Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7440 Review

The Inspiron 14 Plus is a mid-range 14-inch laptop with an unassuming grayish-silver finish, almost designed to fade into the background. Yet, it feels sturdy in hand, and most of the laptop is metal, including the display panel and the interior. It also hides a few tricks up its sleeve, including a new AI-capable Core Ultra 7 CPU from Intel. 

An enjoyable keyboard spans most of the interior’s width. Key feel is good and the layout doesn’t undersize important keys and provides plenty of room beneath it to rest your palms. The touchpad, meanwhile, measures roughly 4.5 inches wide and 3 inches deep. I've seen larger, but there’s still enough space to activate Windows' more complex multi-touch gestures, like pinching to minimize all open windows or swiping between desktops.

The Inspiron 14 Plus backs up its practicality with versatile connectivity. It has a single Thunderbolt port, which can also be used with USB-C and provides Power Delivery to charge the laptop and also DisplayPort for connecting external displays. That’s joined by two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, HDMI 1.4, a microSD card reader, and a 3.5 mm audio combo jack. Wireless connectivity includes Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, all of which is typical for a mid-range Windows laptop.

Photo: Matthew Smith

 

Display, audio, webcam and microphone

The display is where the Inspiron 14 Plus starts to deviate a bit from the script. The review unit that I tested features a 16:9 aspect ratio display with a resolution of 2,240 x 1,400. Inspiron 14 Plus models carried by Micro Center have an even higher display resolution of 2,880 x 1,800. I have experience with that resolution on other (often more expensive) laptops, and it’s fantastically sharp for a 14-inch screen. 

While glossy screens can provide a more vibrant overall image, the Dell has an anti-glare matte screen that reduces glare and makes the display more comfortable to view in a bright room. That’s an important point. A matte screen makes it easier to read in bright conditions and usually sharper, too. It’s a display more geared towards coding, writing, and other text-based work.

The speakers continue the productivity theme. They’re louder than usual for a mid-range laptop and are designed to sound good in the mid-range when listening to a podcast or speaking to someone on Zoom, versus the deeper bass for music and movies. They’re downward-firing, too, so they sound even better when the laptop is placed on a desk versus when sitting in your lap.

A 1080p webcam and dual microphone array round out the features. The full-HD webcam is commonplace now, but buyers upgrading from a laptop that’s a few years old might be surprised by how crisp it looks (and sounds). The webcam also has a physical privacy shutter that can block the camera when it’s not in use.

Performance and battery life

Every 2024 Dell Inspiron 14 Plus has an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor with 16 cores, 22 threads, and a maximum Boost clock of 4.8GHz. It’s an incredibly common processor found across dozens, if not hundreds, of configurations. Yet the Inspiron 14 Plus is slightly ahead of the pack.

Scores:

• Geekbench 6 single-core: 2,233
• Geekbench 6 multi-core: 12,407
• 3D Mark Wild Life Extreme (Unlimited): 4,716
• 3D Mark Time Spy: 3,513
• FFXIV Dawntrail Benchmark: 4,491

The Inspiron 14 Plus posts great scores in Geekbench 6. It slightly outperformed some other recent laptops I've tested that have the same Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor.

Graphics performance is provided by Intel’s Arc integrated graphics which, contrary to what you might have heard, is decent. The Inspiron 14 Plus can’t handle demanding new AAA games but works well enough for older 3D titles and new 3D games with less demanding visuals. It’s important to note that Intel Arc tends to slightly outperform recent versions of other integrated graphics, so the results on offer here are about as good as it gets without upgrading to a laptop with a discrete GPU, which would usually cost much more. 

 

A 63-watt hour battery provides juice while away from a power socket. Even though it's smaller than the 65-75-watt hour batteries in a lot of similar laptops, the Dell achieved a respectable 12 and a half hours of battery life in a web browsing test which automatically rotated between 10 open browser tabs. That’s comparable to, or better than, many alternatives, and should be enough to handle a day of moderate work on the go. 

The Inspiron 14 Plus is a bit of a “sleeper.” Despite its unassuming looks, it defeats most Intel Core Ultra 155H laptops of similar size, and does so without a bump in price or a reduction in battery life. It’s also reasonably priced at $1,099.99 for a top-tier configuration with a 2.8K display, 32GB of RAM (important for local AI) and a 1TB solid state drive.