Another good option from Dell for your work machine Dell’s Inspiron series is known for its heavy-duty workload efficiency for business and commercial users. The 14 2-in-1 (7430) brings the 360-degree convertible plus touch display features to the package. Let’s try and check wat this Windows laptop does well and where it lacks.
Design and build quality: The 14 2-in-1 follows a very familiar and proven design – large sized trackpad with ample space around; dual top-firing speakers; full-sized backlit keyboard with decent key travel that’s comfortable to type on for longer periods (and also spill-resistent); sturdy hinge to keep that 360- degree rotation in check. It ticks a lot of right checkboxes when it comes to the build quality. It weighs a little under 1.6kg and measures 0.73-inch in thickness when closed, the device isn’t the most compact 14-inch machine e have seen but it isn’t too heavy or big to be carried around frequently, either. Oh, and the device comes packaged in a box that’s made from fully recycled and renewable materials, as per Dell.
Display: You get a 14-inch full HD+ (1920x1200) LCD display (WVA panel) with support for 60Hz refresh rates and added Dell Activa Pen touch support (has to be purchased separately). The display here isn’t IPS but has decent colour accuracy to watch videos and view images though viewing angles could have been a bit better. It gets 250nits of peak brightness and just about okay for outdoors use in tablet mode.
Battery life: The 14 2-in-1 sports a 54Whr battery unit and comes with a 65watt type C AC adapter in the box. The battery life here seems to be around 4.5-5 hours, which isn’t too great for a full work day. With brightness at 50%, WiFI always on, an hour of music streaming, two Web browsers opened and editing a Word document, the laptop requires to be put back on charge in around 4.5 hours.
Performance: The device comes equipped with Intel’s 13th Gen. 1355U i7 chip along with Iris Xe Graphics plus 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM (also comes in 8GB RAM option) and 512GB NVMe ADATA 512GB SSD. The device runs on Windows 11 Home and comes with Microsoft Office 365 subscription, too. The machine handles tasks such as working on an Excl spreadsheet while having a PowerPoint PPT opened in the background with some music streaming and Web browser with 5-6 tabs opened always without any major glitches. It wakes up from sleep mode quickly enough and its physical fingerprint scanner is really reliable for frequent usage on a daily basis. There’s a physical privacy shutter button for the 1080p webcam with Windows Hello support for unlocking the device, but I used the fingerprint scanner (also with Windows Hello support) way more often. Connectivity-wise, you get an HDMI 1.4 port and 2 USB 3.2 type C (Thunderbolt4.0) ports with power delivery on the left side; while the right side houses the 3.5mm audio jack, a USB3.2 type A port and an SD card slot. It does seem to be at least one USb type A port short, though two USB type C ports are there for variable uses. The HDMI 1.4 port supports an external full HD 60Hz display but not a 4K display. You get WiFi 6E as well as Bluetooth 5.2 support and I didn’t notice any performance issues for networking here. Worth noting that you don’t get any HDMI to LAN converted with the device. The touch display is also quite responsive provided you’re okay with the tablet form factor in this size and weight, which is clearly quite far from what a regular 14-inch tablet would measure. Can you play games on this machine? Well, if it isn’t a graphic-intensive game such as Hogwarts Legacy, Cyberpunk 2077 or Spider-Man Remastered, then it can handle some titles in medium settings, but this isn’t one you should be eyeing if gaming is one your main use cases.
Verdict: The Dell 14 2-in-1 (7430) is a well-built Windows machine that has a familiar yet decent design, a great set of keyboard and trackpads for work and a decent display, too. It could have had a little battery life for work on the go, which is just about okay. For most use cases, as a work laptop, at Rs. 1,00,095, this is a good offering from the house of Dell that gets the job of running multiple Microsoft Office apps plus Web browser in the conventional laptop mode well.
