Dell Inspiron 14 7000 Series

Laptop Notebooks Tablets News

Dell Inspiron 14 7000 Series

Laptop Notebooks Tablets News

Design and features

Maybe it's just that we've seen a fair share of Dell's more budget-focused laptops over the years, but the Inspiron 14 7000 certainly looks the part of an upper midrange mainstream laptop. There's no plastic lid with too much flex or polycarbonate bottom with multiple access panels. It's all aluminum save for its plastic hinges and it feels sturdy enough to stand up to a daily commute.

The laptop is thin at 0.6 inch and measures 13.6 inches wide by 9.4 inches deep, making it small and thin enough to quickly slip into a shoulder bag. However, while it's not exactly heavy, at 4.1 pounds (4.7 pounds with its power adapter), you won't exactly forget you have it with you, either. 

Laptop Notebooks Tablets News

 

Lift the lid and you'll see a backlit chiclet-style keyboard and a reasonably large clickpad. With the laptop being so thin, there's minimal key travel, so if you tend to hammer hard on your keys, you might find typing uncomfortable. Also, while the keys aren't overly small, there's so much room on the keyboard deck both above and to the sides of the keyboard that it seems like the keys could be larger, or at least moved up some to allow for a bigger clickpad. It does, however, keep it looking simple and clean.

Media controls as well as screen and keyboard brightness are mapped to the function keys and are set to work without the Fn key being held down. The keyboard has two levels of brightness or can be shut off entirely. The top left of my keyboard was a bit brighter than the rest of the keyboard; certainly not the end of the world and if you have to cut corners, I'd rather have some backlighting than none at all.

The clickpad is responsive and has a subtle texture to it that adds just enough drag. There is support for multitouch gestures, however gestures for three and four fingers are shut off by default. I also didn't experience any cursor jumpiness from dragging palms across it while typing, but you can always raise the palm-check setting if you do.

The 14-inch, 1,920x1,080-pixel-resolution screen is overall nice, but doesn't get terribly bright. If you need something that's easily visible in bright office lighting or daylight outside, you might struggle with the Inspiron 14 7000. Also, the Gorilla Glass might be nice for extra screen durability, but it doesn't do you any favors when it comes to glare. On the upside, off-angle viewing is good, with just some loss in brightness off to the sides and none of the inverted colors I've seen on other similarly priced laptops.

 

The side-firing stereo speakers sound thin for both movies and music. They can get quite loud without distortion, but you'll probably want to hook up a pair of speakers or headphones for more enjoyable listening.

Ports and configurations

The 14 7000 Series is more about portability than being a desktop replacement. The port assortment is lean with just two USB 3.0 ports and not much else. If you need things like Ethernet or more USB ports, you'll have to move up to larger-screen Inspiron 15 or 17 7000 Series models, or step down to the Inspiron 14R.

Worth mentioning, too, is that the memory card slot only allows you to put a card in half way. That means traveling with a card in the slot will likely result in breaking or losing your card.

There is no option for a built-in optical drive on the Inspiron 14 7000 Series; you'll have to go up to the 17 7000 Series to get one or, again, switch to the Inspiron 14R if you want to stick with a 14-inch screen size. 

Laptop Notebooks Tablets News

Laptop Notebooks Tablets News