Dell XPS 14z Review

Above, the Dell XPS 14z, with an 11 inch Macbook Air resting on top for size comparisons.

The Dell XPS 14z ships with a soft protective felt cover between keyboard and screen.

Inside, Dell have opted for a slightly darker colour of material which gives it a very high cost appearance. To give you an indication of the darker shade (magnesium), we have taken an image of the laptop alongside the Apple MacBook Air 11 inch, above right.

The screen itself is a seamless design with a glass sheet covering it. The screen measures 14inches with a narrow 1cm bezel, ensuring it is as big as possible for the modest chassis design. Resolution is 1366×768 which is perfectly acceptable for the dimensions, although we would have preferred 1,440×900.

Screen quality is a little disappointing for a luxury laptop, although for a TN panel it is quite good. There are obvious viewing angle limitations which are inherent with this technology however within the contexts of a small laptop, there shouldn't be any viewing angle concerns. Black levels are impressive, with great impact given to high definition media and games, with only minimal bleed in regards to backlighting. The additional glass layer helps boost contrast and the vibrancy of the colour definition. There is a fair amount of reflectivity which makes viewing with a light positioned behind the user rather difficult.

All in all, I would say the screen is just slightly above average and I had hoped for better on such a luxury, high grade design. I had the same modest concerns with the excellent Lenovo ThinkPad X1 which we reviewed earlier this year.

There is no doubt that the build quality of this machine is exceptionally good. The aluminum and magnesium chassis is very strong, with no issues in regards to fitting. The lid and base are single pieces of milled grey aluminum, and the palm and keyboard surround are crafted from a darker magnesium. This is actually a very clever engineering design as magnesium is slightly warmer to touch.

Connectivity is a little weaker than we might expect. Many of the ports are positioned on the rear panel of the laptop which helps to clean up the appearance. Negatively this makes connection at times rather fiddly, with the user forced to tilt the machine forward for access. At the rear of the machine are two USB ports, one of which is super speed USB 3.0 (marked with SS). There is also a mini displayport, HDMI, GB lan and a power connector closeby. The USB ports are rather close, meaning that having a mouse and a large USB drive attached may prove impossible. They should have positioned these ports at opposite sides of the I/O panel.

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