Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 laptop review: Marvellous battery life and impressive performance for under $1,000

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The AMD-powered Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 had me asking myself, “Is this illegal? It feels illegal.” TikTok trends aside, this laptop seamlessly merges affordability with great performance and stellar battery life, all wrapped up in a beautiful navy blue chassis.

Additionally, it has an excellent variety of ports (albeit both USB-C ports reside on the laptop’s left side), boasts a fairly comfortable keyboard, and it’s well-built, which is essential for convertible laptops that are constantly utilizing the hinges to flip between laptop, tent, and tablet modes.

That said, a budget-friendly laptop has to cut corners somewhere to preserve its affordability. This laptop lacks a decent webcam, comes with a set of bottom-firing speakers that leave you searching for bass, and features a display that’s unfortunately capped at a 60Hz refresh rate. Even with those minor negatives, the Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 is still one of the best cheap laptops when you consider how many fantastic features it offers at such a low price.

Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 (AMD) price and specs

Intel has dominated the laptop space for quite a while, but I’ve always had a slight preference for AMD processors. They’re just as powerful in most scenarios, offer excellent battery efficiency, and usually stay budget-friendly. The Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 highlights those strengths at an impressive price.

Our Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 review unit is $949.99 via Dell and comes with the following specs: 

• AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 processor

• Integrated Radeon 860M graphics

• 16GB RAM

• 512GB of SSD storage 

• 14-inch FHD+ (1920 x 1200) touch display

There’s another AMD-powered Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 configuration for $999.99 at Best Buy that bumps SSD storage up to 1TB and downgrades slightly to Radeon 840M integrated graphics. With both the Best Buy configuration and our review unit configuration at Dell, I’d highly recommend waiting for a sale because I’ve seen them dip to $599.99 and $699.99, respectively.

An aluminum-plastic mix for an affordable, yet durable build

Despite being a budget-friendly laptop, Dell’s 14 Plus 2-in-1 avoids the typical boring gray or black colorway. Instead, its chassis comes in an attractive deep navy finish called Midnight Blue, which covers the lid, base, edges, keyboard, and trackpad.

The lid features a subtle Dell logo and, along with the base, is made with aluminum to help resist fingerprints. Opening the laptop, however, the palm rest area is plastic, which can get greasy during use and feels like a budget-friendly material with slight give when pushed.

The laptop’s hinges are smooth and sturdy when flipping between tablet and laptop modes. Combining this durable, convertible form factor with its compact dimensions (12.4 x 8.9 x 0.7 inches) and a fairly light weight of 3.5 pounds, the Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 is a great companion laptop for frequent travelers or commuters.

A great display for a budget-friendly laptop

The Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 features a 14-inch FHD+ (1920 × 1200) touch display that's best described as passable. It’s a decent display, but it won’t blow you away with vivid colors or deep blacks, which isn’t surprising for a budget-friendly config.

The screen delivers a sharp, well-lit picture, but colors come across muted and blacks appear more gray. Using the touchscreen to download Spotify and type with the on-screen keyboard, response time was excellent, though the display’s refresh rate is capped at 60Hz.

Overall, for consuming content and browsing the web, the display works great. But if you need high color accuracy for graphic design or creative work, this laptop’s display won’t be up to the task.

Great port variety, but it’s missing one vital feature

For a budget laptop, Dell’s 14 Plus 2-in-1 offers a solid port selection — with one big caveat.

On the left, you’ll find:

• HDMI 1.4 port

• Two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports

And on the right:

• Audio jack

• USB-A Gen 1 port

From a laptop at this price, I’m not complaining about the lack of an Ethernet port, a higher quality HDMI port, or even multiple USB-A ports. However, what really gets my goat is Dell failing to divvy up this laptop’s USB-C ports between the left and right sides. C’mon, we’re almost in 2026. Shouldn’t all laptops have USB-C ports on both sides for charging convenience?

Bottom-firing speakers are no bueno

A budget-friendly laptop, unfortunately, can’t have it all, and one of the areas where Dell sacrificed quality for affordability with the 14 Plus 2-in-1 is with the speakers. The laptop features two 2.5-watt, bottom-firing speakers that have zero bass and can be muffled, depending on where you set the laptop down.

I fired up “cliché” by mgk in the Spotify app, and the bass was nonexistent. All the atmospheric hums in the intro and punchy bass notes in the chorus were gone, leaving the audio feeling very empty and one-note.

The one perk these speakers do have is volume. They can get pretty loud with minimal distortion up until around 80% volume — it’s just not high-quality audio.

A relatively comfortable keyboard paired with a mid trackpad

I wouldn’t necessarily say the 14 Plus 2-in-1 has a stellar keyboard, but there are pleasant elements to it that I wasn’t expecting from an affordable laptop. 

The keys are large, well-spaced, and feel as though they have a decent amount of travel, providing a fairly good, comfortable typing experience overall. However, as a self-proclaimed keyboard snob, the keys are a little mushy for me and don’t deliver quite as much clickiness as I’d like.

Moving on to the trackpad, it failed to impress, to say the least. 

Dell’s 14 Plus 2-in-1 has a mylar trackpad, which is naturally less smooth than glass trackpads, but this laptop’s trackpad was worse than other mylar trackpads I’ve tried. My fingers stutter across its surface awkwardly, unless I’m deliberately trying to move my fingers super lightly, and clicking feels wimpier than I’d like. In short, the trackpad is usable, but I didn’t love using it.

Its webcam delivers muted colors and a grainy picture

The Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 falls victim to a problem far too many laptops share: having a terrible webcam. 

It’s equipped with a 1080p camera that has the potential to look fine in the right lighting, but in practice, it delivers grainy images with poor color accuracy. My light green eyes may as well have been gray in all of the selfies I snapped.

I also noticed pesky motion blur, with a trailing effect behind my face and objects as I moved the laptop around. While this effect can look artistic when intentional, it’s not something I want in a video call or work presentation.

Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 (AMD) benchmarks and performance

Powered by an AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 processor, the Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 delivers reliable performance, easily handling a daily workload of flipping between 20+ Chrome tabs with Spotify streaming music in the background.

Even with all those Chrome tabs open — including two YouTube videos running on mute — I experienced no lag when typing in Google Docs or loading new pages. While this laptop can’t handle intense video editing or native gaming, it can tackle daily internet-based tasks with grace.

When loading up multiple new pages, the fans do kick up, but they’re pretty quiet, and they die down once tabs are fully loaded. That said, expect slightly noisier fans and increased surface temperature when the laptop is plugged in.

Like all review laptops, we put this laptop through a standard performance benchmark. On the Geekbench 6 test, Dell’s 14 Plus 2-in-1 churned out a multi-core score of 11,301, which I’d say is pretty impressive at its affordable price. 

It’s a higher score than what we’ve seen on a few of Dell’s more expensive, older models, like the Dell XPS 13 9350, but pales slightly in comparison to modern laptops with Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H processor, which generally deliver scores of 12,000 to 13,000. For example, the Lenovo Yoga 9i (Gen 9) and the HP Spectre x360 14 earned scores of 12,345 and 12,955, respectively.

Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 (AMD) battery life

The Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 lasted a jaw-dropping 20 hours and 52 minutes on a full charge during our battery test, which consists of looping a 1080p video at 50% brightness and 50% speaker volume. 

Even the new 15-inch M4 MacBook Air pales in comparison, notching just over 10 hours on the same battery test. AI-powered processors are finally allowing Windows laptops to deliver better battery results, and the Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 is proof.

Is the Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 (AMD) worth it?

For everything this laptop offers at just $949.99 full price (and often even less if you catch it on sale), the Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 is absolutely worth it for those looking to get the best bang for their buck. 

Sure, it has a lousy webcam, middling speakers, and a trackpad that gives me the ick. But it’s powered by an AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 processor that provides impressive performance and assists in delivering jaw-dropping battery life — and those two features alone are objectively more important than a good webcam, set of speakers, or trackpad.

Stellar performance and efficiency aren’t the only two things the 14 Plus 2-in-1 has going for it, either. During testing, I enjoyed typing at my normal lightning-fast pace on its keyboard, found its plentiful ports to my liking (though I wished one of the left-side USB-C ports would scooch over to the right side), and loved how sturdy the hinges felt, even after multiple mode switches.

All in all, this budget-friendly laptop is a fantastic option for students, frequent travelers, or anyone who simply needs a reliable performer for daily productivity tasks.