Dell XPS 14 (2026)

A glorious return for Dell's iconic XPS 14, with improvements in every area-speed, usability and battery life-compared to last year's Dell 14 Premium

- TONY POLANCO

The Dell XPS 14 (2026) is a true return to form. Like many others, I wasn't exactly enthused when the US giant decided to rebrand its iconic laptop line as “Dell Premium”. Thankfully, it didn't take long for the company to rethink its strategy. As we covered in our CES feature last month (see issue 378, p26), the XPS is back - and arguably better than ever.

It’s surely no coincidence that the new XPS looks much like a MacBook. The CNC-machined aluminium chassis has softer, rounded corners and weighs less than 1.4kg - around 300g lighter than the Dell 14 Premium (see issue 373, p50). It looks amazing and feels fantastic to hold.

Best of all, Dell has fixed its biggest blunders: the capacitive touch row is gone in favour of physical function keys. Restoring tactile keys - including a dedicated Escape key - brings much-needed sanity to the keyboard deck. The “Zero-Lattice” keycap design remains, offering a stable, clicky typing experience with 1.3mm of travel that feels great despite the laptop's slim profile, but dedicated typists should stick to less error-prone designs: this is one area where Dell sacrifices some function to form.

The haptic touchpad also receives a major upgrade. While it remains a seamless sheet of glass integrated into the palm rest, Dell now adds subtle tactile etching to define its boundaries. This simple fix solves the invisible trackpad problem of previous models, allowing you to feel the edges without looking down.

There is one baffling design choice, which is the removal of the microSD card slot. While Dell has included three Thunderbolt 4 ports, the loss of dedicated expandable storage is strange, especially for a machine aimed at the creative crowd. And while Dell has bowed to pressure by bringing back the XPS name and physical function row, there are no USB-A ports here.