Dell XPS 14 2026 review: Fully reborn with Intel Panther Lake X7

[FlexUser]

so comparing this with the expertbook ultra which has the same rating!?
this xps is slower, way heavier and bulkier, a useless smaller totally reflective screen, sh*tty port selection etc..
and now tell us, why!

I am not sure if this is the reason that merits an equal store, but an XPS will survive an Expertbook by a magnitude of three.

[winston95]

i ahgree with X and the other posters in this comment - i can tell we are very similar people. good job fighting the good fight!

this is BY FAR the worst laptop ever built! its mind blowing!!!! first off, it cannot sustain peak power draw!!! that is a FAILURE of design!!! any drop in power draw or clock speed at any point = failure. next, fans?! it is mind boggling to me that dell is still using fans in 2026. don't they see the macbook air??? passive cooling is the new norm. FAILURE.

battery life is VERY bad compared to macbooks air and other laptops too. i don't think its because of the oled because they use oleds on phones and those last for a LONG TIME. also, why is it so heavy??? again dell needs to wake up and look at the macbook air. i will never use a laptop unless it is 0.7kg or lighter!!! and the graphics... their supposed to be good!!! but it doesnt even break 10k in time spy... LOL!!! once again, another failure...

again, thank uyou posters like X and oops and the other guys - thank you for agreeing with me. we need people to know what is good!!! and this is not it!!!

[Mark. L]

Going forward, it would be great to see last year's (lower-watt) RTX 5050 graphics compared against the B390 in real-world performance, both for pro software and for games.

[LPDDR6 in 2027?]

next, fans?! it is mind boggling to me that dell is still using fans in 2026. don't they see the macbook air??? passive cooling is the new norm. FAILURE.

I agree that a fan-less design would be awesome. This may be thanks for INTEL's bad, power inefficient, process node, but AMD is using TSMC and is still not offering a low-power APU for fan-less designs either. Don't know if x86 arch is to blame here to a certain degree.

also, why is it so heavy??? again dell needs to wake up and look at the macbook air. i will never use a laptop unless it is 0.7kg or lighter!!!

Are you trolling? The 15-inch MacBook Air weighs 3.3 pounds (1.51 kg) and the lowest-weight, 14-inch, laptops are about 2.2 pounds (slightly below 1 kg), which is as good as it gets right now. I don't see any 13-inch laptops, or any laptops for that matter, weighting 0.7kg, either. Which laptops weight 1.5 pounds (0.7kg)? Don't get me wrong, 1.5 pounds / 0.7 kg in a 14-inch laptop would be awesome.

their supposed to be good!!! but it doesnt even break 10k in time spy... LOL!!! once again, another failure...

This is a rather small (but may be expensive) 128-bit APU chip. The performance it achieves is very good (6.8k in Time Spy at 45W (notebookcheck.net/Intel-Panther-Lake-Arc-B390-performance-and-efficiency-analysis-Intel-s-new-iGPU-trades-blows-with-the-Nvidia-GeForce-RTX-4050.1212582.0.html)). Of course, 10k in Time Spy would be, again, awesome. Maybe the successor is going to achieve it, but the bandwidth would need to be increased by 42% (1.42 = 10/7). If INTEL want still to use a small and cheap-ish 128-bit wide APU, then they'd need to upgrade from LPDDR5X-9600 to LPDDR5X-13600, which is unlikely by 2027, unless they use LPDDR6.

Going forward, it would be great to see last year's (lower-watt) RTX 5050 graphics compared against the B390 in real-world performance, both for pro software and for games.

100%. Like using 50 games and see where INTEL's performance claims of "Arc B390 = 4050 Laptop" really stands.