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• New Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7440 it starts at $1,000 and is potentially one of the best travel laptops on the market today.
• Its Meteor Lake processor delivers solid performance, and the laptop’s lightweight, durable design is coupled with some nice quality-of-life features.
• The display isn’t overly bright, and the downward-facing heat vents may be uncomfortable for some users.

The Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7440 is a light and portable laptop that doesn’t have one main feature that stands out, but a lot of smaller, nice quality-of-life additions. Ultimately, this is a comfortable laptop designed for all-day use, even if you’re not a fan of all of Dell’s design choices here.

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For one thing, most of its body is made from a combination of aluminum and recycled steel, giving it a tough exterior. This is a level of durability that ensures it will survive even the roughest rides. Despite the durable material, this is not a heavy laptop, weighing around 3.5 lbs for easy portability.

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As for the keyboard, Dell made some interesting choices. The individual keys are large and made of a soft, elastic material that is comfortable to use, even after long periods of typing. One of the downsides of rubber keys like these is that they can often feel a bit “mushy”. But the keyboard on the Inspiron 14 Plus is built with a slight spring in each key that complements the squishiness. This tactile feedback makes typing on a laptop interesting. It’s a small detail, but it goes a long way.

In fact, these subtle details seem to be a common theme for the Inspiron 14. Case in point: the edges of the laptop’s palm rest are rounded instead of angular. This design choice greatly contributes to comfortable typing as you won’t feel sharp edges poking you.

And speaking of comfort, the mylar touchpad is also generously sized. Your hands won’t cramp while browsing the web, especially compared to other laptops with small touchpads. It even supports multiple hand gestures. For example, you can pinch to enlarge the window.

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Looking at the display, the Insprion 14 Plus comes with a 14-inch 2.2K display (or 2.8K if you opt for a better display at checkout). The screen looks great for a laptop, even if it’s not stunning. Colors are vivid enough and you can expect crystal clear clarity.

The Inspiron 14 Plus doesn’t have image-enhancing features like Dolby Vision, but it is TUVRheinland certified, meaning it doesn’t emit much harmful blue light, reducing the likelihood of eye irritation after hours of staring at the screen. However, my only complaint about this display is that it is not very bright. The maximum brightness is 300 nits, which makes it difficult to see in sunlight, and the anti-glare coating doesn’t help that much.

Performance is solid. Inside the machine is an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H along with an Intel Arc graphics card. Speaking from experience, you can expect this laptop to handle light to semi-intensive workloads with ease. Examples of this include using multimedia, browsing the Internet, and work-related programs. I emphasize “light to semi” workloads because the Arc GPU might struggle with extremely demanding tasks like video editing.

Battery life is pretty good too. The Inspiron 14 Plus can run for more than eight hours on a single charge; long enough to handle a full day’s work. I should note that in my testing there didn’t seem to be much of a difference between putting the laptop in Battery Balance or Best Power Efficiency mode; The laptop lasted about the same time on both.

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I have a problem with some of Dell’s design choices here, namely the placement of the downward-facing heat vents and speakers. Placing the heating vents on the bottom is a little uncomfortable for me when it comes to the practicality of the case, as I like to do my work on my lap. With the vents facing down, my legs get uncomfortably warm from all the hot air blowing at them. Second, I’m not a fan of speaker placement. And they’re on the bottom of the laptop, resulting in a somewhat muffled sound. This is not optimal, in my opinion, especially since with these drivers the audio would otherwise sound great for a laptop.

ZDNET’s shopping advice

While Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7440 lacking the bells and whistles seen on higher-end models, it stands out as a reliable machine with some nice touches. The laptop offers professionals on the go a high-resolution screen, decent battery life, and solid performance. Yes, the poor placement of the heating vents may disappoint some, but it’s worth putting up with for what you get in return.

Pricing for this model starts at a very reasonable $1,000, a solid deal for what you’re getting here. You can opt for a 2.8K display and 32GB of RAM which pushes the price up to $1,200.