Whenever I sprint around the exhibit halls at a massive event like Computex in Taipei, it can be easy to get numbed to the sky-high prices attached to the niche tech products being announced left, right and centre. In 2026, perhaps more than ever before, it's tempting to gloss over pricing as just an inevitably bitter pill.

So, I was hugely impressed when I stopped by Dell's closed-door area to check out the XPS 13 (which is a certified banger), and got a bonus in the form of some Alienware launches that do really interesting things. Crucially, they do those things at estimated, unconfirmed target prices that make them super enticing.

The big headliner this year from Alienware is the (brace yourself) Alienware 39 5K OLED Gaming Monitor (AW3926QW). That absolute mouthful is a 39-inch 5K monitor that marries the gorgeous blacks of OLED to the immersive fun of an ultrawide.

Fascinatingly, it uses an LG panel, but unlike LG's own UltraGear monitor of the same size, it drops things down to just standard OLED rather than WOLED. Dell's spokesperson said this was because it's happy to trade the brightness ceiling down a little, but get more vivid colours as a result, and the monitor certainly delivers on that front.

It's beautiful to look at, and while a maximum refresh rate of 165Hz at maximum resolution might make it unsuitable for competitive gaming, I'm convinced that you're not buying this to play Counter-Strike 2 anyway. Plus, it has a 330Hz (1080p) mode for those who do need it.

A lovely stand makes it easy to adjust, and its 1500R curve isn't pronounced enough to feel awkward. It's gorgeous, but most importantly of all, I was told that it's currently targeting a launch price of $1,099. That's simply superb value for a screen of this quality, and could make it a genuine disruptor when it arrives later this month (in Asia first, with more regions later in the year).

A "cut-price" option that excels, too

For those who don't have £1,000 to drop on a gaming monitor, I was actually even more impressed by the other big launch Alienware showed off: deep breath, it was the Alienware 34 280Hz QD-OLED Gaming Monitor (AW3426DW).

This is a QD-OLED, a panel that Alienware said has been hugely popular since it launched it in 2022, and upgrades things really nicely. At 34 inches, it's a little more manageable for normal-sized desks (even if it's still entirely extra), and running 007 First Light, I was seriously impressed by how it performed in a brief demo session.

Compared to Alienware's last model, the refresh rate has gone from 240Hz to 280Hz, with peak brightness also up from 1,000nits to 1,300nits. Perhaps most consequential of all is a new anti-reflective coating that really impressed me – subtle enough not to change the picture, but diffusing enough light to make it gorgeous to look at.

Here's the crucial bit – this one's apparently targeting a price of $799. Again, that's not exactly bargain-bin stuff, but for the tech on offer, it's hugely competitive, and if Dell can actually bring it to market at that level, it again should genuinely unnerve some of the competition (meaning LG, most likely).

A background strategy shift

A couple of weeks before Computex, Alienware announced its latest laptop, the Alienware 15 (finally, a doable name). That launch might not have attracted huge amounts of attention, but checking out the 15 at the same time as these high-end monitors underscored something in my eyes.

Dell might not be saying that it's changing the Alienware brand in wholesale terms, but it's clearly trying to swim against the tide in computing and offer prices that people can actually afford.

In the case of this laptop, it's more true than for either of those monitors – it'll start from $1,299.99 with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, and is deliberately geared to offer a huge number of customisation options. In some regions, I was told that even 30-series cards might be available, to keep that price even further down.

When I posited that the laptop chassis might become Alienware's Swiss Army Knife, suitable for a wide range of markets and situations, I got agreement back from Dell's spokesperson, and that adds to the sense that there's a new approach at play.

Alienware, like XPS, has long managed to stay really premium despite also being mainstream and having great brand recognition. At a time when handhelds are spiking in price, GPUs are becoming scarce, and even RAM is basically a hard currency, taking their brand to the people with fairer pricing is a refreshing angle.

Whether it can stick the landing with those monitors' final prices remains to be seen, but from what I've seen in Taipei, I'm pretty excited by the influence the launches could exert on the market. Time will tell, ultimately.

When I tested the new XPS 14 earlier this year, I thought I was on relatively safe ground calling it the Windows laptop of the year. Little did I know that Dell would one-up itself this quickly. The XPS 13, launched in front of my eyes at Computex 2026 in Taipei, has skyrocketed up as my most anticipated laptop launch of the year.

The MacBook Neo might be a sea-change for Apple, but having handled and used both, I'd rather have the XPS 13, and that's quite a statement to make while Apple's little fanless wonder impresses testers left, right and centre.

Dell teased the XPS 13 back at CES, with a prototype unit that it wasn't letting people really get hands-on with. Now, though, the laptop's here and ready – it should launch in its default configuration later this month, with more customisable options to follow.

Even without those upgraded SKUs, though, the base-level XPS 13 might just be the best-value Windows laptop I've seen in ages. That's not just because of its specs, which are extremely solid, but because of the superb design work that's evident in its every curve.

Apple was rightly lauded for sticking with an all-metal design for the Neo, and the XPS 13 matches it on that front. It's made from CNC-machined aluminium and looks simply gorgeous, plus it's hugely compact and slim. It weighs just 1kg, and honestly felt like less than that in the hand, and at just 12.7mm thick it's going to be one of the sleekest laptops you could hope to pack into a backpack or carry-on.

Dell's demo units behind closed doors at Computex were locked to a presentation mode, so I couldn't do even the remotest bit of performance testing, but they should come in very solidly. The default version will pack an Intel Core Series 3 to start, with upgrades to Core Ultra versions in the pipeline.

What I did get to do was a whole bunch of tapping and test-typing on the keyboard, which is an interesting one. Dell has moved back to a chiclet keyboard, different from the tighter and bigger-keyed XPS 14 and 16. I don't have strong thoughts on this change – I found the 14's keyboard really solid, and the 13's is clearly also great, just with a slightly different approach.

Key travel felt clicky and deep enough to be satisfying, and the trackpad similarly looks like a good one from my early impression. It's not a haptic one, unsurprisingly, and is a lot smaller than the equivalent on the XPS 14, but I'd be surprised if that caused much angst in everyday use.

If you want an OLED, you'll also have to make the big upgrade to the XPS 14, because the new XPS 13 has an LCD, no matter what, with no upgrade option. It does come with a touchscreen as default, though, which is nice, and it has a really good anti-reflective coating that was tested in harsh lighting and impressed me. With a variable refresh rate that can go between 30Hz and 120Hz, and a native resolution of 2.5K, it looked vibrant and impressive, but with limited on-screen action that'll need more testing.

Dell isn't being shy this summer – its blog post announcing the XPS 13 repeatedly calls out the MacBook Neo's specs and dimensions, to push the narrative that its laptop is a better buy. Crucially, we know only US pricing right now, but at $699 ($599 for students), it's going to end up as a close-run thing.

For $100 more, whether you're a student or more, you'll get a more powerful laptop that's smaller and sleeker, and you'll have the Windows ecosystem if it's your preference (not always a given). I think the Neo is a paradigm shift for Apple, but that doesn't mean it would be my default recommendation for everyone, and those looking for a mid-range, incredibly portable laptop should surely perk their ears up at the XPS 13.

That June launch estimate for the US means that we'll likely get UK pricing confirmed imminently, which will tell us more about the regional comparisons to the Neo, but I'd almost like to get out of that mode regardless. For Mac buyers, the Neo is a huge deal – I'd say that for Windows customers, the XPS 13 could be similarly game-changing.

For loads of people, that Intel Core Series 3 chip will be more than enough power to get them through light workloads and study, and the design notes of the XPS 13 make it irresistible. I can't wait to get my hands on it in a more in-depth test when it's closer to launch – the way it grabbed my attention on a busy showfloor in Taipei really shouldn't be undervalued.

If it can stick the landing, then the XPS 13 and XPS 14 will give Dell perhaps its most compelling XPS slate ever, which is a remarkable reversal from the brand being killed off just 18 months ago. Picking which one's the laptop of the year might be the hardest part.

Dell doesn't always bother to do much at Computex, but this year it's bucked that trend in a big way by debuting what might be the most consequential part of its XPS brand revival. After bringing out some frankly gorgeous 14 and 16-inch XPS laptops earlier this year, it's now showing off a more final XPS 13, which crucially comes in way more affordably.

In the US, which is the only place for which we have some confirmed pricing right now, the laptop will start at $699.99, with a student discount reportedly bringing it down to $599.99 when it launches in July, making it only a little bit pricier than the MacBook Neo. While we don't actually yet have sales figures to back things up, most analysts are confident that the Neo is a huge change for Apple, and it's clear that the rest of the industry is moving in the same direction.

While the XPS branding has been around for ages, it's been a very long time since a new XPS could be picked up this affordably, and it's very impressive to note that the laptop still looks pretty gorgeous and is the lightest XPS ever made at just 1kg. It's around 12.7mm thin, too, so also the thinnest ever.

How is Dell keeping the cost of the laptop down? By going with slightly older silicon – the Intel Series 3 Core 5 320 on the most affordable version, a chip that should still be more than enough for most light users (including the all-important student market). The laptop will come with a 512GB SSD to begin with, and either 8GB, 16GB or 32GB of RAM, depending on configuration, with a 256GB SSD version seemingly to follow.

You'll also be able to step up to Intel's Core Ultra 7 335 for a pretty significant boost in power, although the price hike isn't yet clear and could make that something to hesitate on. Regardless of internal specs, you'll get a 13.4-inch IPS touchscreen display, with a resolution of 2560x1600, and a 30-120Hz variable refresh rate.

The big downside to the laptop's otherwise very sleek design is that it cuts down on ports significantly, with a USB-C port on either edge being the sum total (not even a 3.5mm audio port, even). That's a throwback, but also familiar from the MacBook Neo, so might just be par for the course now.

I adored the XPS 14 this year when I tested it, and while there are plenty of major differences between that super-premium model and the XPS 13, I still can't wait to get hands-on with the new laptop. I might get that chance here at Computex in Taipei, but we'll certainly be raring to test it when it comes to the UK later this year, regardless.

When you review as many gadgets, laptops, headphones and more as I do, you start to notice a pattern when you've been testing something high-quality. Plenty of the time, even a creditable device won't leave me pining away for it once it's gone, since I have my daily drivers that tend to be the best stuff I have access to.

Sometimes, though, when I package a review unit back up to be returned to the brand, I get a pang of regret, and that's how it felt waving goodbye to the Dell XPS 14. This 2026 revision (and revival) of one of Dell's most influential product lines is a superb success in my books, and I underlined that opinion with a five-star review last week.

While it's never a great tragedy to go back to my M3 MacBook Pro, which still performs absolutely as well as I could need it to, I can't help but miss parts of the XPS 14, which stands out as probably the most desirable non-gaming laptop I've tested in the last couple of years.

Sure, something like the Asus ROG Zephyrus 14 has more chops when it comes to plugged-in gaming performance thanks to its discrete graphics card, but aside from that I think the XPS 14 is the laptop I'd most like to own if I was abandoning the life of the Apple ecosystem.

The most crucial thing is probably its refreshed design, which is simply gorgeous and full of high-quality materials. It properly rivals the MacBook Pro in most ways, with a lack of flex or give under your hands, and a really sturdy hinge that can be opened with one hand.

The fact that I tested the upgraded OLED version of its display also meant it was simply brilliant for viewing content, whether that meant streaming a show in the evening or editing some photos for another review. The warm colours and deep blacks of OLED displays are always memorable.

With a Panther Lake chip from Intel at its heart, I was also blown away by the gaming potential of the XPS 14, which can play new games capably if you tune them right (and if they're optimised right). For older titles, it's a genuine option, and I think we're only a few years away from laptops that make separate gaming GPUs look like bad value.

The reality for me is that it would take one heck of a crowbar to pry me away from Apple, since I've got an iPhone, AirPods, Apple Watch and MacBook Pro. That's a quartet of devices that work together pretty dreamily in my everyday working life. Still, for those who aren't as bought in, the XPS 14 is simply gorgeous.

It isn't the cheapest option on the market if you want a new laptop, especially in the configuration I tested, but a week after boxing it back up, I'm still thinking about how well-built it is. That's a pretty high compliment, so check out my review if you want to know more about the details of its accomplishments.

Long live XPS, eh? After a slight rebranding debacle in 2025, during which Dell retired all of its laptop sub-brands, it's now seen the light and brought XPS back into the fold – and it's done it in some style. The 2026 refreshes of the XPS lineup are finally here, and I've had the XPS 14 for a couple of weeks to see how it stacks up.

Without spoiling my verdict entirely, what I've experienced has been probably the slickest Windows hardware I've got my hands on in years, and the first proper competitor to the peerless MacBook Pro in terms of a genuine day-to-day recommendation for people. Its price makes that a harder sell, to be fair, but purely in terms of the experience on offer, the XPS 14 (2026) is something special.

Price and Availability

Unveiled at the CES tech show at the turn of the year, you can now order the XPS directly from Dell, in both its 16-inch and 14-inch variants. I've tested the XPS 14, but in its most highly-specced version (featuring a Series 3 Intel Core Ultra X7 358H and a touchscreen). This version costs a whacking £2,198.99 here in the UK (or $2,309.99 in the US).

The lowest-spec version offers a Series 3 Intel Core Ultra 7 355, instead, and comes in at £1,599 or $1,699.99, which is more competitive – but remains a pretty tall order. Still, the redesign underlines that this is a premium laptop, so the proof is in the pudding, as I'll get to below.

Design and Specs

For a long time, the XPS line had stuck to a fairly tried-and-true design language that involved a wedge-like taper for its laptops, but in bringing the brand back from the dead, Dell has also given it a hardware makeover. I can't allege that it's actually copied Apple's homework, but anyone who's handled a recent MacBook will be in familiar territory.

Now, the 2026 version of the XPS 14 is flat with rounded edges, spreading its thickness evenly. It has a slight lip where the top meets the bottom, which you fairly easily grip to open the laptop, and it's 14.62mm thick throughout. That makes it really compact and packable, but it's worth pointing out that it feels super solid in your hands.

The laptop is made from CNC aluminium, and that gives it a really premium feeling that is again familiar from Apple's best work. But part of what I've really loved is how it's finished. It has a dark grey, almost blue finish that looks great in different lights, but the inside surface hosting the keyboard and trackpad is in a slightly contrasting soft finish that pairs so nicely.

Weighing in at 1.36 kg, it's not the lightest laptop in the world, but it has that premium feeling that makes it feel well worth the heft, in my view. The design isn't without some downsides, though. The chief one is that Dell is sticking to a low-on-ports vision that now feels a few years outdated.

One side of the XPS 14 houses a 3.5mm audio jack and a USB-C port, while the other side offers up two more USB-C ports – all three of those USB-C options have Thunderbolt 4, Display Port 2.1 and power delivery, so they're all really flexible. Still, for a high-end professional laptop like this, there's no substitute for the ease of an HDMI port, and plenty of people would welcome an SD card reader, too.

Still, I owned an XPS for years that had such fun design touches as a webcam on the bottom of the screen to ensure that you looked terrible on every video call, so the vast majority of design notes here are positive (including the webcam now being above the screen).

The keyboard is nice and sizeable, with big keys that take some getting used to, but which feel pretty great under your fingers. It's paired with a touchpad that you can almost lose sight of, so subtle are its edges, but it feels good in use and has solid haptic feedback.

That takes us to what's inside the laptop – and it's a bit of a specs list. The cheapest version of the XPS 14 comes with 16GB of RAM, with steps up taking this to 32GB. The cheapest build comes with a non-touch display at 2K resolution, as does the middle option, while only the tested version offers a 2.8K OLED that's touch-enabled.

The lowest-cost version also has a Series 3 Intel Core Ultra 5 325 powering it; an 8-core chip with Intel Graphics and no B390 iGPU. Either of the step-up models has the same 16-core Series 3 Intel Core Ultra X7 358H with the Arc B390 for graphical oomph.

Interestingly, all three versions come with 512GB of SSD space, which is a little cheeky in the more expensive versions' case. There are a host of rivals offering 1TB as standard for this sort of price, and Dell should really be matching that, I'd say.

Performance

I'm now quite a few laptops deep into my experience with Intel's Series 3 chips (otherwise known as Panther Lake) and I've yet to encounter a version that feels underpowered. There are quite a few variants to try, of course, but the Core Ultra Ultra X7 358H that I've been using is super-capable.

It's not quite the absolute top-end chipset, but that's a bit like criticising an Apple M3 Max for not being the M3 Ultra – if you really need that power, you can find a machine that includes it. For most people, though, the X7 358H is plenty beastly enough. It's chewed through image-editing tasks with no hitches, and my normal workload of open Chrome tabs, Slack and WhatsApp windows has it barely breaking a sweat.

This really comes into focus when you put the laptop through its gaming paces. The version I tested includes the B390 iGPU, and it performs so impressively, as I've found on other Panther Lake chips. In Doom: The Dark Ages, I've been able to get benchmark results hovering around 50fps on low settings, with some variance according to whether you target performance or quality using Intel's XeSS upscaler.

Even more impressively, I've been able to get a solid 65fps result from Cyberpunk 2077 on its low preset, which is immensely playable and far prettier than its nomenclature suggests. These are demanding games, so indie titles, older games and those with less photorealistic graphics could well be extremely fluid on this laptop, which is quite a boast.

Like some other Panther Lake machines I've used, the XPS 14 isn't afraid to spin up its fans pretty immediately when you put the chip under a little load, but they're not offensively loud, and that's a worthy price to pay for heat management and therefore performance.

Plus, the version of the laptop I tested had a gorgeous 2.8K OLED display that made actually looking at whatever I was doing a further pleasure. OLED displays are thankfully no longer the rarity they used to be among the best laptops, but they're still a real treat to use, especially when they're this sharp. It can also get up to 120Hz, which makes it extremely smooth, as a bonus.

Battery life can stretch to up to 31 hours according to Dell, although I didn't get anywhere near that number, especially if benchmarking. Still, in regular working use I was able to get through a whole day on battery power without dipping below 20%, which means that I feel confident in the XPS 14 as an all-day machine for light to moderate use.

Impressively, that webcam that I mentioned earlier is a 4K one, which is really rare in laptops that I've tested. It even has HDR (high dynamic range), and that delivers clarity in recordings and video calls that puts some others to shame. It doesn't have a privacy shutter, though, which is a surprising omission.

Verdict

The XPS is back in a big way – and after positive early impressions, it's great to confirm that this 2026 model is a major return to form, too.

The Dell XPS 14 is just about the most desirable non-gaming Windows laptop I've tested in years, and it's the first one that's had me genuinely wondering if I'd rather use it than my MacBook Pro.

It has a gorgeous design featuring a classy new chassis, superb Intel Panther Lake power at its heart, a beautiful OLED display in this premium model, and a keyboard that's pleasant to use.

All that makes it a laptop with basically no rough edges other than an undeniably steep asking price – but for those with generous workplaces or budgets of their own, this feels like a slam dunk from Dell.

Also consider

While I've mentioned the MacBook Pro a couple of times in this review, the MacBook Air remains the smart buy for most people, and given how it undercuts the XPS 14, it's a much more efficient pick if you want a capable laptop and don't mind limited ports. Of course, it means giving up on Windows, but that might be fine for you.

If you want a Windows laptop that's even lighter than the XPS 14, consider Asus' new Zenbook A14 or A16, which is incredibly thin and great to use. It's less premium in terms of build quality, and swaps Intel out for the latest wave of Qualcomm chips, but is no less capable as a work machine for that change.

Dell monitors provide a big screen experience for your desktop or laptop, but few compare to these latest options. Alongside the return of the XPS and its new Alienware lineup for 2026, Dell unveiled two rather special Ultrasharp monitors.

Ultra-wide curved monitors often provide a high-resolution experience in larger sizes, but this new model goes one step further. The Dell Ultrasharp 52 Thunderbolt Hub monitor is the world’s first 52-inch 21:9 model, and the largest with an IPS red panel display.

Designed for a very specific audience, this monitor is aimed at financial traders, data scientists and engineers who deal with large amounts of data on a daily basis. Up until now, many of these users have combined two portrait 27-inch monitors on either side of a 43-inch monitor to deliver the screen real estate they require. The new 52-inch ultra-wide does this with one single display, removing the problems of bezels, extra cables and alignment issues.

“We work very closely with financial traders, data scientists and engineers who deal with data on a daily basis. For them, a large screen area is very critical,” says Yoon Lee, Vice President of Displays for Dell.

This huge display offers a 6K resolution at 129 pixels per inch, or over 61,000 pixels in total. It features a 120Hz refresh rate and IPS black technology for richer blacks and sharper contrast. You can connect up to four PCs to the display at any one time and partition the display into up to 52 sections. All controllable with one keyboard and mouse.

Conversely, the Dell Ultrasharp 32 4K QD OLED monitor is about quality over size. This 32-inch display is the world’s first commercial QD OLED screen and offers DisplayHDR TrueBlack 500 antiglare technology. This is technology that has come from the gaming market, but is here designed for creative professionals looking for extreme colour accuracy.

Pricing and availability for these two models is still to be confirmed.

Dell’s gaming brand Alienware is getting a big refresh. Following on from the big revival of the XPS brand, Alienware is to become the exclusive Dell gaming option, with new super-slim laptops and an entry-level offering that will see more users able to afford one.

Last year, Dell strengthened its higher-end options, with the return of Area 51 laptops and desktops. This year, these models see the introduction of AMD’s flagship processors to the desktop model. However, the biggest change is coming at the lighter end of the gaming spectrum.

Two new super-slim gaming laptops are joining the range. The so-far-unnamed 14-inch and 16-inch models are just 17mm thick and are designed for that crossover of creators and gamers. These are significantly smaller than the current offerings, and while they don’t have the same level of performance, they still are set to provide a premium gaming experience, with an impressive battery life to boot.

These new laptops don’t have the same in-your-face gaming aesthetic as most Alienware machines. Instead, these are more covert gaming options for those who want to balance gaming performance with creative projects.

Perhaps the biggest change in the lineup, however, is the addition of a model aimed at brand-new Alienware customers. The upcoming entry-level model, which is also yet to be named, is set to hit a price point that is “hundreds of dollars cheaper” than the current offerings. This more affordable offering will allow customers who were previously priced out of the Alienware lineup to buy a model.

“We want to be a brand that provides products at all price points. We don’t want to turn anybody away just because they don’t have enough money,” says Matt McGowan, General Manager for Alienware. “

While this lower price point is guaranteed to result in some sacrifices, such as reduced performance or display spec, it is still expected to offer an Alienware-standard experience. Newer games require less strain on processors, meaning that they can run very competently on lower-grade machines. This will allow even those who haven’t opted for a flagship gaming machine to get an impressive experience.

The new entry-level Alienware is in many ways replacing the former Dell gaming laptop offerings, the G15 and G16. Right now, we know this will be a 16-inch machine, but further details on the spec have not been released.

It’s not often you hear any brand admit its mistakes, but Dell has just rolled back a major decision to rebrand its XPS range. At the Pre-CES showcase in New York, Jeff Clarke, Dell’s Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer, said, “You were right on branding.”

Last year, Dell named its XPS lineup as Dell Premium, leaving a sea of confusion with models such as the Dell Pro Max Premium and Dell Pro Premium. Not even the computer journalists were sure which was the better model.

The new lineup is much simpler. Consumer laptops will fall into two categories: either a Dell or a Dell XPS model for the higher-spec offerings. All gaming laptops will fall under Alienware, and all commercial models will be Dell Pro – with Pro Precision, Pro Rugged, Pro Essential and Pro Education being subbrands.

The XPS range isn’t just back, though; it’s getting a full relaunch, with new branding and some very appealing new models. The new XPS 14 and XPS 16 have an XPS logo on the lid and a return to physical function buttons. It has also defined the touchpad, making it easier to find where it starts and finishes.

“It’s more than just the name, it’s the spirit of what XPS embodies,” says Clarke. Starting this January, XPS will feature our best devices, that iconic design… focused battery life and more mobile than ever.”

Displays on the new models include tandem OLED and 2K options, with variable refresh rates from 120Hz down to just 1Hz, to preserve battery life. That battery now boasts up to 27 hours of streaming or over 40 hours of local movie watching (i.e. not over WiFi). They’re thinner and lighter too, at just 14.6mm thick and weighing 3lbs (1.36kg) for the XPS 14 and 3.6lbs (1.63kg) for the XPS 16.

There’s also a third model that was still in early prototype state at the December showcase but is coming later in 2026. The Dell XPS 13 is the thinnest and lightest XPS model they have ever produced. This doesn’t have the same keyboard and trackpad design, plus details are still to be confirmed on the exact spec, but like the rest of the XPS lineup, this is expected to offer strong performance and battery life.

One question mark over these new super-thin XPS models is the use of integrated graphics, rather than a dedicated GPU. This, Dell claims, is essential to offer the slim form and the battery life. It will be interesting to see how good the new Intel graphics are on these models, and also how much these machines retail for.

Dell also hinted that separate models that do feature dedicated graphics cards could be on the way later in the year.

There’s also a reversal on the way Dell computers will be sold in Europe, with a return to retail stores. This includes a mix of brick-and-mortar stores as well as online retailers. Of course, you will still be able to buy them direct from Dell.com but it will be one of many options once more.

Picking the best monitor for your home office or halls dorm setup isn't easy, because there are a host of different models to pick from, as well as a wealth of various specs and features to sift through to find the right device for you. However, as I've spent many an hour testing such monitors, I'm the expert who can save you some time when it comes to making your choice.

If you're working from home, then you want to make sure your productivity is maximised. Home or halls working comes with a lot of benefits – easy access to the fridge and the TV – but the same potential distractions, so you're going to want to ensure everything is set up in a way that's conducive to working at your best.

These are the three monitors I'd recommend now if you're upgrading your WFH setup – which could be 'working from halls' in this scenario. Each offers superb specification, a brilliant picture, features that are actually useful, and value for money.

So, no matter what your needs or budget, one of these options should be a fit for what you're looking for.

T3's Top 3

Philips v Dell v LG: Pricing

One of the key considerations with any purchase is how much you're going to have to spend. The widget embedded above will give you the latest and best prices currently on the web for these monitors, but I can also tell you the list prices.

The Philips 40B1U6903CH is going to set you back around £1,400 (and isn't available in the US); the Dell UltraSharp U4323QE will cost you in the region of £950 / $1,030; and the LG UltraGear 27GX790A is yours for the sum of £900 / $900 or so. None of these are what you'd call budget, nor super-expensive, but the Philips stands out as the costliest.

As always, keep your eyes out for special discounts and deals on these monitors, as they've been available for less fairly often. With new monitors being launched on a regular basis, manufacturers, including Philips, Dell, and LG, will sometimes drop the prices on their existing hardware accordingly, to your advantage.

Philips v Dell v LG: What's unique?

Not all monitors are created equal, and these models each have their own selling points. For the Philips 40B1U6903CH, features such as an integrated webcam, a USB hub, an energy-saving mode, some side-mounted ports for easy access, and built-in speakers. It's a very business-like monitor, but in a good way.

When it comes to the Dell UltraSharp U4323QE, what helps this monitor stand out are the sheer number of connection options, including an Ethernet port, a USB hub, and two HDMI 2.1 ports. You can even use it as a KVM switch with multiple computers hooked up to it. It supports showing multiple inputs together, and has its own pair of speakers built in too.

As for the LG UltraGear 27GX790A, the features I like here are the RGB lighting around the back that add a touch of fun to its aesthetic. It can rotate around 90 degrees and work in portrait mode if you need, and you're well covered for ports for content sources and peripherals. There aren't any integrated speakers, but there is a headphone jack.

Philips v Dell v LG: Which looks best?

The Philips 40B1U6903CH uses a 39.7-inch, IPS WLED, 5120 x 2160 pixel display, with a maximum 75Hz refresh rate and 4ms response time. It's an ultrawide monitor too, so it's great for getting apps up side by side, and offers clean and crisp images across the board – though it's not cutting edge in terms of fast-paced gaming support.

There's a similar all-rounder vibe to the Dell UltraSharp U4323QE, which has a 42.5-inch, IPS LCD, 4840 x 2160 pixel screen. Refresh rates and response times top out at 60Hz and 5ms respectively, so this is more for creative work and office work than brilliant performance in a home cinema setup or with AAA gaming titles.

Then there's the LG UltraGear 27GX790A, which sports a 26.5-inch OLED, 2560 x 1440 pixel panel, with a brilliant 480Hz refresh rate and 0.03ms response time. Those are some of the best specs you'll see for games, but the OLED tech means just about anything looks gorgeous on it – games, movies, websites, and even spreadsheets.

Philips v Dell v LG: Which wins?

As always, the best pick depends on what you're after. The Philips 40B1U6903CH is a fine choice if you want a lot of room on screen for everything you're doing – multi-taskers take note. I use an ultrawide monitor myself, and it's like having the benefits of a dual monitor, without having any extra power cables to deal with.

The Dell UltraSharp U4323QE isn't an ultrawide, but still gives you lots of space to work with, and it functions really well as a home office monitor. I especially like the USB hub capabilities, and the way you can show multiple inputs on screen at once. It's perfect if you want a large display and have multiple computers to connect.

If you're planning on doing some gaming after work or studies are done, then the LG UltraGear 27GX790A is the obvious pick – but it's really good at everything else as well. If you want something more compact then it might be the best pick for you, while the OLED display technology really shines here, as ever.

Honourable mentions

The monitors above are my top three picks, but there are plenty of others around worthy of attention too. It's worth putting in a little extra time and effort to compare a few models against one another, to see which is most suitable for your needs.

I really like the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 as a 4K OLED option that copes really well with anything you want to throw at it. As well as an excellent picture, the monitor also comes with a selection of smart apps on board, so you can load up Netflix or YouTube (for example) without connecting a separate device.

The Alienware AW2725Q is also worth mentioning if you're into your gaming and want an alternative to the LG. It's the same size as the LG, also using a fantastic OLED panel, and serves up a 240Hz refresh rate and a 0.03ms response time – perfect for those top-end titles.

When it comes to being one of the best 4K monitors on the market at the moment, the Alienware AW2725Q stakes a strong claim: it offers a specs list and a build quality that's likely to have broad appeal, especially for gamers.

I've spent several weeks testing out the Alienware AW2725Q, and I'll talk you through all the features and specs you need to know about – from how long it's going to take you to set up, to the sort of visuals you can expect from games, movies, and your apps.

Of course, the Alienware AW2725Q is just one among many, many monitors currently available. If you think this unit might not be for you, and want further advice, try our guides to the best monitors for home working and the best monitors for the MacBook Pro.

Price & Availability

The Alienware AW2725Q is available to buy now. The widgets embedded in this page will direct you to the best prices you can currently get for the monitor online, but at the time of writing it's selling for around £799 / $899 / AU$1199. If you're in the UK, you can pick it up directly from Dell.

Design & Setup

I've had to set up some cumbersome and poorly constructed monitors in my time, but thankfully the Alienware AW2725Q is not one of those.

The stand slots and snaps into the back of the actual monitor, while the base slots and snaps into the stand. So, even if you've got no one around to help you, the monitor should only take a few minutes to set up.

As for the design, it's rather simple and rather bulbous. It's by no means ugly – quite the opposite, in fact – but it doesn't aim for the super-thin, super-minimal aesthetic approach that so many other monitors do.

It wears its curves rather proudly (not the panel itself, though, as that's flat), and is finished in a dark blue colour, with a glowing Alienware logo around the back.

Once set up on its stand and with the height maximised, the AW2725Q measures 609.51 x 516.01 x 210mm, which should help you figure out if you've got room for it.

There's plenty of flexibility in terms of height adjustment, tilting, swivelling, and even rotating – so you can turn it all the way through 90 degrees if you need to.

Ports-wise, it's a decent selection, with two HDMI 2.1 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4 port, three USB-A ports, one (non-input) USB-C port, and one USB-B upstream port.

There are lots of settings to explore on the on-screen display, including a variety of configuration modes, and they're all easily accessible via a joystick under the chin of the unit.

Picture & Features

This 27-inch 4K monitor brings with it a QD-OLED panel that dazzles most of the time, running at a 3,840 x 2,160 pixel resolution, and offering a 240Hz refresh rate and a 0.03 millisecond response time.

If you're a gaming enthusiast, those raw specs should have you interested, as should the relatively high pixel density on offer here. Quantum Dot OLED also means extra punchy colours, in addition to mega contrast, which is just what the Alienware offers.

In my testing, those decent specs translate into a very decent picture too, especially for gaming. With titles like GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2, lag was non-existent and motion was smooth (with the usual caveat that some of this is going to depend on your graphics card!).

That QD-OLED display really shines when it comes to the deepness of the blacks. On-screen elements are sharp and extremely well-defined, while the vibrancy and HDR performance is stunning.

Brightness tops out at 250 nits, which is about the norm for panels like these. So it's not best in class, or as punchy as the best OLED TVs of today, but it's more than fine.

The monitor scores highly for colour accuracy and colour coverage too, which is reassuring in terms of creative work, not only for gaming.

It's safe to say this is a monitor I really enjoyed looking at for an extended period of time: no matter what you've got on screen, the Alienware AW2725Q is capable of showing it off fantastically well.

It's also worth noting that there's specialised tech here to minimise the chances of burn-in on that OLED panel. At the time of writing, Alienware is offering a 3-year warranty on this monitor for extra peace of mind. Burn-in is no longer the problem it once was for OLED screens, but it's still reassuring to have that safety net in place.

Unfortunately, there are no built-in speakers here, and there's no headphone jack either. It's very much for people who will have a separate soundbar or speaker setup, or who are going to be using headphones all the time. I always like to see monitors come with integrated speakers, even if they're not very good ones, if only to act as a backup.

Alienware AW2725Q review: Verdict

There's no doubt that the Alienware AW2725Q is an excellent monitor, particularly for gaming. However, don't make the mistake of thinking that this is just for gamers, because it works very well for video content and normal day-to-day computing – and that versatility adds to its appeal.

What bothers me most about this monitor is something many other people wouldn't even think of: as someone who's used to a much larger and wider curved gaming monitor, the flat 27 inches offered by this display feels a bit ordinary by comparison. That's more about me than this monitor, though, and your mileage may vary.

Assuming a 27-inch size is the sweet spot for you, however, and the aesthetics of this monitor appeal, it's an excellent choice. It does plenty to stand out from the pack, and to seal the deal it's also available at a very competitive price when weighed up against some of the other QD-OLED screens of a similar size.

Alternatives

Right at the start I mentioned that Alienware AW2725Q is in a crowded field, and you've got a lot of alternatives to pick from if this model isn't for you. For example, check out the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8, which is a real gaming powerhouse.

Then there's the BenQ PD3225U, which is slightly bigger than the Alienware model, and geared more to creatives rather than gamers.

If the Dell UltraSharp U4323QE has made it on to your shortlist of the best 4K monitors, it's going to be because you're after something that's pretty huge. This is a giant 43-inch monitor (well, 42.5-inch on the diagonal, to be precise), and it will take up a significant amount of room on your desk.

This is your classic case of a 4K monitor that excels in certain areas, while at the same time being pretty average in other departments, which I'll get into shortly. It's going to have genuine appeal for some groups of users – especially those 'WFH' – while others will hardly give it a second glance.

We've got plenty more buying advice if you're still considering your options for your next monitor upgrade. As well as reading this review, you might also want to check out our guides to the best monitors for the MacBook Pro and the best monitors for home working.

Dell UltraSharp U4323QE: Price & Availability

The Dell UltraSharp U4323QE is available to buy now from several retail outlets, and at the time of writing is retailing for around £950 / $1,030 – though the widgets embedded on this page will lead you to the best prices.

If you're in the UK, as well as picking up the monitor from Dell direct, you can find it at retailers including Amazon and Currys.

Dell UltraSharp U4323QE review: Design & Setup

If you're going to go for a 43-inch monitor, you're going to have to be prepared for it to take up a substantial amount of space. With the stand, and set to its lowest position, this unit measures 967 x 595 x 256mm, so it's bulky. You can just about get it up and in place without help, but a second pair of hands is recommended.

You can get everything assembled without any tools, which I always like to see: it's all slots and thumbscrews. You've then built a mega monitor with an aesthetic that's minimal and business-like – some would call the design dull, others would say it's streamlined.

There's not a whole lot of stand adjustment available, but small height, swivel, and tilt tweaks can be made. All of which comes in handy.

You've got a plethora of ports to play around with here too. There are 2x DisplayPort 1.4, 2x HDMI 2.1, 1x USB-C port with 90W power delivery and DisplayPort 1.4 support, 3x USB-C upstream ports, and 3x USB-A ports. All the USB ports offering USB 3.2 Gen 2 support. You also get an Ethernet port, plus a 3.5 mm audio port.

It's very comprehensive and speaks to the main appeal of the monitor: as a productivity powerhouse. You can use the Dell UltraSharp U4323QE as a USB hub, or as a KVM switch with several different computers connected.

Everything is managed with a straightforward on-screen menu system, and I like the power button and control joystick position around the lower back right corner – a much more accessible configuration than many monitors.

Dell UltraSharp U4323QE review: Picture & Features

This IPS LCD panel runs a 4K resolution (3,840 x 2,160 pixels) in a 16:9 aspect ratio, and gives you 350 nits maximum brightness, a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, and 95% sRGB colour gamut coverage.

Gamers aren't going to be too impressed with the 60Hz refresh rate and the 5ms response time, though. You can of course attach this to a gaming PC or a console, but you won't get the best of experiences.

What it's like to actually sit in front of depends on what you're looking at. For getting through some serious work – webpages, documents, spreadsheets, image editing – it's really impressive. Everything is crisp and clear, even if it's not the most vibrant in terms of its colours, so it's hard to quibble with the quality.

For more demanding use cases, like movies or games, the output from the Dell UltraSharp U4323QE isn't quite so good. It's still perfectly respectable, but this isn't the panel to put at the top of your list if you're going to do a significant amount of gaming or want to use it as the basis of a home cinema setup (the lack of HDR is another mark against it there).

I was impressed by the two 8W stereo speakers built into the monitor. It's always better having integrated speakers, just in case you need them, even if you're planning on connecting a dedicated sound system as well. You don't get soundbar quality or anything like that, but it's more than good enough for casual video watching and music listening.

Dell has packed in a bunch of additional features here to further push the appeal of the UltraSharp U4323QE if productivity is your priority. You can, for example, get four separate inputs up on the display at once – so a live feed from a streaming dongle, a laptop, a desktop, and perhaps even a games console too. These inputs can be managed via the Dell Display Manager app.

You also get Dell's ComfortView Plus technology included: an always-on, hardware-based technology that's designed to reduce blue light emissions while maintaining colour accuracy. It's arguable how much of a difference it actually makes, but I certainly found the panel easy on the eyes during my testing.

Dell UltraSharp U4323QE review: Verdict

I like my screens big, so I can get multiple apps and browser tabs up at the same time, and the Dell UltraSharp U4323QE certainly delivers here. As Windows and macOS have both gotten better at supporting larger monitors and snapping open windows to the sides and the corners of a display, this 43-inch scale has real worth.

Having one central monitor to act as a hub for all my gadgets and computers really appeals to me, too, especially if I can get four screens up simultaneously while keeping everything charged. If you agree, rather than thinking that's really more visual input than anyone needs, the Dell UltraSharp U4323QE will seem like a great investment.

I found that this is a monitor that performs well for the tasks that I do every single day: researching products on the internet, writing up reviews, editing images, and checking lots and lots of emails. So if you're after a monitor with high-end picture quality and features for home office work and creative tasks – at a very large size – it's a big success.

Also consider

If it's a 4K monitor you're after, you can find them in a wide variety of shapes and sizes now. Case in point: the 31.5-inch BenQ PD3225U, which excels in terms of the colour and contrast it offers, and is very much aimed at creative professionals.

Then we have the 39.7-inch Philips 40B1U6903CH, which ups the resolution to 5K (that's 5,120 x 2,160 pixels), extends the aspect ratio to 21:9, and includes a curved panel. It's pricier, and again focuses very much on high-end specs and productivity features, but it's very impressive.

Alienware has been a huge brand in PC gaming for ages now – and you can tell that it has some bigtime brand value since Dell very much didn't kill it off while wiping out a whole heap of its other historic product lines (including XPS, Inspiron and more) earlier this year. So, there's every intention on Dell's part to keep pushing the gaming envelope with new Alienware releases.

Right on time, then, we're getting a veritable deluge of new monitors, running the gamut from cutting-edge OLED options to more affordable but still impressive (on paper) new displays. There are six in total that Dell's announcing today, all of which should be available fairly soon.

Sometimes an announcement is elegant enough to be easily summarised, and sometimes you need a list – this is one of the latter situations, so here's a summary of what Alienware's unveiled today, with US pricing and availability in each case. We don't have regional information yet, but that'll surely trickle out soon.

• Alienware 27 4K QD-OLED (AW2725Q) – March 4, 2025; $899.99
• Alienware 27 IPS Monitor (AW2725DM) – March 6, 2025; $269.99
• Alienware 32 VA Curve Monitor (AW3225DM) – March 6, 2025; $319.99
• Alienware 34 VA Curve Monitor (AW3425DWM) – March 6, 2025; $399.99
• Alienware 34 240HZ QD-OLED Monitor (AW3425DW) – April 29, 2025; $799.99
• Alienware 25 320HZ Monitor (AW2525HM) – Summer 2025; $249.99
• Alienware 27 280Hz QHD QD-OLED (AW2725D) – Summer 2025; $549.99

As you can see from the list, QD-OLED is very much the tech of the day for Alienware, with OLED panels becoming more and more popular in PC gaming over the last 18 months. This has largely been because they've gone from being prohibitively expensive to far more widely and affordably available.

What Alienware is shouting about is that it's really pushing hard on pixel density, which is often a falling-down point for some OLED displays, which have superb inky blacks and vivid colours but aren't always as sharp as top-end IPS options. The Alienware 27 4K QD-OLED AW2725Q, for example, the most expensive monitor being unveiled, boasts 166 PPI – a world best for a QD-OLED panel. With a 240Hz refresh rate, that means you're getting pretty close to the ideal situation – a "best of all worlds" sort of monitor.

Each step-down option offers something different, from bigger screen sizes to curved displays for those who enjoy them, and most boast the sort of refresh rates that PC gamers crave. So, if you're in the market for one of the best gaming monitors and fancy something brand new, you might want to head to the Alienware site to dig into each monitor in detail.

It's CES 2025, which means that we're getting almost inundated by tech news after the brief lull brought by the holiday period, but few announcements have felt as seismic as the one that Dell just made. It's confirmed that it's completely ripping up the branding it's established over the last decade and more, and moving forward with a new, supposedly simplified naming structure for its devices.

That means, in point of fact, the abrupt death of long-running sub-brands including probably its biggest: XPS. It's long been a shorthand for premium Windows laptops that rival Apple's MacBooks where quality is concerned. That's not the only name being consigned to history, though, with others like Inspiron similarly going the way of the dinosaurs.

Moving forward, Dell says that it'll instead be sticking to three new tiers of device: Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max. Those naming conventions obviously bring Apple's own system to mind immediately, whether you're thinking of the annual iPhone lineup or its own-brand M-series chipsets.

Dell acknowledged that similarity during a briefing T3 attended in December, but doubled down on the idea that customers appreciate the simplicity of "Pro" and "Pro Max" as labels for higher-spec machines. Its spokespeople also pointed out that words like "Inspiron" simply don't have the clarity that helps cut through in marketing.

Whether the new naming situation ends up genuinely being clearer might take some time to work out, though, given that each of those tiers actually holds three more sub-tiers, as the Dell-supplied graphic below clarifies.

In each case, there will be Base machines along with Plus and Premium options that add better specs or extras. During that briefing, I was told that a new XPS 14, for example, would now slot in as a Dell 14 Plus machine, to give a rough sense of where things would fit.

That means that most consumer laptops, even quite premium ones, are likely to sit under Dell branding, with Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max reserved for enterprise machines and those with specs aimed at intensive creative work, for example. It's also worth clarifying that Alienware will continue to sit outside all of this, as Dell's gaming laptop brand.

CES isn't just Dell's excuse to announce this major change – it's also launching a bunch of actual laptops. That new Dell 14 Plus (no longer an XPS) will arrive on 18 February, for example, priced at $1,099 in the US with international pricing not announced. There will also be a Dell 16 Plus, then Dell Pro machines in a range of sizes from 13-inch to 16-inch, and finally Dell Pro Max laptops in 14 and 16-inch variants.

Most of these laptops don't have final pricing yet, and we'll be getting hands-on with many of them in the coming weeks, but it'll be genuinely fascinating to observe how well the new brand structure works. While naming conventions can be a little inside baseball at times, this is an example of a fairly significant public shift, so Dell will doubtless be hoping that its market research proves accurate.

Remember the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears? 'Too cold', 'too hot', and 'just right' in the middle? That’s what the new Dell XPS 14 (9440) aims for, landing between the ultra-svelte and portable Dell XPS 13 and the powerful but heavy Dell XPS 16. 

It achieves a good balance, offering excellent battery life and plenty of power for everyday use, in a bid to be one of the best laptops money can buy. However, the only GPU option (an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050) isn’t powerful enough to drive the 3.2K OLED screen for high-res gaming.

Clearly, then, the Dell XPS 14 is aimed at those who want a balance. It's a compelling package, but does this 'just right' approach tick all the right boxes and is it the best Dell XPS laptop for most people?

Dell XPS 14 (2024): Price & Availability

The Dell XPS 14 is available now, starting at £1,439/$1,499/AU$3,698.20. That’s for the base model, with integrated graphics, a Full HD screen, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and the Intel Core 7 Ultra 155H processor. 

The top-of-the-line model (with Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, 64GB of RAM and 4TB storage) will cost you much more: around £2,698.80/$3,399/AU$3,998.50. 

I tested two models: one with the standard FHD screen and one with the 3.2K OLED option, in order to compare the pros and cons of each.

Dell XPS 14 review: Design

The XPS 14 is a sleek, stylish laptop with an attractive machined aluminium case. It’s available in two finishes: an off-white called Platinum and a dark, almost deep purple finish called Graphite. I looked at models in both finishes, and I think the Graphite looks more attractive.

Open the lid of the XPS 14, and the absence of a visible touchpad and function keys is the first thing you notice. Both of these are hidden beneath the smooth, slightly matte Corning Gorilla glass top that surrounds the keyboard. The function keys are backlit, but the touchpad isn't marked or illuminated. It’s an attractive, if a little stark, practical, clean-looking design. 

The glass top and the keyboard match the outside finish: another reason I prefer the Graphite. Both finishes do show fingerprint marks, which are more visible on the darker Graphite though.

The connections are on the edges of the case: two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left side, a headphone socket, one Thunderbolt 4 port, and a microSD card slot on the right. That means no built-in HDMI output, but an included dongle plugs into one of the Thunderbolt ports and adds a USB-A port and an HDMI 2.0 output. 

These Thunderbolt ports also charge the XPS 14, which comes with a USB power supply (60-watt for integrated graphics, 100-watt for Nvidia GPU models). These ports can also charge other low-power devices: each can send up to 15W of juice to charge a phone or tablet.  

The whole package weighs about 1.7kg/3.8lb, making it significantly heavier than the XPS 13, which weighs about 1.2kg/2.6lb. That’s enough of a difference to be very noticeable, especially if you're carrying it around all day. The size difference isn’t much, but the XPS 14 is chunkier and denser. 

Dell XPS 14 review: Display

Two display options are available for the XPS 14: a Full HD (1920 x 1200 pixel) LCD panel, or a gorgeous 3.2K (3200 x 2000 pixel) 120Hz OLED panel. 

The OLED option adds a few hundred to the price, but I think it's worth it. Although it has slightly lower maximum brightness, it has much better colour, contrast, resolution, and overall good-lookingness. 

Movies and games look great, with bright colors right next to gloomy shadows that still maintain details, especially with games that support High Dynamic Range (HDR). Games like Doom Eternal really pop with this display, with the blood spatters standing out vividly against the dark, gloomy atmosphere of the game.

The FHD display isn’t bad, though: it provides strong colour and a slightly higher brightness (at 500 nits) than the OLED, which could make it a better option if you need to use it outside. 

Dell XPS 14 review: Keyboard & Touchpad

The XPS 14's keyboard is excellent, with large, slightly concave keys that make typing comfortable. The keys have a decent amount of travel but do not have the clicky feel of a mechanical keyboard. The cursor keys feel cramped, though, with the up and down keys squished into the same space as a single key. The CoPilot key, which triggers Microsoft’s new AI assistant, is on the right of the space bar. Grilles cover the small but quite powerful speakers on each side of the keyboard. 

The hidden touchpad is quite large – the active area measures 7.62cm (3in) by 14cm (5.5in). After using it for a while, I quickly learned where it was without needing the touch cue of a raised ridge or edge. When you tap it, it produces a reassuring click that feels like a physical click, but it is purely artificial: the glass panel doesn’t move. Instead, the XPS 14 creates the click with a motor, known as haptic feedback. 

While I quickly became comfortable with the touchpad, the touch function buttons didn’t work for me. There is no simulated click, and the function key backlights are hard to see in direct sunlight. It contributes to the smart and clean design, but as a frequent user of function keys, I would have preferred a row of physical keys. When you press the Function key, the buttons do double duty as controls for volume, screen brightness, and so forth, with the labels changing to indicate the different functions. 

Dell XPS 14 review: Performance

The XPS 14 has enough work speed but lacks the performance to excel at gaming. The 16-core processor has no problems powering through tasks in programmes like Excel and Photoshop, crunching complex formulas, and handling large photos with only a slight whooshing of the fan. The benchmarking program PC Mark 10 scored 6082, which is average for a mid-range laptop. That’s somewhat less than the 7630 the XPS 17 scored, which had a faster processor and GPU. 

Gaming was more of a stretch, thorough. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU is the only GPU option available and is at the low-end of Nvidia’s laptop GPU lineup. In Doom Eternal, running on the Good graphics preset, it managed about 60 frames per second at the native 3200 x 2000 pixel resolution. At the lower resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, it managed 120fps. However, there was not enough graphics memory to run Doom Eternal on a higher graphics quality setting. 

The more graphically intense racing game F1 22 had a similar pattern: in the high graphics preset at the 3200 x 2000 pixel resolution, it managed about 43fps. At the 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution, that was increased to 78fps, which is a much smoother gaming experience. It’s just a pity that there isn’t enough graphics power here to really take advantage of the gorgeous screen. 

Dell XPS 14 review: Battery life

The battery life of the XPS 14 is excellent. It typically lasted well over eight hours during my testing, which is plenty for a day’s work or a long flight. 

How much longer depends on one thing: which screen option you choose. I tested both options and found that the OLED screen shortened the battery life, but it was still great. 

Watching a movie on the standard option, the battery lasted 11 hours and 46 minutes. Watching the same film on the OLED screen, the battery life fell to 8 hours and 32 minutes. To be fair, both tests were worst-case scenarios with the screen set to maximum brightness. 

If you need to stretch it, get the standard option and knock the brightness down: set to a moderate level (200 nits), the battery lasted through a remarkable 19 hours and 13 minutes of movie watching. That's more than enough for the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Extended Edition). Just skip the Hobbit moves and the Amazon series, because both are terrible. 

The other features of the XPS 14 are pretty typical: you get Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 6E wireless (although not the Wi-Fi 7 present on the XPS 13 and 16 models). The top right blank key on the keyboard doubles as a power button and fingerprint reader, and the 1080p webcam above the screen can also be used to log in with Windows Hello. 

Dell XPS 14 review: Verdict

The Dell XPS 14 looks like a killer combination on paper: great battery life, a gorgeous OLED screen, and decent computing power. 

But, in real-world use, it feels like an inadequate compromise, ending up bigger and heavier than the XPS 13 and less powerful than the XPS 16. 

That’s most evident in gaming: while the XPS 16 had the gaming grunt to handle games at the full resolution of the screen in high frame rates, the XPS 14 doesn’t. To play modern games on the beautiful 3.2K resolution OLED screen, you have to knock the game resolution down to Full HD, or put up with pokey frame rates. 

The Dell XPS 14 is for those who really can't be content with a screen size that's any smaller. But as the middle ground between Dell XPS 13 and Dell XPS 16 it doesn't feel quite as accomplished in portability or power goals. It's still a great laptop in many areas though.

Also consider

The two apparent competitors here are the 2024 models of the Dell XPS 13 and the XPS 16. It depends if you want smaller and more portable, or larger and more powerful.

The other obvious competitor is the new 15-inch M3 Apple MacBook Air, which does not need fans to cool the system. That makes it much quieter and thinner.

Sometimes things aren’t about size. For computer monitors, the more critical thing is resolution, because you sit close to one. That's why the best 4K monitors are revered, but just how much more detail can you pack onto a screen? 

The Dell U3224KB has one answer: this is a relatively small 32-inches across, but has an ultra-high 6144 x 3446 pixel resolution, typically called 6K. Multiply that out and it's greater than a massive 21-million pixels – which makes 4K's just-over-8-million-pixels sound paltry!

Using the aptly-named Dell UltraSharp means that you can have a full-resolution view of 4K video on screen, but still have plenty of room for the controls of your video editing programme. It also means you can view 6K videos shot by many professional video cameras at full resolution. It supports pro colour as well, with 100% Rec.709 and 99% P3. But given the price, can it really claim to be one of the best Dell monitors? Let's find out.

Dell U3224KB: Price & availability

Are you sitting down? You might want to. The Dell U3224KB will set you back a hefty $3,199/£2,542/AU$3,759 from Dell's own website. 

This is a 32-inch monitor, let's not forget, and you can buy many of the best 4K TVs for less than that at 65-inch scale! They serve different functions, though, and for many this Dell monitor will be worth its asking price in a pro setup.

Dell UltraSharp U3224KB review: Design & features

The U3224KB has an attractive, clean design with a bezel around the 32-inch screen and a flat metal base. It’s a rather corporate-looking design, but it is functional: a hole in the back of the column routes the cables from the computer to the display, so they are hidden from view. 

The stand can tilt the monitor back and forth by about 25 degrees, and left and right by 60 degrees. It can also be rotated to portrait mode, although it is a tight squeeze if you have anything on your desk in front. The base can be replaced by a VESA 100 stand or mount too.

The main input for the U3224KB is a Thunderbolt 4 port on the base behind the display panel. This single connection carries the video signal, power, audio, and connects other devices. It can supply up to 180W of power to a laptop too.

As well as the Thunderbolt 4 input, the U3224KB includes HDMI 2.1 and mini DisplayPort 2.1 inputs, plus two USB-C upstream and five USB-A ports, which means there is no shortage of ways to connect devices. A gigabit Ethernet port is also present. 

These can all be switched between with the Auto KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) feature, which switches between the video and other inputs from the keyboard, so you can connect two devices to the monitor and control them both from one keyboard and mouse, switching between them with a key combination you set in the Dell Display Manager. That’s an incredibly useful feature if you have a work laptop and a personal computer. 

The U3224KB can also display the image from two inputs side-by-side or show one image as a picture-in-picture preview. That’s handy if you're waiting for a video to render for example: you can switch to your laptop but still see how the render is progressing.

Including Mini DisplayPort rather than the more commonly used larger type is odd, but the port is used in many workstations and high-end PCs. A cable is included (which also has a locking bolt at both ends) but at just 40 inches long, it wouldn’t stretch far enough to reach my computer under my desk: I had to move it onto the top of my desk, which already has enough junk on it. Fortunately, DisplayPort cables (including ones that go from the larger type of socket to the mini type) are pretty cheap.

A 4K webcam is built into the top of the monitor frame. It’s more prominent than most, built into a circular enclosure that can be tilted up or down by about 20 degrees: useful for getting you right in the centre of the frame when you are sitting closer to the screen. It can’t be tilted left or right, but it does include software-switchable viewing angles of 65-, 75-, and 90-degrees.

Two 14W speakers beside the camera produce decent sound, although it lacks the punch and bass feel of a decent set of desktop speakers. It is also odd to hear the sound coming from the top of the monitor rather than the bottom, but it works well for video conferencing.

The dual microphones next to the camera captured voices adequately in my testing, but my captured voice sounded rather flat, and the microphone picked up some background noise. That would be fine for video conferencing in a quiet environment, but if you are working in a noisy office or appearing on CNN, get a headset.

One nice touch here is a series of touch buttons on the frame to hang up a call, control the volume, and disable the camera and microphone: a plus for the paranoid and cautious. When the camera turns off, an internal shutter drops into place with a satisfying click.

Underneath these buttons on the bottom edge of the monitor is another nice touch: a slide-out panel with two USB-C and one USB-A port, perfect for devices like thumb drives that you want to plug in occasionally without reaching around the back of the display.

Dell UltraSharp U3224KB review: Image Quality

I was very impressed with the image quality of the U3224KB. Monitors like this aren’t about producing the garishly bright colours of 3D games, but instead, focus on colour accuracy and dynamic range. 

The dynamic range of this monitor is excellent: I found that it could produce deep, solid blacks right next to bright whites. I measured the maximum brightness of the screen at an impressive 509 Cd/m2, which is very bright for a monitor this size, so it would have no problems cutting through office lighting. 

This is the first 32-inch monitor to use Dell’s IPS Plus panel, which uses a thicker panel inside the display to block more of the backlight and produce deeper black. It’s an effective technique that seems to work well: even with the brightness at maximum, I measured a patch of black on the screen at 0.33 CD/m2, meaning that Dell’s claim of a 2000:1 contrast ratio is pretty much spot on. 

The same was true of the colour gamut: it reproduces the entire Rec.709 colour gamut and managed most of the much wider professional DCI-P3 gamut, only missing a small piece of the green axis. It supports DisplayHDR 600 but does not support other HDR standards. With a refresh rate limited to 60Hz, this isn't going to be one of the best gaming monitors, but it'll be good enough for most.

Even without calibration, the colour accuracy of my review model was almost perfect, with excellent reproduction across the spectrum. I also calibrated it with my Spyder X but found that the custom profile was almost identical to the one that came with the monitor.

And yes, before you ask, I did try games on it. Doom Eternal running at the full 6K resolution was an impressive sight, albeit one that had steam coming out of the back of my graphics card. 

Dell UltraSharp 32 6K Monitor U3224KB review: Verdict

So is the Dell UltraSharp 32 6K Monitor worth it? For most people, the answer is no. The U3224KB is a great monitor, no doubt, but it is very expensive. Those who can justify it are those who make a living on their computer in front of a screen that requires these kinds of credentials.

Video editors and photographers can see more of an image at once or fill the extra space with controls or buttons that are normally hidden away. Coders can see more code on the screen simultaneously, especially with this big monitor in portrait mode. The built-in webcam and speakers aren’t strictly necessary for these users, but they are a great bonus if you do a lot of video conferencing.

Also consider

There are lots of 4K monitors available, but 6K models are a bit thinner on the ground. Mac users may want to look at Apple’s own Studio Display, which offers 5K resolution and more svelte styling than the Dell. It costs about the same, though, and is more integrated with Apple’s own styling. 

If 4K will do then we rate the DELL U2723QE as the best 4K monitor for most people and the LG 27GP950-B as the best 4K monitor overall, as the latter also has a higher refresh rate which is more suitable for gaming. 

When you hear the word ‘laptop’ you expect something that, y'know, fits comfortably on your lap. With its 17-inch screen and just over 2.4kg (5.3lbs) weight, that’s unlikely to be the case with the Dell XPS 17 (9730). However, that added bulk has given Dell the freedom to stuff some incredible performance into this machine.

With 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, you shouldn’t have to worry about much in terms of everyday use, and can even venture into gaming laptops territory without many issues. But is it worth the money, and will it challenge the best laptops of today? Let’s find out. 

DELL XPS 17 (9730): PRICE & AVAILABILITY 

The Dell XPS 17 9730 is available now, starting at £2,173/$2,499/AU$3,998 with an Intel Core i7-3700H processor, 16GB of RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, a 512GB SSD, as well as 1920 x 1200 resolution screen. 

The review unit I tested costs £2,974/$3,349/AU$5,500 with the Intel Core i7-3700H processor, 32GB of RAM, Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU, 1TB SSD, and a glorious 3840 x 2400 display. 

Check out T3's Dell discount codes to see if you can save on your purchase, as there are often some good deals to be had.

DELL XPS 17 (9730) review: Design & Display

It’s deja vu all over again with the XPS 17 (9730): the exterior of this beefy laptop is unchanged from 2022's model, the XPS 17 (9720). That’s not a big problem because it’s a great design, packing a lot of features into a case just 19.5mm (0.77in) thick. 

You still get the same machined aluminium case, Gorilla Glass screen cover, and carbon fibre palm rest package, but with a slightly increased 2.4kg weight. That’s a lot to lug around, and you’ll feel the density of this thing when you pick it up, especially when you include the hefty 130W USB power adapter. But if you want sleek and light, get a Dell XPS 13 – as this larger 17-inch model on review is about power over portability. 

There are plenty of upgrades under the sleek exterior, though, with a 13th Gen Intel Core i7 processor with 14 CPU cores. There are two options: the i7-13700H maxes out at 5Ghz, or the i9-13900H ups the maximum speed to 5.4Ghz. Intel’s somewhat confusing naming system aside, the two processor options are pretty much identical except for the maximum speed, offering 6 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores. That provides 20 logical processors or threads, the basic units that the system can assign to a task. 

The screen on my review unit was the more expensive option, a Ultra-HD panel display with a tiny sub-4mm (0.15in) bezel around the edge. This display looks great, with vivid colours that pop off the screen and deep, dark blacks. It does lack the bright colour and deeper blacks of OLED displays that are showing up on gaming laptops, though, and is also limited to a 60Hz refresh rate: you don’t get the smooth motion of high-frame-rate gaming here, although this laptop plays a decent game of Doom Eternal. If you want to save a bit of cash (and extend the battery life), Dell also offers a Full HD (1920 x 1200 pixels) option. 

The graphics processing unit (GPU) that drives this big screen is an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 with 8GB of dedicated DDR6 video RAM. That’s in the middle of the available range, from the RTX 4050 with 6GB of video RAM to the RTX 4080 with 12GB. Whichever option you choose, get ready to be warm, as these GPU can use up to 60W of juice: nearly as much as the processor itself.

Because of those pesky laws of thermodynamics, all that energy has to go somewhere. The XPS 17 (9730) uses a vapour chamber cooling system and two fans to vent the heat, sucking air in from the grille on the bottom of the laptop and pushing hot air out of the vents between the base and the screen. This does a pretty good job: most of the time, you hear nothing but a slight hum from the fans. 

However, the fans get a little noisy when the CPU and GPU are working hard: the sound rises to a dull roar. It never reaches the attack-helicopter-overhead noise of many gaming laptops, though. The Dell's case does get a bit warm as well – as after a long session or number crunching I measured it at about 55C (130F) on the edge of the base next to the screen and the bottom of the case.

The large, widely-spaced keyboard is comfortable to use, and the equally expansive touchpad under it is nicely sized for easy use. The black carbon fibre material surrounding both does keep the weight down, but I found it showed fingerprints and cat hairs rather too easily. Two big speakers on either side of the keyboard produce bright, clear sound with plenty of bass and good stereo separation.

DELL XPS 17 (9730) review: PERFORMANCE & FEATURES 

The XPS 17 (9730) is a fast machine by any measure: I found that it could handle video and photo editing, huge spreadsheets, and 3D modelling without breaking a sweat. It’s not a gaming machine, but it did a decent job running several modern 3D games at or near the maximum 60fps that the screen can handle. 

In the PCMark 10 Office benchmark, the XPS 17 (9730) managed a very respectable score of 7607, which is a 7% increase on the previous XPS 17 model. That’s not a huge increase, but it aligns with what we’ve seen from upgrading 12th to 13th Gen Intel processors: more of a performance bump than a quantum leap. 

This speed increase was reflected in my tests: programmes like Adobe Photoshop and Premiere were very usable. I could apply a filter to 4K video in Premiere and usually get a real-time preview of the result. The same was true in Photoshop: the XPS 17 (9730) has no problem working on very large images with multiple layers. That’s probably partly due to the 32GB of RAM in my review unit, but the processor didn’t seem to be holding it back, either. 

The gaming benchmark 3D mark recorded a score of 9618 in the Time Spy test, which is at the high end of the scale for non-gaming laptops. This was borne out in my experience running 3D games like Doom Eternal, which ran between 50 and 60fps at the Ultra Nightmare graphics setting at the native resolution of the display. 

F1 22 is a bit more demanding, running at 14fps at the native resolution in the highest graphics mode. When I reduced that to Full HD the frame rate rose to a very playable 50fps. So while the XPS 17 isn’t a gaming machine, my review unit could still handle its own in modern games. 

One area where the XPS 17 (9730) doesn't excel is battery life, which in my tests was adequate when doing general work, and very poor when playing a game or editing video. Using the PCMark 10 battery test, I found that it lasted for 5 hours and 22 minutes, running the benchmarks mixture of web browsing and a bit of spreadsheet work. That time was significantly shorter when I tried something more arduous: I only got about 50 minutes of Doom Eternal out of the 97Whr battery and about an hour-and-a-half of running a complex spreadsheet. 

DELL XPS 17 (9730) review: VERDICT 

The XPS 17 (9730) may be a bulky and heavy laptop, but its exceptional performance, expansive and bright screen, and generous storage capacity cannot be denied. Whether or not its size is worth the extra weight ultimately depends on your needs.

Do you need to be running power-hungry tasks like 4K video editing on the road? It’s way too much computer if you are just doing a bit of web browsing, word processing, or other lightweight tasks – as the smaller Dell XPS 13 has more than enough power and is much lighter. 

If you require a computer that can crunch numbers and show the result on an attractive 4K screen, then the Dell XPS 17 (9370) is a great pick for 2023, as long as your shoulders (and credit card) are up to the strain. 

Also consider

If your computing needs are more modest, you can’t go wrong with the XPS 13 or the XPS 15. The latter offers a great balance of biggish screen and processing power, but without breaking your back (or bank balance quite so much). 

If the big screen is the main thing you need, consider the LG Gram 17. This slim model feels featherweight compared to the XPS 17 but offers similarly extensive screen real-estate. 

If the new breed of 18-inch gaming laptops is a bit much for you (in both physical and financial terms), the sweet spot for balancing performance and value is currently the 16-inch size, like the Alienware M16 on review here. 

This powerful package provides plenty of gaming oomph with a weight that won’t break your arm when you pick it up. Like all of our best gaming laptops, it sure ain’t cheap – but it offers great value for money when you consider its power. 

ALIENWARE M16: PRICE & AVAILABILITY 

The Alienware M16 is available now direct from Dell or other fine retailers. The price ranges from £1,599/$1,699 for the AMD or Intel base model, up to over £/$4,500 for the top-spec options. 

The review unit I tested costs £2,479/$2,799 with a 12-core, 24-thread 5.2GHz AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card with 16GB of Video RAM, and the QHD+ resolution and 240Hz refresh-rate screen – so it's a step or two below the top-end of the line (believe it or not!).

Frustratingly, you can’t get the exact same spec as I'm reviewing here in Australia, but to get the same processor and GPU, you’ll also need to plump for 32GB of RAM and lower-resolution FHD+ display with a whopping 480Hz refresh rate. All that reflects in a cost up to AU$4,298. If you’re looking at the cheaper end of the spec sheet, you can go as low as AU$2,998.

ALIENWARE M16 REVIEW: DESIGN 

The classic Alienware design is evident here, with glowing alien head logos, an extended back, and smooth, organic curves dominating the design. Although it is not quite as heavy as the shoulder-straining M18, the M16 weighs in at a substantial 3.26kg (7.2lbs), plus an additional 0.54kg (1.2lbs) for the brick-sized power supply: you’ll certainly feel it if you are carrying this around all day. 

The M16 has many ways to connect other devices, with one USB 3.2 Gen 2 port and a wired 2.5Gbps Ethernet port on the left side. Most of the connections are on the back, though, with a power input, SD card slot, mini Display Port, and HDMI 2.1 video outputs, plus three USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (one Type-A and two Type-C). The last two USB-C ports can connect directly to monitors that support it so that you can have up to three monitors connected. There's no Thunderbolt 4 speed support, though, which would provide the fastest available connections for external hard drives (but as an Intel technology, no surprise to not see it on an AMD machine).

Another absence is the ability to charge from a USB-C power source: the M16 can only be juiced up from the included power adapter. The laptop can charge USB-C devices (so you can charge your phone from it), but you can’t charge the machine itself from a USB-C source. It's just not powerful enough, whereas the included power supply does provide 330W, thus quicker charging. However, in these days of interchangeable power supplies, the proprietary power adapter here feels like an unpleasant throwback.

ALIENWARE M16 REVIEW: DISPLAY 

The highlight of the Alienware M16 is its screen: an extremely bright and vivid QHD+ (2560 by 1600 pixels) display with a 240Hz refresh rate. That means that the panel can be updated 240 times a second, which produces very smooth and natural motion in games. It’s a big, bright display (with a maximum brightness of 450 nits), but it doesn’t offer the vivid colours and deep shadows of OLED displays. It doesn’t support high dynamic range (HDR) or the extended colour gamuts of many displays designed for video or photo use either.

The display doesn’t suffer from the lack of these features when gaming: the games I tested it with looked great, with bright, vivid colours and excellent, smooth motion. Fast-moving games like Doom Eternal especially benefited from the higher refresh rate, where it was still possible to see what was going on while having a fistfight with a Revenant or playing ping pong with a Cacodemon’s eyeball. On laptop displays with a slower refresh rate, the screen often turns into a blurry mess as you pivot and blast, but the details of what is a Parademon and what is a lump of rock remain easy to distinguish here. 

ALIENWARE M16 REVIEW: PERFORMANCE

A great screen like the one on the M16 won’t help much if you don’t have the graphics power to drive it. Fortunately, I found that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 and 12GB of video RAM in my review unit were more than up to the task, running most modern games at high frame rates that took advantage of the fast screen. 

Doom Eternal, for instance, maxed out the screen producing about 240 frames per second running at the native resolution of the laptop, even on the Ultra Nightmare maximum graphics quality setting. The more demanding racing game F1 2022 managed a lower (but still very playable) 70fps at the native resolution and maximum Ultra High graphics settings. When I knocked this down to the High graphics preset, the frame rate jumped to a butter smooth 154fps. 

The bottom line? The M16 is more than capable of handling the latest games and should remain so for the next few years. It is also a capable laptop for running other tasks: Adobe Photoshop was very fast when applying complicated filters to large images. Adobe Premiere quickly chewed through a complex 4K video render with multiple effects and colour filters. 

The downside of all this performance? Noise. The laptop makes a loud whooshing noise when working hard that almost drowns out the big, loudspeakers above the keyboard. It doesn’t quite reach the lawnmower level of noise of the M18, but it sure ain’t quiet. Even with all of these fans running to push the heat out of the case, the case above the keyboard and on the base gets pretty warm during a long gaming session too.

ALIENWARE M16 REVIEW: FEATURES 

The M16 has plenty of other gaming-related features, from a nice clicky keyboard to overclocking features that allow you to control more or less every aspect of this powerful laptop. 

The keyboard uses Cherry MX switches, which have a lovely positive feel: you get a nice physical and audible click when you’ve pressed the key, and it works well for keyboard-bashers and twitchy gamers. All of the keys also have individually controllable LED lights behind them, and you can use the Alienware Command Center app to control these lights, creating profiles for different games, so you can illuminate the keys you use. That’s useful if you are a hunt-and-tap typist: you can illuminate the keys you must remember for each game. The same app allows you to create macros assigned to keys to make laborious tasks easier. 

The Alienware Command Center app also provides access to several system profiles that control the thermal and power features of the system. Choose the Quiet preset, for instance, and the system slows down the CPU and GPU while running the fans at low speed. The Performance preset is the opposite: it cranks everything up to 11, including the fans. It isn’t an overclocking app, though: you don’t get access to more technical things like the individual clocks for memory and the CPU, for instance. 

The M16 does have some nice internal expansion options: you can install three SSD drives, two of the larger M2280 type and one of the smaller M2230 type. That means you can have up to 8.5TB of storage inside the case, with two 4TB drives and one 512GB one. The system also supports up to 64GB of fast DDR5 RAM in two slots.

ALIENWARE M16 REVIEW: BATTERY LIFE 

Gaming laptops usually don’t have great battery life, but the Alienware M16 is worse than most. In the PC Mark 10 battery test, which simulates some light office work, it lasted just 3 hours. 

That’s pretty terrible, but it gets even worse when you fire up a game: I only managed about 45 minutes of Doom Eternal before the system was warning that the battery was nearly exhausted. 

The M16 has a decent-sized battery (a 6-cell, 86 Wh one), but the components inside my review unit just use a lot of power. Is that a problem? As long as you have plenty of power sockets and don’t leave the house much, no. And that’s probably a good description of the life of many gaming laptops: you don’t buy one to go camping with.

ALIENWARE M16 REVIEW: VERDICT 

Gaming is a tough business: today’s state-of-the-art gaming laptop is tomorrow's doorstop. As modern games improve, they make more demands on the machines that run them, pushing the envelope of what the hardware has to do. That’s why it often makes sense to spend more money on a decent gaming laptop such as the Alienware M16, which will keep up with games for a few years at least. 

It feels odd to call a laptop as pricey as this good value for money. Still, it is. The combination of an AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX (but not the more expensive 7945HX) and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU (not the more expensive 4090), provides excellent performance without the cutting-edge price. 

So, if you can afford it, the Alienware M16 is a great pick for a gaming laptop that can play as hard as you do and should keep doing so for the next few years. Just don’t forget to take the power supply with you because the battery life is not the one.

Also consider

There are plenty of other options to consider for the best gaming laptops. If you absolutely want the top of the range (and don’t mind giving yourself a strained shoulder whenever you lift it), consider the Alienware M18, which increases the screen size to a remarkable 18-inches. It also increases the price to an equally remarkable size, though. 

If your budget doesn’t stretch to the above option, consider the MSI GE66 Raider, which has a slightly smaller screen, but which can also run at 240Hz. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is another step down in price but has performance that can almost match the Alienware.

Dell and its Alienware brand have announced a quadruplet of gaming monitors that look to suit the needs of casual or hardcore PC gamers, and without overstretching budgets.

Available in QHD and FHD resolutions, the Alienware AW2724HF and AW2724DM, plus the Dell G2524H and G2724D start at just $249.99, so are budget-friendly even with an impressive feature list. We're still awaiting UK pricing details and availability too, but they're now on sale in the US and range up to $459.99.

The beefiest of the bunch is the Alienware AW2724HF (pictured above). It offers a 27-inch Full HD (1080p) IPS panel but with a 360Hz refresh rate. The company claims there's a wider viewing angle in comparison with its 25-inch equivalents - 21 per cent wider, in fact - while a 0.5ms response time aims to eliminate blur and ghosting.

It is AMD FreeSync Premium and VESA AdaptiveSync Display certified, while TUV ComfortView Plus tech reduces low blue light emissions to enable you to game longer without damaging your eyes.

Those looking for something a little cheaper might want to consider the step-down model - the similarly-27-inch Alienware AW2724DM. It ups the resolution to 2560 x 1440 but with a slower refresh rate of up to 180Hz (albeit still impressive for most gaming sessions).

AMD FreeSync Premium Pro tech is on board, and it's Nvidia G-Sync compatible too. Plus, you get VESA Adaptive Sync certification for good measure.

The AW2724DM also employs TUV ComfortView Plus and supports HDR.

The Dell G2724D is another 27-inch option. It has a QHD (2560 x 1440) resolution and is capable of up to a 165Hz refresh rate for PC gaming, although that's limited to 120Hz when paired with a PS5 or Xbox Series X. You also get a response time of 1ms.

It is VESA DisplayHDR 400 rated for HDR images, with AMD FreeSync Premium, Nvidia G-Sync and VESA AdaptiveSync compatibility part of the mix.

It also comes with a fully ergonomic stand that can tilt, swivel and pivot pretty much anyway you want it to.

Last but certainly not least is the Dell G2524H - a 25-inch gaming monitor with an IPS panel that supports a refresh rate of up to 280Hz. It has a Full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution and response time of as low as 0.5ms.

Again, it supports AMD FreeSync Premium, Nvidia G-Sync and VESA AdaptiveSync, with Comfort Plus tech to keep you from eye strain. There are customisable profiles available, while that stand also offers tilt, swivel and pivot options to adjust it to the best position.

While none of these new models compete with some of the best curved gaming monitors, they should enable you to expand your gaming set up for a reasonable price - allowing you to spend the rest on a mammoth PC gaming rig and a best-in-class gaming headset.

Two of the best laptops for Windows users just got a big upgrade: the Huawei MateBook X Pro and Huawei MateBook 16S are now available with the latest 13th Gen Intel Core CPUs – and unlike some rivals, Huawei hasn't upped the price. The X Pro is still £1,799 and the 16S is £1,499.

The processor improvement should address one of the few niggles we had about the current-gen MateBook X Pro, which was its battery life; more efficient processors should result in better stamina.

Unfortunately for US readers, these particular laptops aren't officially available to you: Huawei is not allowed to work with companies based in the US due to the government's ban on the company, although no doubt they'll turn up on the likes of eBay fairly soon anyway.

What's the difference between the Huawei MateBook X Pro and the MateBook 16S?

The MateBook X Pro is the Apple rival, a very lightweight and powerful laptop that's very similar to Dell's all-conquering XPS. As we said in our review of the 2022 model, "The Huawei Matebook X Pro (2022) can do almost everything well - the 14.2-inch screen is bright, sharp and colourful, the performance is fast and reliable, it’s loaded with up-to-date connectivity and it definitely looks the part too." The new version can be configured with processors up to the Intel Core i7-1360p.

The 16S is the touchscreen model, with a very large 16-inch display. It's now available with up to the Intel Core i9-13900H, delivering a speed boost of up to 30%. It was already one of the best large laptops around, and the new processors bring it bang up to date.

These aren't the only new Huawei products to be revealed this week. The firm has also shown off the Huawei P60 Pro, its new and photography-focused flagship phone  with an extremely large lens and what our tech ed Mike Lowe describes as a macro mode "unlike anything I've ever used in any phone to date."

This year’s model of the Dell XPS 13, the 9315, has been on a bit of a self-improvement kick recently – losing a little weight here, trimming a few millimeters there and generally getting the sort of internal upgrades that keep you up with the Joneses. This new XPS 13 is slightly lighter, smaller and faster than last year's XPS 13 9310. 

But it’s more about evolution than revolution, and Dell isn’t offering the first-class features, such as OLED screens that it did before. Those are now reserved for the flagship XPS 13 Plus. You probably won’t miss them, though, and the XPS 13 9315 remains the ultralight model to beat – as well as one of the best laptops out there. Read on to find out why, and learn about how we test products. 

DELL XPS 13 9315 laptop: DESIGN AND SCREEN

My review unit was a mid-range model with an Intel i5-1230U 12th Generation processor, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, FHD+ display and a 512GB SSD. The higher-end Dell XPS 13 9315 has an i7 processor, 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB drive.

The cosmetic changes in the new XPS 13 are minimal, but they make the whole thing a smidge smaller. The updated model is slightly lighter at almost 2.6 pounds, down from 2.8 pounds. It’s slightly skinnier too, at just 0.55 inches when closed, which is 0.05 inches thinner than last year's model. It’s available in the usual silver and a rather attractive dark umber finish that I tested out, both carved lovingly out of tinted aluminum. 

The insides have also been reworked with a smaller motherboard and cooling system that uses a single fan to vent heat from the processor. You can choose the 4.4Ghz i5-1230U processor or the slightly faster 4.7Ghz i7-1230U. Both offer 10 processor cores, with eight efficiency and two performance cores. As you might expect from that, the system is more focused on efficiency than raw processing power, but it certainly is no slouch. Both processor options can be combined with up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM – which can’t be upgraded, and you should get as much as you can afford – and up to a 1TB SSD.

The screen is a 13.4-inch FHD display, available with or without touch support. It has a decent level of brightness, which I measured at a maximum of 465 candela per square meter. That’s bright enough to use the screen outdoors on a shady porch but not in direct sunlight. The screen has crisp, clear colors and decent shadow details, but there is no support for HDR or wider color gamuts. Unlike the XPS 13 Pro, there’s also no option for a 4K or OLED screen.

Two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one on each side, connect the XPS 13 9315 to the outside world. Both can power the laptop with the included 45-watt USB-C power adapter. There are no USB-A sockets, but you do get a USB-C to USB-A adapter. 

The other thing missing here? A 3.5-millimeter headphone and headset port. That’s right, Dell has gone with the industry trend of dropping the headphone socket, replacing it with a USB-C to 3.5-millimeter headphone adapter. This is a mistake, I think. USB-C headphones are not ubiquitous yet, and the adapter is too easy to lose on the road.

The bottom line is that the options focus more on affordability and efficiency than performance. The XPS 13 Plus is the king of the hill that can be specced up for the aristocracy, while the XPS 13 is the cheaper, everyday option for the common people.

DELL XPS 13 9315 laptop: PERFORMANCE AND FEATURES

The performance of the XPS 13 is interesting. It’s a pretty average performer when it comes to computing speed, but the battery life is excellent. That’s not surprising given the efficiency-focused processor and design, but it’s a successful combination. 

For performance, I found that the XPS 13 was pretty fast. The experience of running programs like the image editing program Photoshop and office apps like Excel was acceptable. Both programs ran well when dealing with large, complex files, but the XPS 13 lagged somewhat when running more complex tasks like Photoshop filters and regressive analysis in Excel. The XPS 13 scored 4151 in the PCMark 10 benchmark test, which is middling. The more expensive XPS 13 Plus scored a significantly higher 5393.

The XPS 13 9315 is more than adequate for most tasks, though. It will breeze through office work and is fine with an odd bit of photo and video editing.

The XPS 13 was overwhelmed by modern 3D games. Doom Eternal was unplayable on all but the lowest settings. The 3D benchmarking program 3DMark measured the performance of the XPS 13 at 1067 in the Time Spy test. Again, that’s pretty middling, with most gaming laptops recording scores of 6000 and up. To be fair, though, the XPS 13 isn’t a gaming laptop, and I found that non-FPS games (like my favorite, Factorio) were quite playable.

The flip side of this is battery life. I found that the XPS 13 has a remarkably long battery life, lasting 11 hours and 12 minutes in the PCMark 10 battery test, which runs a series of common business tasks. The same was true of watching a video: The battery lasted 14 hours and 43 minutes when playing back a 1080p video with the screen set to the middle of the brightness range. Both are at the very high end of the range – most ultralight laptops have battery lives in the range of 5-7 hours. 

One interesting thing to note is that this XPS 13 is noticeably cooler than previous XPS 13s. Even when running a benchmark test, the top and bottom of the case were never more than slightly warm, and the fan noise never rose above a whisper. That’s because the processor is a lower-powered one than previous models, which uses under 30 watts of power. Even though the case and cooling system are thinner, the XPS 13 stays cool when working out. 

DELL XPS 13 9315 laptop: VERDICT

The Dell XPS 13 9315 remains the one to beat. It combines great performance and outstanding battery life into a slim, svelte package that will be as much computer as most people will ever need. 

This probably won’t cut it for serious photo or video editors, however, who would be better off with the XPS 13 Plus. Likewise, it won’t work for hardcore gamers who want more video processing power than the integrated Xe graphics adapter can provide.

But for those who want a good-looking, hard-working and long-living package that can browse the web, play back videos and handle the thousand and one general computing tasks that we do 99% of the time, it’s a great pick. 

ALSO CONSIDER

Although the XPS 13 9315 is the top pick for ultra-portable computing, there are plenty of other great thin-and-light laptops vying for the prize. 

The Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro offers a bigger 15-inch screen and includes a built-in 5G modem, with similar battery life to the XPS 13. Apple’s Macbook Air is also an obvious competitor to the XPS 13, sharing a similarly slim design and aluminum case.

The world’s fastest, most powerful laptops for gamers and creators have NVIDIA graphics inside – and Currys can help you find the one that’s the perfect laptop for you. 

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX graphics technology delivers incredible acceleration to turbocharge your creative, scientific and engineering apps, with powerful graphics cores delivering incredibly realistic ray-traced graphics in real time with state-of-the-art AI and incredibly immersive gaming. 

Whether you’re gaming, 3D rendering, photo or video editing or streaming online, NVIDIA Studio laptops unleash the power of your PC to accelerate everything.

Exceptional power every day

Take the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7620. It’s an absolute flying machine with 6GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics, a blisteringly fast Intel Core i7 processor, a 16-inch display with 3K resolution and a whopping twelve hours of battery life. Not only that, but it’s available with interest free credit to help you spread the cost*.

Or perhaps you’d prefer the Dell XPS 9520. Dell’s laptop may be super-light and razor-thin but it doesn’t cut any corners when it comes to sheer performance: that 16:10 widescreen display is powered by NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti graphics teamed up with an Intel Core i7, and it has a massive 1TB SSD so there’s tons of room for even the biggest apps and projects.

If you’re looking for a laptop with stunning visuals, you’ll love the Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5. Its 2.5K display shows off the gorgeous graphics of its NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 GPU beautifully, and there’s a powerful AMD Ryzen 6 6600HS processor for superbly speedy performance. 

No matter which laptop you choose, you’re getting the incredible power, performance and efficiency of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX graphics in all the games and apps that matter.

Blistering performance and rock-solid reliability

RTX-powered laptops don’t just do things faster. They do them better. 

That’s because NVIDIA Studio combines NVIDIA's powerful hardware with specially designed drivers that deliver exceptional power, speed and stability in your most important apps. NVIDIA knows that power users need not just great performance but rock-solid reliability too, and they work very closely with the makers of more than 125 creative, engineering and scientific apps to deliver exactly that. Whether you’re rendering 3D in Blender, editing in Photoshop or After Effects or streaming in OBS, NVIDIA Studio ensures you get the maximum level of performance with the minimum amount of fuss. 

NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics aren’t just about sheer speed, although of course they deliver that in spades. They deliver RTX-accelerated features like Lightroom’s AI-powered “Enhance Details” for refining hi-res RAW images; Photoshop’s Smart Portrait and Neural Filters, and Premiere Pro’s RTX-fuelled hardware decoding/encoding and AI Reframe. 

Not only that, but they’re always evolving. NVIDIA's teams of testers and engineers are constantly optimising the NVIDIA Studio drivers to enhance your favourite apps’ features, reduce repetition and speed up your workflow. 

Work hard. Play harder

With your GeForce RTX laptop you’ll be able to game like never before with real-time, cinematic quality rendering in even the most visually intense games. DLSS AI acceleration delivers a double whammy of maximum frame rates and maximum quality, more than doubling the frame rate in some triple-A titles, and NVIDIA Reflex delivers the ultimate competitive advantage with the lowest latency and fast response times so you can acquire targets faster, react more quickly and aim with precision. 

The perfect partner for your pro-level laptop

Every NVIDIA Studio laptop is a serious performer, and if you buy yours from Currys you’re not just getting yours for a great price. You’re also getting a choice of payment options including interest free credit on selected models, and Curry’s famous price promise: you won’t get it cheaper elsewhere, guaranteed. Currys will price match any product against other UK retailers both in the high street and online, and it’ll even match discount codes too. 

Click here to discover the incredible NVIDIA Studio range at Currys.

·      Interest-free credit offers are available on selected products only. Different offers may be available in store vs online. Full terms and conditions are available at www.currys.co.uk

Dell is trying some experiments with their XPS laptop line this year, which includes the XPS 13 2-in-1. While previous XPS 2-in-1s have used a fold-over keyboard, this year's model goes the whole hog into becoming a tablet with an optional detachable keyboard and stylus.

It’s a style of laptop that Microsoft has favored for their Surface Pro models, and it is easy to see why: the XPS 13 2-in-1 is a small, sleek device that is very portable and offers a compelling package.

The price is that it is no speed demon: the fanless design offers below-average performance, which makes it a poor pick for photo or video editing, which is a pity as the 3K screen is excellent. 

DELL XPS 13 2-IN-1: PRICE & AVAILABILITY

The 2022 XPS 13 2-in-1 is now available at $1059 for the base model without the folio keyboard and stylus, ranging up to $1759.99 for the top-of-the-line model we tested with an i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. The memory and storage are not upgradeable after purchase. 

DELL XPS 13 2-IN-1: DESIGN 

The XPS 13 2-in-1 is a svelte, slim slab of a tablet at just 0.29 inches (7.4mm) thick. The optional (but essential) folio case and keyboard add somewhat to the thickness, but it’s still pretty thin at TK inches with the keyboard folded against the screen. It’s a bit heavier than it looks: 2.7lbs (1.3Kg)  for the tablet, keyboard, and stylus package. A button on the top right corner turns the laptop on, and two on the top left to control the volume. Between these is a magnetic patch that holds the optional stylus in place. 

The folio case has an attractive design that converts it into a stand: pull the magnetically attached back of the folio case off, fold it down, and the bottom third forms a stand. That means you can adjust it from very close to flat to almost entirely upright. It is also pretty effective as a lap stand: because the bottom of the stand spreads the weight, you don’t get the uncomfortable edge digging into the leg. It still isn’t as comfortable as a full laptop, though: you feel like you have to keep your legs still to stop it from tipping over or sliding about. 

The keyboard attaches to the bottom edge of the tablet, where it latches firmly into place with magnets. When folded against the screen, this forms the second side of the case, protecting the screen from bumps and knocks. 

The only wired connections for the XPS 13 2-in-1 are two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left side. That’s a slightly odd design: most tablets offer one port on each side so that you can plug the power in on either side. For this one, you must plug the included USB-C power adapter into the left side, even if it would be more convenient on the right. 

Also missing is a headset socket: Dell has gone full USB-C here, but they include a USB-C to 3.5mm headset adapter and a USB-C to USB-A adapter in the package. I’m not a big fan of adapters like this: they're too easy to lose, especially with a grab-and-go laptop like this one. But it is the current trend, and more headphones and headsets are coming with USB-C connections. 

The other thing missing? Fans. There are none inside this laptop: heat from the processor is released through the metal panel on the back of the tablet. It gets pretty warm when the processor works hard: the top left part of the back of the case reaches a toasty 105 F (40 C).

Two grilles on the left and right sides of the tablet look like fan vents, but these are for the surprisingly loud and clear speakers. These produce a lot of volume with decent bass and good stereo separation. The side-facing design could make them somewhat annoying for anyone sitting next to you, though: they aim a lot of the sound energy to the sides.

DELL XPS 13 2-IN-1: DISPLAY 

The screen is nice and bright: I measured the attractive 2880x1920 pixel screen at a healthy 550 Candelas per meter square (cd/m2), which is bright enough to be usable in anything but direct sunlight. That’s very important on a tablet-style device that will be used outside and in, as well as with a stylus. It’s a comfortable screen for work and fun: it looks good when working and playing back YouTube videos. There is no support for HDR or other fancy visual stuff, though. 

Nor is there any support for high frame rates: the display runs at 60Hz, and it looks laggy and choppy when you put it next to the faster 120Hz displays on other tablets like the Surface Pro 9 or the Surface Laptop Studio. You probably won’t miss it if you haven’t gotten used to a faster display, but it is easy to get spoiled by the smoother 120Hz motion on other screens. 

DELL XPS 13 2-IN 1: TOUCHPAD & KEYBOARD 

The optional keyboard snaps onto the bottom of the tablet. It’s a thin (about 0.2 inches) device that protects the screen when folded against it. When in use, it sits flat against the desk or surface it is resting on. Unfortunately, you don’t get the slightly angled surface of the Surface Pro 9 keyboard, making it a bit less comfortable for long typing sessions. 

It’s a decent keyboard with a solid construction that doesn’t bend with heavy use. The keys are large and have a moderate amount of travel for the thickness of the keyboard, and the touchpad is a good size and responsive. Some users don’t favor the large-keys-with-no-gap-between-them approach of this type of keyboard, but I found it more comfortable than smaller ones with gaps. 

The other option for controlling this laptop is the pen. This isn’t included in the standard package: Dell charges an extra $100. It’s a decent stylus that attaches to the top of the tablet with magnets and charges wirelessly, and Dell certainly is not alone in making the keyboard and stylus optional to keep the cost down, but it’s still a cheeky thing to do.

DELL XPS 13 2-IN-1: PERFORMANCE & BATTERY LIFE 

The XPS 13 2-in-1 is on the slower side. It’s best described as adequate: it works well for web browsing, watching videos, and other less demanding tasks, but it can’t cut it with more intense tasks. It handled most tasks in Microsoft Office without straining, running tasks in Word, Excel, and others without issue. It struggled with converting videos rather than just viewing them or running complex analyses in Excel. 

The same was true of gaming: Doom Eternal managed about 40 frames per second… if I went back to the 1990s and set the resolution to 640 by 480 pixels. Anything higher than that and the frame rate dropped to an unplayable 10 to 15 frames per second. Hi-rez first-person shooter gaming is too much for the Intel Xe graphics adapter built into the processor. It proved adequate for non-FPS gaming, though: I could play a decent game of Factorio, even with a huge Seablock factory that involved several million components flying around. 

The battery life is on the longer side of decent: using PC Mark 10, I found that it lasted 8 hours and 11 minutes when running a selection of office tasks with the screen set to about half brightness. That’s just about enough for a day of work away from the office (or catching up with work on a long flight), but you’ll need to take the included 60 Watt charger for anything more than a day trip.

DELL XPS 13 2-IN-1: VERDICT 

The Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 is a nicely designed, well-built tablet with many features, decent battery life, and adequate performance. But it is expensive: you can pick up a Surface Pro 8 with a keyboard and stylus for less than the XPS 13 2-in-1 tablet alone. 

It is about the same price as the just launched Surface Pro 9, which we have yet to be able to review. The two are so similar, though, that I expect they will have the same problem: they are great tablets but could be better laptops. So, unless you need the tablet experience, go with the XPS 13 or the XPS 13 Pro and get more bang for your buck. 

With CES 2023 just about to get underway – that's the largest consumer technology show on the planet – there's a clear theme emerging already: 18-inch gaming laptops are the big new thing for 2023. But by 'big', are they too large? I've been privy to going hands-on with one 18-inch laptop already, the Acer Predator Helios 18, and here are my thoughts.

As I publish this article, Razer has revealed a teaser for its all-new Blade 18 gaming laptop. Presumably that's to avoid being beaten to the punch by Acer and Dell, both of which have revealed their equivalent products in full, the aforementioned Helios 18 and Alienware's M18, respectively. It's the former of those two that I've seen and handled in person, the others I've only seen in video pre-briefings so far (and the Razer I can't say anything more about at the time of first publishing this piece).

What's clear is that new panel technology has become readily available, hence all these makers jumping onto the big new thing and delivering super-size gaming laptop offerings. Except, as I quickly decided when handling the Acer Predator Helios 18 back in mid-December 2022, this new supersize laptop actually isn't too big at all.

That's because the 18-inch panel in the Acer Predator Helios 18 is a 16:10 aspect ratio, and with small screen bezels part of the package, Acer has been able to squeeze everything into the footprint of a would-be 17-inch laptop, except with a less tall screen. I'm not saying it's compact, per se, but if you never found 17-inch too large then 18-inch doesn't really make any difference from a portability point of view.

Where it does of course make a notable difference is with screen real estate, and here it's only a win for gamers. You're getting a bigger screen for your eyes to enjoy, which can only be better. The 18-inch panel in the Predator Helios 18 offers various options, too, with 1000-nits ultra-bright Mini-LED AMOLED and up to 240Hz refresh rate on offer.

The other big win comes down to the larger chassis: there's more room available to implement better cooling systems, have additional and larger vents, and keep airflow maximised so that top-end specifications can also be wrapped into the body. Want the top-end Nvidia GPUs of 2023? You got it. Latest Intel processors too? No problem. With such high-power kit you're not a million miles away from desktop-grade performance from a power perspective, so long as you can plug into a power socket.

Over the years technology has tended to go to two extremes: getting as small or as big as physically possible. Sometimes that ends up with a result that's beyond the extremes of sense or comfort. With 18-inch gaming laptops, however, it's just the next logical step – and I think these large (but not too large) and ultra-powerful machines are just the tonic that gamers will want. Well, if you can afford one anyway, as I don't anticipate these mega-laptops will come in at price points anywhere near casually affordable.

Premium models often feel like a cynical way to extract more money from customers who have it and just want to spend it. The Dell XPS 13 Plus doesn’t feel that way, though. The changes made to the design and internals are genuinely beneficial, making it a faster, more comfortable to use laptop. 

I hope the changes are used in the next versions of standard XPS models — the bigger keyboard and concealed trackpad are both big improvements. Make no mistake: the XPS 13 Plus is a premium laptop, and you are paying more for the looks and a minor performance increase. But it really does look great and is an impressively fast laptop in a very small case.

Overall, this upgraded model is one of the best laptops of 2022, and you can find out how we test to determine that or read on to learn why.

DELL XPS 13 PLUS REVIEW: PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

The Dell XPS 13 Plus is available now, starting at $1,149 (£1,168.99, AU$2,339.01) for the base model with the i5-1240P processor, 8GB of RAM and FHD screen. The top-of-the-line model, with the i7-1280P processor, 32GB of RAM, and a UHD screen, will set you back $1,899 (£2,048.99, AU$3,853.55). 

The review unit that I tested was somewhere in the middle, with an i7-1280P processor, 16GB of RAM, and the 13.4-inch OLED display, which is priced at $1,799 (£1,699.00, AU$3,399.00). It’s available in Platinum and Graphite finishes.

DELL XPS 13 PLUS REVIEW: DESIGN AND FEATURES

Dell claims the XPS 13 Plus is about minimalism rather than looking flashy, and it’s true. The whole design of the Plus is about making the features of this laptop simpler and easier to use. Let’s take a look at the updates in turn, and read the XPS 13 review if you need a refresher on its features. 

The keyboard is very different from the original model. The XPS 13 Plus offers larger keytops that run right to the edge of the laptop and replace the function keys with touch sensors on the glass panel. The larger keys are a big plus, as it means that individual keys are easier to find for ham-fisted typists like me. 

It also makes better use of the space: there are no strips of unused space at the edge of the laptop case. The lack of gaps between the keys — Dell refers to this as a lattice-free design — does require a bit of practice, though, as you don’t feel the edges of the keys when hunting around with your fingertips. 

The function keys also have a new design. Gone are the usual tiny row of keys, replaced by touch sensors under a glass panel. This isn’t a second screen like the touch bar on older Mac laptops; it just replaces the function keys. Normally, the lights behind this panel show the functions you’ll often find on the top row of a laptop keyboard, such as escape, volume, screen brightness, etc. 

Hold down the function key — the light switch shows labels for escape, F1 to F12 and the delete key. A very gentle touch on the light is enough to activate the key. It works well, but it takes a bit of getting used to. It does feel odd hitting ctrl-alt-delete and having one of them be a touch button.

Speaking of things that take some getting used to: the usual recessed touchpad is gone, replaced with one hidden under the Gorilla Glass 3 panel on the bottom of the keyboard tray. There are no indications of where the active area of the touchpad is: I found myself feeling around to find it at first before I got a sense of where it is, in the middle of the glass panel. 

Surprisingly, this trackpad has a nice feel when you press down for a mouse click. That’s a fake-out, though — you feel the vibration of small motors under the panel, making it seem like you are clicking a switch. When you try the same thing with the laptop turned off, you realize there is no physical switch, just a smooth glass panel. It’s a nice piece of engineering that makes you feel like you’re clicking without a failure-prone mechanical switch. 

I am a notorious button basher. I go through a new mouse every six months or so, and laptop touchpads tend to fail quickly because I tend to aggressively click on them when I am in a foul mood — which, as a freelance writer, happens a lot. So, it will be interesting to see if this new fake click holds up, but it feels simpler and stronger than the typical touchpad.

The internals of the XPS 13 Plus have also been changed. It uses a faster processor than the XPS 13 and has a beefed-up cooling solution with bigger fans. That and a bigger battery make it slightly heavier, at a little more than 2.7 pounds without the power adapter. And that’s another upgrade — a 60W USB-C power adapter is included that supports ExpressCharge 2.0, which means it can charge the battery to 80% in about two hours.

Two Thunderbolt 4 ports — one on either side — provide connections to the outside world and the connection for the included 60W USB-C power adapter. Like the standard XPS 13, there is no headset connector, but Dell includes a USB-C to 3.5mm headset adapter and a USB-C to USB-A adapter. Just don’t forget them when heading out on a trip.

The review model I tested came with the 3.5K, 3456-x-2160-pixel OLED display, which is gorgeous. It has excellent color, rich greens and deep blues, and plenty of shadow detail. I measured the screen brightness at a maximum of 336 Cd/M2 (candelas per square meter) — a bit dimmer than many LED screens but usable in everything except direct sunlight. It was certainly usable in my well-lit office and sitting in the shade on my deck. The resolution is slightly below 4K, but watching HDR 4K videos from YouTube or Netflix on this display was still a real pleasure.

The strength of OLED screens like that of the XPS 13 Plus is in their dynamic range, and this one is no exception, showing everything from deep blacks and subtle shadow details to bright highlights. Most OLEDs dim the screen a bit to prevent overheating when displaying a mostly white screen, such as a word processing document. 

I saw no evidence of this on the XPS 13 Plus. The display didn't dim after several minutes of showing a white screen. However, that isn’t something I would recommend because it could damage the screen in the long term and run the battery down quicker, as OLEDs draw a lot more power when showing a very bright screen. The system does warn you if you have the brightness turned up while on battery power, and turning the brightness down will significantly extend the battery life.

DELL XPS 13 PLUS REVIEW: PERFORMANCE & BATTERY

The review unit I tested came with a Core i7-1280P, Intel’s top-of-the-line laptop processor with 14 cores — six P (for performance) cores that run up to 4.8Ghz and eight E (for efficient) cores that can go up to 3.6Ghz. That’s along with 16GB of DDR5 RAM, which makes for a powerful combination, and the XPS 13 Plus has the numbers to prove it. I tested it with the benchmarking program PC Mark 10, where the laptop achieved an impressive score of 5393, about a 6% jump from the standard XPS 13.

That’s enough to give you an edge when working in power-hungry apps like Adobe Photoshop. Editing large photos in that greedy program felt a little snappier and more responsive than on the XPS 13. The option to install up to 32GB of RAM is also welcome, as you’ll need that if you’re running Photoshop. Get it if you think you might need it — the memory is fixed to the motherboard and is not upgradeable by the user.

The XPS 13 Plus was a bit out of its depth when it came to playing first-person shooter games, though. It achieved a rather unimpressive score of 1710 in the 3D Mark Time Spy gaming benchmark. That’s pretty good for a laptop with integrated graphics where the graphics processor is built into the processor. But it’s pretty weak compared to a laptop with a separate graphics processor like the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio, which scored 4302 with its NVidia 3050 GPU.

Doom Eternal proved to be a bit much for the integrated Xe graphics of the XPS 13 Plus. The game looked great on the OLED screen but ran at a rather jumpy 20 to 25 frames per second at Full HD resolution in Good graphics mode. If your gaming runs more to the intellectual than the bloodthirsty, you may be fine, though. My current gaming obsession, the factory-building Factorio (with the Seablock mod), ran smoothly and looked great, so the XPS 13 Plus should be able to handle most non-FPS games without too many problems.

Heat is an issue with gaming and other demanding tasks. The Core i7-1280P processor at the heart of the XPS 13 Plus is a toasty little chip, outputting up to 60 watts of heat when running flat out, although this is usually throttled down to a more manageable 28 watts. Most of that gets vented out of the air vents concealed in the hinge of the XPS 13 Plus, but it also moves into the case of the laptop. 

After a long gaming session, the bottom of the case near the hinge reached a toasty 115 degrees F (about 48 degrees C), while the top above the function touch keys reached a similar 110 degrees F. That’s pretty hot if the thing is sitting on your lap. 

The XPS 13 Plus may be a very small laptop, but it offers plenty of battery life: 8 hours and 11 minutes in the PC Mark 10 Video battery test, which plays a 1080P video on loop until the battery runs out. That’s a couple of hours longer than the standard XPS 13, which comes down to a slightly larger battery: 55 mAh against the 51 mAh of the XPS 13. Presumably, the integrated touchpad left more space in the base to pack this extra battery.

One thing to note here: I tested the battery life with the screen brightness turned down by two notches so that the screen brightness was approximately 200 Cd/m2, about two-thirds of the maximum. I do that for all the laptops I test to provide a standard measure, as 200 Cd/M2 is just about right for an indoor display — not too bright and not too dim. 

I didn’t gain much extra battery life by reducing the screen brightness — dropping down to 100 Cd/M2 only added another five minutes of battery life — but running the screen at maximum brightness significantly ate into the battery life, dropping it to 7 hours and 13 minutes. So, avoid setting the brightness to maximum if you want to squeeze out extra battery life.

DELL XPS 13 PLUS LAPTOP REVIEW: VERDICT

The “Plus” in the Dell XPS 13 Plus isn’t just a marketing gimmick. The redesigned keyboard, trackpad and internals make for a premium package that feels like a step up from the XPS 13. Of course, that comes at a cost: you’ll pay a few hundred dollars more for them than the standard XPS 13. 

Is that worth it? For many people, perhaps not — the XPS 13 is already a great laptop, and you would generally be better off investing the money in more memory or storage space. But the new design is undeniably cool, with a minimalist aesthetic that will appeal to those who value style and substance and don’t mind paying a bit extra to get it.

ALSO CONSIDER

The obvious alternative to the XPS 13 Plus is the XPS 13, the standard model in Dell’s XPS lineup. You’ll save a few hundred bucks by forgoing the Plus and still get a kick-ass laptop with a very portable design, although it doesn’t have the chic look of the XPS 13 Plus.

If you want a premium design, the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio has a fold-over screen that turns it into a tablet but without the clunky design common to 2-in-1 laptops. It isn’t cheap — you’ll expect to pay a bit more for this nifty bit of design, although you do get the option of a discrete GPU that offers improved gaming performance.

Dell's XPS range is stylish at the best of times, but its new XPS 13 Plus racks it up a notch. With a keypad that stretches the full width of the casing and a touchpad that blends seamlessly into the body, it's extremely minimalist and is the first PC that in my opinion really challenges the design aesthetic that has drawn users over to Apple. 

All of this design prowess comes at a premium though. So when I saw that this relatively new model has a chunk of cash taken off the price for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I was excited. The specs on this machine are high – a 12th gen Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM and 1TB hard drive and an FHD+ (1920x1080) display.  

In the US you can get a similar model with a smaller 512GB hard drive but an impressive 3.5K display for around the same price. 

There are lots more deals on the Dell website if you're looking for something in particular, but this is one that really stands out. 

• Dell USA Cyber Monday deals
• Dell UK Black Friday deals

Dell USA Cyber Monday deal

• Dell XPS Plus (USA) was $1899, now $1399 at Dell USA

Dell UK Cyber Monday deal

• Dell XPS Plus (UK) was £1598.99, now £1348.99 at Dell UK

Dynabook is a fairly new name on the laptop scene, but its roots are deep. The company was formerly part of Toshiba, which built the first laptop computer in 1985. Now Dynabook is off on its own, but it’s still producing laptops that offer a different spin on design, because this model is extremely light, has excellent battery life and offers decent performance. 

Plus, there are plenty of ports, including wired Ethernet and HDMI out. That makes it a tempting option for those who often need to connect their road warrior laptop to other external networks, displays and other devices. 

Is the Dynabook Portégé X30L-K worthy of a place among the best laptops of the year? Read on to find out or learn more about how we test.

Dynabook Portégé X30L-K review: price and availability

The Dynabook Portégé X30L-K is available now, with prices starting at £1187 / $1,379 / AU$2077. My review unit came with the Intel Core i7-1260P processor, 16 GB RAM and a 13.3-inch FHD display, which has a retail price of £1389 / $1,800 / AU$2562.

Dynabook Portégé X30L-K review: design and features

The Portégé X30L-K surprises you when you pick it up. At just under 2 pounds (904g), it’s very light compared to other similarly sized laptops. It's also pretty small. 

Much of that is down to the somewhat retro design, with a plastic casing that weighs much less than the machined aluminum of laptops like the Dell XPS 13. The downside is that the construction of the X30L-K feels much less robust; although it should stand up to knocks and bangs, it just doesn’t feel as tough as its metal-skinned siblings.

The 13.3-inch screen of this laptop tilts back a long way — you can actually fold it all the way back flat against your desk. This isn’t a convertible laptop, though: you can’t fold it back against the body. If you want a laptop that can do this, Dynabook offers the X30W, a similar model that is convertible into a tablet.

What this laptop does have plenty of is ports. On the left side, there are two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a full-sized HDMI port, a USB 3.2 port and a 3.5mm headset socket. On the right side are even more: a Kensington lock socket, a wired gigabit ethernet port, a USB 3.2 port and a micro-SD card slot. 

That’s a lot of connections compared to the usual one or two Thunderbolt ports. The gigabit ethernet will be welcomed by anyone who has had to fight with dodgy WiFi in a home or office.

The keyboard of the X30L-K is rather disappointing, with widely spaced keys that have a very soft, almost soggy feel. The touchpad is adequate, distinguishing well enough between a touch and a tap with a decent positive click for the latter in the center of the pad. 

A fingerprint reader is also built into the pad, but there is a dead zone around this that’s rather annoying. If you try and touch and slide starting in this zone, the mouse doesn’t respond. Above the touchpad are buttons for left and right clicks, so you don’t have to rely on the rather haphazard click of the pad itself.

In the middle of the keyboard is another throwback: a pointing device rather like the TrackPoint on old IBM laptops. This Acupoint device works like a miniature joystick — wiggle it around and it moves the mouse. That might get a fond sigh from those who grew up on older Toshiba or Lenovo laptops that used them, but modern touchpads are so much easier to use that it feels more like nostalgia than a practical alternative.

Although some of the design cues here might be old-school, the wireless connections are anything but, with a built-in WiFi 6E adapter that supports all three frequencies of the latest wireless internet standard. The WiFi 6E wireless router adds an additional 6GHz frequency band that can provide speedy access on a crowded wireless network.

The Dynabook Portégé’s 13.3-inch LED screen, at 1920 x 1080 pixels, is very bright. I measured it at 391 Candelas per meter squared (Cd/M2), which makes the laptop bright enough to be used in pretty much any lighting conditions, including outdoors. The screen was still very visible when I was working outside on my deck on a very sunny day. 

Images looked good, with clean, vivid color, though they lacked the impact of the newer OLED screens available on other laptops. The colors were not as vivid as an OLED, the blacks not as deep. Still, the X30L-K screen was fine for general use — just don’t expect cinema quality here when you’re watching movies.

Dynabook Portégé X30L-K review: performance and battery life

The X30L-K is not the fastest laptop on the block, but it has a decent amount of processing power. I found that it ran business apps, browsed the web and played streaming video without problems, but choked a bit on video editing and games.

When I tested this laptop in the benchmarking program PC Mark 10, it managed a fine score of 5348, which is comparable to similar laptops like the Dell XPS 13. It’s a bit faster than the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro, though, which is interesting since it has the same processor.

The brain of this laptop is the mid-range Intel Core i7-1260P, a 12th-generation, 12-core processor. There is a bit more to it than that, though: eight of those cores are what Intel calls E (for efficient) cores that can run at up to 3.4Ghz, while the other four are P cores that can push up to 4.7GHz for a short while. 

With cores inclined more toward efficiency than performance, the processor uses less power than some, but it can’t bring the same level of performance as those used on other laptops with more P cores. That’s a fair compromise, though: this laptop is more about efficiency than raw power.

The X30L-K is definitely not a gaming laptop. The integrated graphics choked on the 3D first-person shooter Doom Eternal, producing glitchy, intolerable gameplay even on the lowest graphics settings. The scores in the benchmarking program 3D Mark were also disappointing: it managed a lackluster score of 1716. However, it performed much better at other non-FPS games, such as Factorio. 

The Portégé X30L-K may be a thin and light laptop, but it’s anything but thin when it comes to battery life. It lasted an impressive 13 hours and two minutes in the PC Mark 10 test, which plays back a 1080P video until the battery dies. I also tested the laptop using the Modern Office battery test of PC Mark 10, which simulates someone grinding away at a spreadsheet and other common work tasks, and the battery life was about the same at just over 13 hours. That’s pretty impressive.

One thing to note is that I ran both tests with the screen brightness turned down to 200 Cd/M2, two stops from the minimum. I do that for consistency, so different laptops are tested in a similar way. The battery life with the screen brightness turned up would no doubt be reduced. 

Dynabook Portégé X30L-K review: verdict

The Portégé X30L-K is an attractive package with a lot to offer. It has excellent battery life and good performance, plus a lot of ports. That means you can connect to things like TVs, wired networks, USB hubs and other devices without having to lug around a ton of dongles and adapters. 

While such things won’t matter much for work-at-home types,  for those who have to travel to customer offices, run presentations or debug problems, having extras like the gigabit ethernet could make all the difference.

Dynabook Portégé X30L-K review: also consider

Our guide to the best lightweight laptops is a great place to start, as this is a very competitive area of the laptop market. If the price tag of the Portégé X30L-K is a bit beyond your budget, look at the cheaper models of the Dell XPS 13.

The Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro also has the same ultralight weight as the Portégé, but with a more stylish look and a built-in 5G modem, which means it can connect to the interwebs from pretty much anywhere.

The future of work might be described as work where you are, which could be at home, in the office, or somewhere in between. Wherever you might be, the laptop that you use for work could benefit from adding one of the best 4K monitors.  

One such option is the Dell P3223QE, a 32-inch 4K monitor that is also a USB-C hub to add extra features to your desktop or laptop computer. It’s part of Dell’s professional monitor line, designed for professional home and office users. It is a nicely designed monitor that provides plenty of desktop real estate, with a flexible stand and a clean, simple design that makes it a great, if a little expensive, pick for the home office. 

In this review, I’ll guide you through everything you need to know about this stylish work monitor, from the specs to how we test. 

Dell P3223QE 32-inch 4K Monitor review: price and availability

The Dell P3223QE 32-inch 4K monitor is available now from Dell. It is priced at £585 / $759/ AU$1,191. Take a look at our Dell discount codes for ways to save on your order.

Dell P3223QE 32-inch 4K Monitor review: design and setup

The 31.5-inch panel that the P3223QE uses has a resolution of 3840 by 2160 pixels, the same as your 4K UHD TV. It is an In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel that has a 60Hz refresh rate. This display has excellent detail and good color, although it lacks the deep blacks and brighter colors of the new generation of OLED displays. It covers 99 percent of the sRGB gamut, but you don’t get support for the wider P3 or Rec.709 color gamuts that UHD TVs support. That might make it a poor pick for editing 4K video, as you won’t see the colors in the same way that they will show up on a UHD TV. 

There is a good selection of ports and inputs on offer here. For video, it offers one DisplayPort plus an HDMI 2.0 input. For data, there is a USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 input, plus two USB 3.2 outputs and a LAN port on the back. An additional two USB 3.2 ports on the bottom edge provide an easy way to connect temporary devices like media card readers or USB thumb drives. 

The power and menu buttons are located on the back of the panel, so you reach around with your right hand and use your index finger to use them. The menu button also doubles as a 4-way joystick control for moving around the on-screen menu. It’s an unusual arrangement, but once you get used to it, it is easy to use and keeps the clean and clear design of the front panel.

The stand of the P3223QE has a flexible, smart design that makes it very easy to use. You can rotate the monitor to portrait mode, lift it up or down by nearly six inches and tilt it forward and back by five and twenty degrees respectively. That means it should be easy to find the optimal viewing position, and the cables fit neatly through the pole of the stand to keep them tidy. That doesn’t hide the cables away like some stands do, but it’s an elegant solution to keep things tucked away. 

Dell P3223QE 32-inch 4K Monitor review: features and image quality

The image quality of the P3223QE is excellent – images had clear, bright color and sharp detail. I measured the peak brightness at 335 candela per meter square (cd/m2), which is bright enough for most uses, but not as bright as some. The color is clear and vivid, but this monitor is limited to the sRGB color gamut, so you don’t get support for the wider Adobe RGB or Rec.709 colors. That’s fine for general use, but it would be a problem for photo or video use, because it can’t show the same range of colors as a standard UHD TV. Edit video on this monitor and then show it on your TV and it will look quite different. Show a movie on it and you’ll get muted greens and blues that don’t look natural. 

The idea of this monitor is that you plug the USB-C cable into your laptop and it handles everything – you get power to charge the laptop and the same cable handles video and other accessories. So when you get home you just plug in the single USB cable and the monitor starts up, connects to your external mouse and keyboard and other devices, and charges your laptop at the same time. 

It’s an attractive idea and it works pretty well. Using the P3223QE with a Microsoft Surface Studio Laptop, most of the things I tried worked without hassle the first time I tried it. Within a few seconds, the video appeared on the monitor, the laptop detected the USB dongles for my wireless keyboard and mouse that were plugged into the monitor, my external hard drive was detected and the laptop started charging. 

The only thing that wasn’t plug-and-play was the Ethernet connector; for some reason, this required an additional driver. That wasn’t a big problem to fix, though. A right-click on this in the device manager and selecting search for an updated driver found the right one and installed it, because the USB to Ethernet chip that Dell used isn’t one of the ones that have drivers baked into Windows 11. 

The next time I plugged the single USB-C cable into the laptop, all of my devices (including the Ethernet) were up and running in a couple of seconds, and the laptop started charging. It’s a simple solution to the business of taking your work with you, but also having the comforts of the home office available. 

One feature that is missing from this monitor is built-in KVM switch. Other monitors, such as the Dell U2723QE, allow you to switch between multiple computers from the keyboard (hence the name KVM, short for Keyboard, Video, and Mouse switch). The P3223QE only has one USB input, so while you can connect more than one computer at a time to the three video inputs, you can’t switch between them from the keyboard and keep control of each computer. 

You can, though, control the monitor from the keyboard with the Dell Display Manager, a neat app that allows you to control every feature of the monitor without touching the monitor itself. That’s a big plus for tweaking the brightness and other settings, as you can control them from the same spot that you will be using the monitor. 

Dell P3223QE 32-inch 4K Monitor review: verdict

The P3223QE has a lot of features to like: 4K resolution on a big, wide 32-inch display that gives plenty of real estate for your work to expand into. Plugging in a single cable to connect video, USB devices and charge your laptop at the same time is also kind of awesome. No more messing with power cables, video cables and USB cables when you are working from home. 

It is missing some things that would have made it more flexible, though, like a wider color gamut for video use and a KVM feature. When your office is your living room, you need devices that can be used for both work and play, and while the P3223QE is great for work, it isn’t so suited to play. 

Dell P3223QE 32-inch 4K Monitor review: also consider

There are a couple of stand out alternatives to this Dell monitor that are worth considering. The Samsung M8 Smart Monitor excels as a do-it-all monitor. You can plug your laptop in to do some work, or watch Netflix thanks to the built-in Tizen OS. It’s about the same price as the P3223QE as well, so it’s a great pick for the flexible home office. 

If gaming is important for you, then the Benq EW3880R might be a good pick. This has the same 4K resolution, but the screen is curved, which makes it more comfortable for long gaming sessions. In addition, it offers a set of built-in speakers and HDR support to make your games look better. 

The Dell Ultrasharp 27 4K USB-C Hub monitor U2723QE is an excellent 27-inch monitor that has a great trick up its sleeve: the ability to switch between three connected computers. That’s a great feature for those who have separate work and gaming PCs. 

Dell offers a wide range of choices when it comes to displays, including a number of 4K monitors. The Ultrasharp range, in which the U2723QE sits, is designed to be its highest performing models in terms of image quality. These are designed for creative professionals, using the displays for video and photo editing, but this level of performance also makes them suitable for those who just want a great-looking picture. 

These are not like the best gaming monitors though, as they don’t offer high refresh rates and response times. As a relatively affordable and moderately sized option, the U2732QE is likely to be a popular choice for those that work from home and want something better than the base model. To see if it delivers on this, I used it with Dell’s latest XPS desktop machine for the review. 

Dell Ultrasharp 27 4K U2723QE review: price and availability

The Dell Ultrasharp 27 4K U2723QE monitor is available now direct from Dell and is priced at £682/$625/AU$902. A 32-inch version, the U3223QE, is also available which costs £897/$920/AU$1,193. Make sure you check our Dell discount codes page to save on your order.

Dell Ultrasharp 27 4K U2723QE review: features

The Dell 27-inch 4K U2723QE has a clean, modern and professional-looking design, with a very thin bezel around the edge of the bright 27-inch panel. Like all of the best 4K monitors, the 3840 by 2160 pixel resolution of the display provides plenty of desktop real estate, while the thin profile doesn’t take up too much of your desk space. 

The front is feature-free, with only a tiny LED on the bottom right corner that shows when the monitor is turned on. The power and menu buttons are located on the back of the panel, so you reach around with your right hand to activate them. The menu button also doubles as a 4-way joystick control for moving around the on-screen menu. It’s an unusual arrangement, but it works well and is comfortable to use for the limited times that you’ll need it. 

The included monitor stand is made of plastic, but feels well constructed and holds the panel without wobbling. The stand also has plenty of room for adjustment: you can lower the panel to within a few inches of your desk, or up to 5.9 inches high. That’s high enough that you can rotate the panel around to portrait orientation. There’s a VESA 100 mount on the back of the panel if you have another stand that you want to use instead. 

Dell Ultrasharp 27 4K U2723QE review: performance

I found that the U2723QE is an excellent monitor, producing bright, clear images with deep blacks and bright whites. Cranking the brightness up to maximum, I measured the light level of the panel at an excellent 263 cd/m2, although you wouldn’t usually run a monitor this high – 120 or 200 cd/m2 is better for daily use. The color was also excellent, as the monitor covers the entire sRGB and Rec.709 gamut, and 98% of the Broadcast DCI-P3 gamut. The colors were bright, but the accompanying blacks were also pleasantly deep and dark, although the monitor lacks the color and contrast punch of Quantum Dot or OLED displays. Unfortunately, the frame rate is limited to 60Hz, with no support for the higher frame rates. 

In use, all of this meant that images on the U2723QE looked great, with strong, punchy color in videos and accurate, smooth color gradients when editing photos and video. The 4K resolution means that you get the full impact of things like streaming 4K movies, and you have plenty of desktop space for work. It also looked pretty good for games, but you don’t get the smooth motion and fluidity of a dedicated gaming monitor that can handle higher refresh rates. 

There is certainly no shortage of ports on the back of this monitor to connect stuff. You get two USB-C upstream ports (for connecting computers), one USB-C downstream port, four USB 3.2 ports, one HDMI 2.0 input, one DisplayPort in, and one DisplayPort out, plus a 3,5mm audio output and security socket. There are a lot of ways to charge stuff, too. Two of the USB-C and one of the USB 3.2 ports can charge devices at between 10 and 60 watts. That’s enough to charge a laptop, a phone and another device at a decent speed without extra chargers. 

The upstream ports are designed to connect a laptop or desktop PC, while the downstream ones are for peripherals. You can also use the DisplayPort output to connect a second monitor, all of which can be driven from the PC by one USB-C cable. There is also a Gigabit Ethernet port, although this does require the installation of a driver, as the drivers are not baked into Windows or macOS.  Basically, you can pretty much connect your entire office or gaming setup to this display, and have it all running and charging off one power socket.

The real killer feature for many users is the built-in Keyboard Video and Mouse (KVM) switch. This allows you to connect up to three computers to the display, then switch between them. The way it works is that you connect one computer to each of the upstream USB-C ports and one to the HDMI input, then your mouse, keyboard, and other devices to the other USB ports on the monitor. When you switch between the computers, the display switches the connected USB devices over at the same time, as if you unplugged everything from one computer and into the other. It’s a neat trick and a great feature if you have a laptop for work, a desktop PC for games, and a media streaming box to watch movies as you can switch between them without unplugging everything. You can switch between computers using either the on-screen menu or in the Dell Display Manager software, which also allows you to configure and name the devices, then switch between them with a key combination.

The same feature allows you to put both computers on screen at the same time (Dell calls it Picture-ByPicture mode, or PBP) or have one shown as an inset into the other (Picture-In-Picture, or PIP). That means that you can keep an eye on one computer if it is rendering an image or crunching a large spreadsheet while doing something more interesting on the other. 

Dell Ultrasharp 27 4K U2723QE review: verdict

The U2723QE is kind of a do-it-all device. It combines an excellent 27-inch 4K monitor with the features of a USB-C hub, a KVM and a charger. It could handle pretty much everything that most users will need in one, getting rid of a number of cables, hubs, and chargers. Missing, though, are features like the faster Thunderbolt connection standard and speakers. If you are a serious gamer, you might be better off with a dedicated gaming monitor that can keep up with your fancy graphics card and handle higher refresh rates, but for most users, 60Hz and a monitor that can handle pretty much every connection you will ever need is the way to go. 

Dell Ultrasharp 27 4K U2723QE review: also consider

There are lots of 4K monitors of similar size to the U2723QE, including the monitors on our best 4K monitors list. The LG 27UL8750 is the same size, and resolution as well as a similar minimalist style. It is a bit cheaper than the Dell, though, at under $500. Apple’s Studio Display is at the other end of the price spectrum, at double the price of the Dell. It will match your Mac setup much better, though, and has 5K resolution. That means you could view a full 4K video stream and still have some space left over for editing controls. 

For gamers that prefer the power of AMD over Intel, Dell has released a range of machines featuring Ryzen processors. AMD Ryzen chips have featured in some of the best gaming laptops for some time, including the Asus ROS Zephyrus G14 and Alienware's m15 R5. However, these latest additions feature the very latest Ryzen 9 chips in everything from the powerful Aurora desktop to the entry-level gaming laptop, the Dell G15. 

The Alienware m15 R7 and Alienware m17 R5 were both originally unveiled at CES in January, alongside the Alienware X14. They offer a choice of Ryzen 7 6800H, Ryzen 9 6900HX, and the Ryzen 9 6980HX (on the m17 only). Both models are available in North America now, priced $1,499.99 and $1,599.99 respectively. UK and Australia pricing and availability are expected to follow. 

The new Alienware Aurora Ryzen Edition R14 desktop machine now comes with not only a choice of Ryzen 9 processors but also the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D which uses 3D V-Cache to deliver 96MB of L3 cache. In other words, seriously impressive gaming. This all stacks up next to AMD Radeon RX graphics, up to 4TB of SSD and up to 128GB DD4 RAM. This is also available now in North America from $2,949.

Finally, the Dell G15 has also had an upgrade. This more entry-level gaming laptop comes with new Ryzen processor options. This 5525 model offers a choice of three chips, from the Ryzen 5 6600H 6-core model to the Ryzen 9 6900HX 8-core model. This alongside Nvidia Geforce RTX graphics, up to 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. The Dell G15 is available in North America now priced from $899.99

Dell is known for its stylish, high-performance XPS range as much as its affordable Inspiron laptops, but there's a lot more in between (see the best Dell laptops). Today it adds new models to its work-focused Latitude and its professional Precision ranges, along with a range of tools that are aimed at the hybrid work world. 

The Latitude models include a brand new 9430, the smallest 14-inch 16:10 business machine. It features Wi-Fi 6E and 5G options to provide the fastest possible connectivity and comes kitted out with 12th gen Intel Core processors up to i7, 32GB RAM, Intel Iris X graphics and 1TB storage. It also comes in a 2-in-1 version with a QHD+ touchscreen display. This will be available from April, priced from $2245 (roughly £1700 / AU$3,000). 

The Latitude 7000 range includes new 13, 14 and 15-inch models in laptop and 2-in-1 options. The standout is the Latitude 7330 Ultralight, described as the smallest and lightest 13.3-inch premium commercial laptop. This weighs under 1kg (2.13lbs) and also comes with Wi-Fi 6E and 5G options. The display is an FHD (1920x1080) non-touch unit, though touch and 2-in-1 versions are available. Available from April with price starting from $1899 (roughly £1500 / AU$2500).

In addition, the Latitude 5000 range gains five new models, including 13, 14 and 15-inch variations. The 15.6-inch Latitude 5531 has options up to i7 H45 vPro processor, UHD (3840x2160) display, 64GB RAM and 4TB storage. Available in April, priced from $1749 (roughly £1300 / AU$2300). 

In the Precision range, the highlight is the new Precision 5470. This is the smallest, thinnest and most powerful mobile workstation in the range and weighs 1.48kg (3.26lbs). It features a 14-inch 16:10, up to QHD+ (2560x1600) resolution, and has a range of processors up to 12th gen Intel Core i9 H vPro. Available in April. Price is still to be confirmed. 

Dell's Optimizer is a new suite of privacy features that are built into many of the new machines. This includes intelligent privacy, including onlooker protection, ExpressConnect to allow for simultaneous multi-network connections, and intelligent audio to improve the quality of your video calls. 

In addition to the wealth of new laptops, Dell also released three new monitors to pair with the notebooks when working from home. The Ultrasharp monitors include a 30-inch U3023E, a 16:10 WQXGA monitor that includes a USB-C Hub for easy connection. It also features wired ethernet and 10Gbps connections and quick access front ports. Available now, priced $1049 (roughly £800 / AU$1400). 

Two new 4K monitors are also available in 27-inch (U2723QE) and 32-inch (U3223QE)
sizes. Both have IPS Black technology to deliver an improved 2,000:1 contrast ratio and USB-C hub for easy connection. Available now, priced $724 (£550 / AU$964) and $1149 (£880 / AU$1500) respectively. 

Make sure you check our Dell discount codes page for the latest offers. 

The Dell XPS 15 (9520) and XPS 17 (9720) are the new 2022 models of the premium XPS range. While on the outside little has changed, these new laptops have seriously increased in power and performance. 

Both models now come with Intel's latest 12th gen Core processors, also known by the Alder Lake code name. The chips featured range from the i5-12500H up to the flagship 14-core i9-12900HK. These are the more powerful 45W CPUs and support the faster DDR5 RAM up to a maximum of 64GB. Both models also come with up to 4TB of storage with support for a maximum of 8TB. 

The XPS 15 includes graphics options up to the 40W Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, while the XPS 17 has options for the 60W Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 or 3060 – though the 3060 is coming slightly later. 

The XPS 15 display comes with the brilliant OLED touch display option in addition to the 4K UHD+ (3840x2400) touch display and FHD+ (1920x1200) non-touch display options of the XPS 17. If you're struggling to choose between the two sizes, we compared the former XPS 15 and XPS 17 models.

While these updates aren't quite as exciting as the Dell XPS 13 Plus update back in January, the spec boost will be welcome news to those users wanting maximum performance. The new XPS 15 9520 starts from $1449. The XPS 17 9720 starts from $1849. Both are available now from Dell US online. UK and Australia prices and availability are still to be confirmed. 

These laptops and computing discount codes make the cost of your new device cheap and cheerful

It’s important to find the right device for what you need. A laptop is really handy if you’re in need of something portable that can run loads of applications (perfect for if you’re working or studying) so make sure you snap up some savings on quality laptops from our PC specialists like Currys and Lenovo.

If you’re looking for a gaming PC or laptop, Dell’s Alienware range is superbly optimised to give you the ultimate gaming experience every time you play.

If you’re in need of lots of storage space and a big screen, buying a PC with a monitor is the perfect solution and with top retailers like Samsung and HP, you know you’ll bag a bargain.

You won’t just find deals for laptops and computers here, but also the accessories that go with them, like keyboards, laptop bags and docking stations - we have it all under one roof!

Presidents Day is this coming Monday and to help you celebrate the birth of our first president, George Washington, there are some great deals to be had on a range of products. If you're in the market for a new laptop right now then it's definitely worth taking a look at the offers Dell has on its website. 

From now through Feb 23, there are big discounts on sleek XPS notebooks, affordable Inspiron machines, G15 gaming laptops, Alienware products, desktops, monitors and more. According to the website, limited quantities of each item are made available each day from 11am ET, so you need to be quick to catch the best deals. 

You can view the full list of available discounts on Dell's Presidents Day page. We've also highlighted some of the best offers available right now below. 

The best Dell Presidents Day deals

Amazon has opened the floodgates on savings in this absolute heater of a back-to-school sale that runs from now through until the end of January while stocks last. This opens up a world of savings of 20-35% across a wide range of laptops, 2-in-1s, desktops, monitors, accessories and school supplies directly from the Amazon stores of big brand names like HP, Dell, Acer and more!

We’ve picked out our top deals from the sale, with particular attention paid to anyone looking for a new laptop to kickstart the year with. If you don’t see something you like below, check out Amazon’s back-to-school sales page where everything from bags, to laptops, to all the supplies that you’ll need to get yourself or your child ready to head back to school (or uni) can be found. 

• Best student laptops Australia 2022: the best laptops for school or uni
• Gaming laptops are the perfect choice for students going back to school – here's why
• Dell XPS Plus out-designs Apple for the best laptop of 2022

Looking for something to pack all the new gear (books and all) into? Amazon has you covered there as well with plenty of backpacks going for less.

T3's best and cheapest Dell monitor deals guide, curated with the best price drops, discounts and offers, is here to help you find a new Dell monitor on sale cheap today.

For desktop users, the picking of a monitor has traditionally been down to size, but as screen qualities and features have improved, a lot more thought goes into the choice. 

As more of us work from home, laptop users are also increasingly seeing the benefits of adding a dedicated screen to their setup – especially for gaming and editing. Working or playing for hours on a 15-inch or less screen can be tough on the eyes. 

The latest Dell monitors offer a range of sizes, resolutions and features to suit everyone from a student setup to a gamer or creative professional. There are 4k and 8k models, curved screens and fast response times. Whether you're hooking up your desktop, laptop, Mac or PC, there's something in the range to suit. 

In this guide, you'll be able to find the best price on some of the most popular Dell monitor models. These update in real-time, so you always know that you're seeing the best deal on the model you want.  

Best Dell Monitor Deals Today

If a site or retailer is running any special offers, you'll find them right here along with the top three best Dell monitor deals today. Be sure to check back throughout the month as new sales on Dell monitors show up.

• Dell Store: shop all deals on gaming monitors, work monitors and more

Dell UltraSharp U2720Q 4k monitor deals

The Dell UltraSharp U2720Q is a 27-inch 4K display that features connections for USB-C, USB-A, HDMI and Display Port. For this reason, it's the perfect monitor for MacBook Pro users or anyone else running connections from USB-C ports. It will even power your laptop while connected. 

The list price for this monitor is $699.99 though you can often find deals around the $550 mark. While it's already a great choice, at this price it's a must-buy. 

Dell UltraSharp UP3216Q Professional monitor deals

If you're looking for a professional-grade screen, the Dell UltraSharp UP3216Q could be the answer. This 32-inch 4K screen prides itself on color accuracy, offering 99% Adobe RGB coverage and 87% DCI-P3. 

This model retails at over $4,000 but has now been superseded by the Dell UltraSharp UP3221and so can be found for much less. 

Dell P2721Q 4k monitor deals

While not an UltraSharp model like the U2720Q, the P2721 provides two USB 3.2 upstream and two USB 2.0 downstream ports in addition to a USB-C, HDMI and Display Port. This means that you can connect this to your laptop and use it as a USB hub for your accessories. The 27-inch monitor also features a 4K IPS panel and Dell's ComfortView option to reduce blue light. 

The full retail price of this model is $659.99 but it's common to see deals available for under $500. 

Dell UltraSharp U4320Q 43-in monitor deals

Looking for a super-sized screen? This Dell UltraSharp U4320Q has a 42.5-inch display. That's pretty much TV-sized viewing, so you'll need a lot of desk space. If you're looking for a serious video editing screen, this 4K unit will do the trick. It has a 1000:1 contrast ratio and a choice of HDMI, DisplayPort, USB-C and USB 3.1 ports.

The price isn't as scary as you'd expect either. Though the RRP is $1,159.99 you can find it for just under $900 – that's less than some good 4K TVs. 

Dell S2721HGF curved gaming monitor deals

If you're looking for a gaming monitor and you're on a tight budget, the Dell S2721HGF is a great option. This is a 27-inch curved monitor with a full HD resolution, a 144Hz refresh rate and a 1ms response time. This makes it ideal for nice smooth gaming and while it might not offer all the bells and whistles of other gaming monitors, it comes in at a really good price. 

The retail price on this is just $369.99 and right now deals are coming in as low as $249. 

Dell UltraSharp UP3218K 8K monitor deals

Looking for the very best all round? 8K screens are still rare and expensive but they do exist and they look stunning. The Dell UltraSharp UP3218K is one such display. This 31.5-inch monitor provides a jaw-dropping 8K resolution that not only displays any 8K content you might have natively but it will upscale 4K content to look even better. 

With a retail price of $4,999.99, it's not cheap, but you can find some good deals to take the price below $4k. 

Buying Advice & FAQs

Is Dell a good monitor brand?

Dell produces a range of top-class monitors from gaming models to business-focused displays. As with most brands, there are a range of prices and specifications available to suit different needs and budgets. However, we find that with a balance of performance and cost, Dell is one of the top names in the monitor market. 

What is the best size for a computer monitor?

The ideal size for your monitor depends on what you plan to use it for, as well as the space you have. Most new monitors start from 22 or 24-inches, and for general use, this will be plenty. 

The resolution you go for will also affect the size you need. 4k and 8k monitors provide much greater detail even at smaller sizes, especially when viewed at close distances. Creative users may want to look at 27-inches and above to really get the best of their machine. Many gamers also like the immersive nature of curved screens, and for these, it's the bigger the better. 

Editor's Recommendations

Know what type of monitor you're after but still need more choice? Check out some of our dedicated monitor buying guides below. 

• Best gaming monitors 2022
• Best monitors for MacBook Pro 2022
• Best 4K monitors 2022

Dell is doing the students of Australia a big favour by slashing prices on some of its top laptops, including a well-specced Inspiron 2-in-1 that’s perfect for a back-to-school resupply. It’s a 15-inch Inspiron convertible with a powerful processor and plenty of system memory for it to help you or your child multitask without a hiccup. 

The best part? While most laptops on this current sale have up to 40% off, this particular model has a much more impressive 45% off! Right now you can grab the hybrid laptop/tablet for only AU$1,373.99. This is down from AU$2,498.99, meaning that’s a massive saving of AU$1,125 is right at your fingertips! 

The Inspiron 15 2-in-1 gives you the best of both worlds with its ability to be used as both a tablet and laptop, depending on your needs. Whatever those needs may be, the 11th Gen i5-1135G7 processor should be able to handle it. It’s a mid-tier CPU that pushes at the upper end of what can be achieved with only 4 cores. Basic computing tasks will be a breeze, and it can even be used for creativity on the go with the power to run video editing or design programs without breaking the bank. 

The 15.6-inch Full HD display means whatever you use the Inspiron for, you’ll see it big and beautifully. The touchscreen lets you get hands-on with your tasks and the screen has Active Pen support, but you will need to purchase a Dell Active Pen separately. Luckily, they’re also on sale right now with 28% off. 

Shipping with 512GB of storage, that’s usually plenty for most users, but if you think that’s not room for everything, a look at T3’s best external hard drives shows they have never been cheaper, allowing for an easy solution to any storage issues you or your child may face. Additionally, it ships with Windows 11 Home, so you’re ready to roll with the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system. In fact, you’ll also get a 30-day free trial of Microsoft Office and McAfee Live Safe security software, but you’ll need to purchase licences for both if you wish to continue using them after the month-long trial. 

•  Best Dell laptops 2022: top-rated Dell portables for work and play 
•  Dell XPS 15 vs Dell Inspiron 15 3000: Is the premium or budget 15-inch Dell laptop best for you? 
•  Best keyboard 2021: the best keyboards for surfing, typing and light gaming 

Ultimately, the Inspiron 15 2-in-1 is a solid workhorse. It will be able to cover all bases for anyone in need of a machine to help with study over the next few years. At this price, its dollar-for-dollar value is really what’s exciting about this deal. If it’s not quite scratching your itch, feel free to have a look at what else is on offer with Dell’s current sale. 

Any shortlist for the best USB-C monitor is likely to have the Dell P3221D somewhere on it: it's a decent size, it's competitively priced, and it offers a fantastic level of quality in terms of the picture it produces – it's another quality bit of computer hardware from Dell.

However, is it the right purchase for you? Here we'll outline everything you need to know about this particular monitor, including the different connection types it accepts, the dimensions of the device, the features the screen supports, and plenty more besides.

You've certainly got a lot of different models to pick from if you're shopping for a monitor upgrade at the moment: you can get plenty of other ideas by checking out our curated lists of the best 4K monitors, the best ultrawide monitors, and the best gaming monitors.

Should I buy the Dell P3221D?

There are certainly no major reasons why you shouldn't buy the Dell PS3221D as your next USB-C monitor, though of course everybody has different priorities and different demands for a piece of hardware like this. You need to weigh up the specific features you need in a monitor and the sort of ways you're going to be using it – whether that's for gaming, for creative work, or for whatever else.

You should also weigh up the design and the dimensions of the monitor as well: you're likely to be spending a significant number of hours staring at this screen, so you want to make sure that it's one that you appreciate the aesthetics of. Not only that, you need to make sure that it's able to fit on your desk comfortably, without pushing off everything else that's currently on there.

If, after taking everything on this page into consideration, you think that the Dell PS3221D is the monitor for you, then we'd say go for it. It's a quality bit of kit and it's not going to let you down in terms of the display quality it offers or how long it lasts. Choosing something with the Dell brand attached means you can be sure that it's well constructed and will be compatible with a broad range of other devices. Make sure you check our Dell discount codes to save on your order.

What are the specs of the Dell P3221D?

When it comes to monitors, no spec matters as much as the actual size of the display, which in this case is 31.5 inches – that's fairly large as far as monitors go. The aspect ratio is a standard 16:9 widescreen one, so this screen is going to be good for movies as well as work, and the resolution is 2560 x 1440 pixels. In other words, you should be able to fit plenty of information on this panel.

Other key specs that you're going to want to know about are a contrast ratio of 1000:1, a grey-to-grey response time of 5 ms in fast mode, and a maximum brightness of 350 nits. There's also a standard refresh rate of 60Hz here. While you will find gaming monitors with faster response times and refresh rates, the Dell P3221D will still be able to cope with gaming perfectly well – it's just more of an all-rounder.

When it comes to ports, there's HDMI, DisplayPort and USB-C to choose from, as well as three USB-A sockets so you can connect (and charge up) other peripherals. In the box you get a DisplayPort cable, a USB-C cable, and a USB-C to USB-A cable (as well as a power cable of course), but you're going to have to bring along your own HDMI cable if that's a connection you're going to be using.

What are the best features of the Dell P3221D?

If the design of a monitor can be counted as one of its features then we'd say this is absolutely one area where the Dell P3221D stands out. The monitor manages to look both stylish and professional, with an integrated cable management system, an easy-to-use on-screen display, and think bezels around the front – the bottom chin is slightly thicker but not by much.

We should also mention that the screen can tilt, swivel and rotate to an impressive degree, so you can actually use this screen in portrait mode as well as landscape mode if you need to (it's handy for programming and for reading long documents, for example). The Dell P3221D couldn't be much easier to set up either, and the wide, silver stand gives it a firm foundation on whatever surface you want to place it on.

Dell promises an energy efficient and flicker-free monitor experience with this model, and the viewing angles of 178 degrees both horizontally and vertically mean that you've got lots of flexibility when it comes to placing this screen. With impressive support for a total of 1.07 billion colours as well, and 99 percent of the sRGB colour gamut, it's a monitor that's well suited to all types of creative and office work.

What else do I need to know about the Dell P3221D?

If you're measuring out space on your desk for the Dell P3221D then the dimensions (with the stand) are 713 mm x 469 mm x 230 mm or 28.1 inches x 18.5 inches x 9.1 inches. Dell only lists the weight of the monitor without the stand, which comes in at 6.4 kilograms or 14.1 pounds – that's fairly standard for a monitor with these dimensions, but bear in mind that it's not that easy to lug around.

You have the option of downloading the Dell Display Manager for Windows, which helps you in getting your open programs arranged on screen. You can very easily lay out three or four different applications so they're all visible, for example, and the utility can remember and restore custom layouts as well if you need it to. There are other software packages that do similar tricks, but it's a bonus to have one made by Dell as well.

Buy direct from Dell in the UK and the monitor comes with a three-year warranty for some extra peace of mind. It's also a device that's compatible with several other Dell accessories if you want to kit out your setup even further – notably the Dell MSA20 monitor arm and the Dell SB521A Slim Soundbar (the Dell P3221D doesn't come with speakers of its own, so you'll have to organise these separately if you need them).

What are the alternatives to the Dell P3221D?

When it comes to the best alternatives to the Dell P3221D, it really depends on what kind of monitor you're in the market for. If USB-C connectivity is of paramount importance, for example, then you might want to consider the pros and cons of the 32-inch LG 32UN88A-W pictured above – it's a gem as far as productivity and creative work goes, and it comes with an unusual desk clamp instead of a stand.

If you need something that's a little bit more suited to serious gaming than the Dell PS3221D, check out our guide to the best gaming monitors on the market. Something like the MSI Oculux NXG253R offers super-fast refresh rates, plenty of pixels and a versatile stand, all for a very reasonable price. The screen measures 24.5 inches from corner to corner, so it's smaller than the Dell model we've looked at here.

For a screen that really stretches across your desk, take a peek at our list of the best ultrawide monitors as well. The Philips 346B1C is slightly bigger than the Dell P3221D at 34 inches, and yet it still comes in at an affordable price point. With an aspect ratio of 21:9, you can fit even more applications side by side if you need to, or stretch out games and movies as far as they'll go for a more immersive experience.

• Here are the best monitors for the MacBook Pro

There's no doubt that the last two years have changed the way we work. Working from home has gone from being a luxury to the norm and video conferencing is just a part of life. 

Dell hasn't let this go unnoticed and at a press event in New York last week revealed some of its concepts designed to make home and hybrid working easier. These aren't finished products, merely solutions to problems but hopefully, some of this technology will eventually make its way on to final products in the future. 

The one that really impressed me is Dell's Concept Pari. This is a web camera concept that initially sits above the monitor like a mini version of Dell's UltraSharp Webcam. The device wirelessly connects to the computer and so can be removed from the dock and placed on a stand for top-down product demonstrations or held. The really clever part though is that is can also be placed anywhere on the monitor screen to give a more natural eye line when video calling. 

Unfortunately, this requires a special monitor to allow the camera to be placed on the screen at this time but the concept is really impressive. We've all got used to the fact that you don't get proper eye contact in video calls due to people looking down at their screens rather than directly at the camera. This solves that problem and makes the call feel much more natural. 

Concept Flow is a system designed for hybrid working, allowing you to quickly connect your laptop to your static monitor, keyboard and mouse. It uses wireless charging so that when the laptop is placed on a certain point on the desk it automatically starts to charge and connects to your accessories without the need for wires. 

There's also proximity sensors that turn on and off the monitor when you arrive and when you leave the desk. It's definitely a sleeker alternative to having to connect and disconnect a load of wires each time. 

The final concept of the three is Stanza. This is a form of tablet but with a more natural notepad feel, with a natural writing experience when combined with a pen. You can also use the pen to take audio notes which are then converted to text on the screen. Content can be dragged and dropped between the Stanza tablet and a nearby PC and it can even be used as a second screen when working away from home. 

It's an interesting look at how Dell is solving problems and is certainly a hint at the direction it is taking some of its products. Dell also revealed a concept for a sustainable PC design that allowed parts to be easily replaced and broken down for better recycling. I can't wait to see what it has in store in 2022. 

The Dell Inspiron range has been a cornerstone of the affordable laptop market for some time being popular with students and those on a budget. It's why the standard Inspiron 14 features as one of T3's best laptops for students. 

Hybrid laptops, or 2-in-1 machines span a wide range of models, from basic Chromebooks through to ultrabooks. They provide not only a regular laptop experience but also, by flipping the screen back all the way, a tablet format with the keyboard hidden. The hinge also allows you to set it into a tent-like position or (with the keyboard flat against the desk) a freestanding monitor. 

This adaptability makes them popular options for the home and for office. This combination of a 360-degree hinge and a touchscreen display means that these models cost a little more than their regular laptop version though. 

DELL INSPIRON 14 2-IN-1 7415 REVIEW: PRICING AND AVAILABILITY

The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7415 is available now, starting at £679/$799.99. My review model, with the Ryzen 7 5700U processor, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD is priced at £898/$999.99. The machine is also now available with the brand new Intel Core 11th gen processors from as little as £763/$649. This unit came with Windows 10 Home edition, but Dell will be offering a free upgrade to Windows 11 when it is available later this year. 

Shop our Dell discount codes to bag a saving on your order. 

DELL INSPIRON 14 2-IN-1 7415 REVIEW: SCREEN AND DESIGN

The screen of the Inspiron 14 is a little disappointing. It has decent color and videos look fine on the 14-inch Full HD touch display with thin edge bezels, but it lacks brightness. We measured it at a maximum brightness of 200 Cd/M2, which is the base level we would consider acceptable. Working outside on a sunny day it was just visible in shadow, but you couldn’t make much out in direct sunlight. That’s disappointing, especially for a 2-in-1 system that is designed to be carried around and used like a tablet. 

Above the screen is a small webcam with a sliding shutter. Slide the small switch over, and a physical piece of plastic slides over the webcam. That’s all contained inside the screen bezel so it isn’t going to break off. That’s a nice touch for educational users or those who just want to keep things private. 

No pen is included, but the touch screen is compatible with the Dell Active Pen PN350M. This attaches to the top lip of the lid with magnets, so you aren’t likely to lose it.

The case feels well constructed, and the hinge that allows the screen to rotate into tablet mode feels pretty tough – it should stand up to knocks and bumps without issue. The keyboard isn’t great, though, with a flat, mushy feel and a bit more give than I like. If you are a keyboard basher like me, the whole keyboard flexes slightly when you are struck by inspiration and start hammering away on it. I don’t expect laptop keyboards to feel as robust as the mechanical keyboard I use as a daily driver, but the more expensive cousins of the Inspiron 14 have a better, more robust feel. They don’t feel like they are going to buckle when the muse is with me and I am bashing away in a poetic frenzy. 

One nice touch is the inclusion of a combination standby button and fingerprint reader in the top right of the keyboard, which is becoming standard fare on mid range laptops. For those who have inquisitive children or co-workers, that’s a definite plus as a simple way to control who can log on. Just touch the button to put the device in standby mode when you walk away to make a cup of tea, then touch the button to turn it on and log on when you return. 

The touchpad is large and responsive, with a nice mechanical click when you press down. It supports up to 10 touches, so you get all of the standard multi-touch features, like two-finger scroll, three finger touch and flick up to see all running programs, etc. It did pick up the odd wrist touch, though, mistaking that for a finger click when I rested my palm on the edge of the touchpad.  

DELL INSPIRON 14 2-IN-1 7415 REVIEW: PERFORMANCE

My review model of the Inspiron 14 was built around a Ryzen 7 5700U, the faster of the two options on offer. This CPU includes 8 cores that run at 1.8Ghz, although some of them can crank that up to 4.3GHz when required. Twinned with 16GB of RAM, I found that this combination was capable of some decent work, although it lags behind its faster cousins. 

I tested the laptop using the PC Mark 10 benchmark, which simulates a number of common office tasks like video conferencing, spreadsheet number crunching, etc. It achieved a score of 5323, which is somewhat slower than laptops like the Dell XPS 15 (with a score of 6030) but is a touch faster than the cheaper Asus Aspire 5, which managed 4007. I certainly found the Inspiron 15 to be adequate for general use: it cranked through spreadsheets and some light photo editing without problems. It started to choke when I applied more complex filters in Photoshop, though, and editing HD video in Premiere was a stop-start business as the system struggled to create previews. 

The same is true of gaming: the Inspiron 14 managed a rather lackluster score of 1182 in the Time Spy test of 3D Mark. Most 3D shooter games weren’t really playable, with frame rates in Doom Eternal between 10 and 25 frames per second (fps) at the Full HD resolution. It managed a more playable 50 to 60 fps  if you dropped the resolution down to something like 640 by 480, but we aren’t in the 1990s anymore, and that doesn’t really cut it these days. 

DELL INSPIRON 14 2-IN-1 7415 REVIEW: BATTERY LIFE

The Inspiron 14 has decent battery life, lasting just over 11 and half hours in my tests with the PC Mark 10 Video benchmark. It is worth remembering, though, that the computer is just playing back video in this test. Start playing games or doing any serious work and that’s going to be significantly less. It will still be more than adequate for most uses, though, and should get you through a day of work or college note-taking.

DELL INSPIRON 14 2-IN-1 7415 REVIEW: VERDICT

There is a lot of competition for the Inspiron 14 – £900/$1000 gets you a lot of computer these days. Overall though, the Inspiron 14 is a decent pick for this budget, with acceptable performance and build quality. It’s no gaming machine, though, and the compromises that keep the price down are evident in the flimsy keyboard and the screen that just can’t manage the brightness levels that make games and videos pop off the screen. 

DELL INSPIRON 14 2-IN-1 7415 REVIEW: ALSO CONSIDER 

The Acer Aspire 5 shares many of the same features as the Inspiron 15, but costs a lot less. Starting at $500, It has a Full HD screen and decent battery life, but the CPU is a quad core model and only comes with 8GB of RAM, while the Inspiron has a faster eight-core CPU and double the memory. 

The Dell XPS 13 is a definite step up from the Inspiron 14, but that does up the cost. The XPS includes a 4K OLED screen option that puts the Inspiron 14 to shame, but it costs much more. The whole package is more refined and robust, though, with a superior keyboard, magnesium alloy case and better overall build quality. Is it worth nearly double the price? That’s up to you, but we would recommend that you consider it if you want to handle heavy workloads on the go or want to watch movies on the move on the gorgeous OLED screen. 

If you're on the look-out for one of the best portable monitors around, the Dell C1422H is likely to get on your radar sooner rather than later – it's from one of the most well-known brands in computing, it's reasonably priced, and it has a lot of the features you'll need.

What we're going to do here is help you decide whether the Dell C1422H portable monitor is the right choice for you – we'll fill you in on all the crucial information you need to know about this device, from how you get it connected to the screen size and specs resolution.

As with all of our buying guides, by the time you've finished reading you should have a much better idea of what you're going to get (and not get) for your money. If you need more ideas, check out our best 4K monitors guide and our best ultrawide monitors guide.

Should I buy the Dell C1422H portable monitor?

Portable monitors are ideal if you're working on the move and want all the advantages of a second screen wherever you go. These compact displays can slip in your bag alongside a laptop, often don't need a separate power supply, and give you roughly double the amount of screen real estate than you get from using your laptop on its own. On top of that, they're more affordable than you might think, especially when you use one of our Dell discount codes. 

Of course you don't have to use them away from the home or the office, even though they're labelled as portable monitors – they're equally useful when kept in one place. You can extend your desktop or laptop computer screen without taking up a huge amount of room on your desk or needing an extra power plug. It's much easier to move around one of these displays than it is a full-sized monitor.

Invest in a portable monitor like the Dell C1422H and you get all the usual benefits of a second screen: you can keep your eye on a video while you're writing up a report, or have social media feeds on one display and a video editor on another, or compare two documents side by side, and so much more. These portable monitors tend to be on the smaller side, so they're best used for something that doesn't take up a huge amount of screen space (so a Twitter feed rather than an Excel spreadsheet).

What are the specs of the Dell C1422H portable monitor?

When it comes to the important specs of the Dell C1422H, you are first going to want to know that this IPS LCD display is 14 inches from corner to corner, and runs at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The refresh rate is a standard 60 Hz, and there's a maximum brightness level of 300 nits. The contrast ratio is listed as 700:1, while there's a response time of 6 ms.

If you're wondering how well this is going to fit on your desk or in your bag, the overall dimensions of the portable monitor are 32.237 cm x 20.269 cm x 1.43 cm (that's 12.69 inches x 7.98 inches x 0.56 inches). The weight of the unit is 590 grams or 1.3 pounds. As portable monitors go, it's actually one of the more compact and lighter models, with a lot of other displays going up to 15.6 inches in size.

There aren't really too many other specs to talk about when it comes to the Dell C1422H, though you should know that it features two USB-C sockets for power and video input, and you get one USB-C to USB-C cable included in the box, as well as a protective sleeve to keep the screen safe from harm in transit.

What are the best features of the Dell C1422H portable monitor?

Just about every aspect of the Dell C1422H portable monitor appeals, so it's not easy to pick out just one or two features that are the best ones. We could start with the design, which – typically for Dell – is stylish in an understated, minimal kind of way. The bezels are nice and thin, except for the one at the bottom which has the Dell logo on it.

The design of the Dell C1422H is clever as well as aesthetically appealing: it comes with its own integrated stand that folds around behind the display itself, meaning it stays stable in use. You get a decent degree of tilt, and with a USB-C socket on each side of the device, you can connect a computer from the left or the right – whatever works best. It's not the flashiest model out there, but it works.

This is the first portable monitor that Dell has released, and you can tell that a lot of care and attention has gone into it. Its bright, crisp screen makes it the perfect companion for a Dell XPS laptop, though you can connect it up to any Windows laptop (or desktop) you like. It's slim, it's versatile, it's well built, and we don't think anyone who decides to pick one up is going to be disappointed.

What else do I need to know about the Dell C1422H portable monitor?

We should mention that the Dell C1422H is powered by USB-C, so you can run it directly from your laptop with no separate power supply required. There's power pass through functionality as well – so you can plug a power adapter into the Dell C1422H and then connect another cable to your laptop to charge the laptop up while you're working.

The buttons on the side of the device control the power, the brightness of the display, and a feature called ComfortView: this reduces the blue light emitted by the screen, so there's less strain on your eyes late at night. It's perhaps not a feature that's going to get a huge amount of attention, but it is a nice extra to have, and it's part of what's an excellent all-round portable monitor package.

You also need to be aware of what the Dell C1422H doesn't have. It doesn't have a HDMI port or integrated speakers, features which you'll find on other portable monitors. It's important to make sure that this particular device has all the features you're going to need before you go ahead and decide to purchase it.

What are the alternatives to the Dell C1422H portable monitor?

As our best portable monitor list shows, there are more of these types of devices out there than you might realise. These various models give you plenty of choice in terms of size, design, connectivity and other features, so take your time before confirming your decision: weigh up all the different factors involved, including the price.

We don't have room for a comprehensive portable monitor round-up here, but we will mention the impressive Asus ZenScreen MB16AH (above). It's a larger model, 15.6 inches, and it comes with both USB-C and micro HDMI ports so you get more choice in terms of connections. You can use the screen in either portrait or landscape mode, and there's a built-in blue light management mode as well.

Another option to consider is the MSI Optix MAG161V, especially if you're looking for a portable screen that can cope with gaming. At 14 inches it's the same size as the Dell C4122H, and though it weighs a bit more, it does offer a HDMI port as well as two USB-C ports. It's thin and stylishly designed, and it comes with its own set of stereo speakers as well, which is a bonus.

• Pick up one of the best 4K monitors

Alienware's new Aurora gaming desktop was unveiled today, giving us a good glimpse into what the newly redesigned Legend 2.0 is all about. The updated design aims to tackle the most important part of keeping your gaming PC running at its optimal level – airflow. After seeing the changes to Alienware's flagship gaming desktop, I like what I see and here's why.

Over the past 25 years, Alienware has put out some impressively powerful gaming machines. Some good, others not so much. But seeing the Aurora gaming desktop evolve into what it is today, it's apparent the company is listening to its customers.

The recently launched Alienware X-Series gaming laptops are thinner than ever and run even cooler thanks to a redesigned heat management system. It looks like the new Aurora gaming desktop is following suit with a serious overhaul to airflow management thanks to a slick new design to the chassis itself.

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Alienware's new Aurora redesign boasts quite a lot of benefits, too. Here's just a quick list of what Alienware claims the new Aurora Legend 2.0 design offers:

• New component layout optimizes acoustics and makes upgrading even easier
• Room for up to four 120mm fans
• 1.5x the internal volume compared to the R12 and R10
• Up to 16% quieter during idle with liquid cooling options
• Up to 3% lower CPU temps compared to current models
• Up to a 5% increase in GPU performance compared to predecessors

The new open air layout is a much needed upgrade to the chassis itself, increasing airflow by up to 50%. That alone should make Alienware's new Aurora gaming desktop a top competitor for best desktop gaming PC, as those who prefer to use fans over thermal will see a decent increase in performance.

Alongside the improved airflow situation, the new Aurora also features an improved thermal cooling option. Housing up to four 120mm system fans and liquid cooling options, those who prefer thermal options will be just as impressed. Thanks to the open layout, the Aurora's new chassis provides improved acoustics to quiet down component noise.

Modern gaming desktops in general are producing less heat and eating less voltage thanks to improved components. But while enhanced cooling systems on GPUs and CPUs help, this new open air design should do wonders for Alienware's flagship desktop. Previous Alienware Aurora desktops handled cooling well in their own right, but this new Legend 2.0 design sounds like it'll take air cooled systems to the next level.

As a bonus, the new Aurora chassis will also feature an optional transparent left-side panel, letting owners use AlienFX customizable lighting to set their own style with eight unique lighting zones to personalize.

Pricing for the new Alienware Aurora gaming desktops are still yet to be announced, but it would be wise to expect to see prices slightly higher than current models.

If you’re looking for the best Dell laptops that 2026 has to offer, you’re in the right place. Dell is, of course, one of the most respected brands in the computing industry and has years of experience creating Windows machines for all kinds of budgets and purposes.

There are so many options now, whether you’re looking for something for everyday use, for gaming and streaming, or perhaps you’re after a hybrid of laptop and tablet? Whatever you need, there’s a Dell laptop for it! We love that Dell offers some of the best laptops on the market, we're talking big and small, as well as some of the best gaming laptops and best student laptops, so all your needs are covered.

We've kept our leash short for this list, bringing you just the very best options and no filler – including some of the most recent Dell launches (meaning after it ditched brand names like XPS and Inspiron to go cleaner).

T3's Top Picks

The best Dell laptops we recommend 

Best Dell laptop overall

The Dell XPS 13 series has consistently wowed us here at T3, and while the '9315' version of that laptop is super, it's the newer, longer-lasting and all-around better XPS Plus that now takes our top spot in this best-of list.

As with any XPS, the Plus is powerful, supremely well-built, and compact, so just about everything you could possibly want in your search for the best Dell laptop around at the moment.

With great Intel processors installed and up to 32GB of RAM if you spec it, this is a portable computer that's going to be able to handle everything that you want to throw at it. From late-night Netflix to early-morning report writing, you'll find the Dell XPS 13 Plus a highly capable and competent laptop.

It's that 13.4-inch display with the super-thin bezels that really makes this laptop stand out though: you can go from Full HD through to 3.5K or greater-than-4K options, the choice is yours (as is the expense!). Whichever you choose for your needs, though, you won't be disappointed by this stellar laptop. It's the best Dell for most people.

Best premium Dell laptop

Dell completely ripped up its self-imposed rulebook in 2025 when it announced that almost all of its established laptop subbrands were effectively dead moving forward, including XPS. Now, they have simpler names that might take a little bit of time to learn.

The first of these that we got our hands on was the Dell 14 Premium, and it continues the XPS legacy nicely, not least with a super 3.2K OLED display that makes almost anything look amazing. You can kit this laptop out with high-end components to ensure that it can power through extremely demanding tasks without breaking a sweat, meanwhile.

All of these options can drive the cost up pretty aggressively, of course, but that comes with the territory. As you can read in our full review of the Dell 14 Premium, this is a super capable high-end laptop to compete with the best MacBooks.

Best budget Dell laptop

Besides the premium, flagship laptops that Dell puts out, there are plenty of value-for-money models as well – the selection on Dell's website is so huge that you're bound to find something that fits your financial situation. The Inspiron line is a good place to start looking, and the Dell Inspiron 15 is particularly tempting.

The main highlight is an expansive 15.6-inch screen – large screens aren't always a given at lower price points, but the display attached to this particular Dell laptop gives your video streaming apps and your web browsers and anything else you want to run plenty of space to move around in.

You get some very decent specs to go alongside that screen, with SSD hard drives and AMD or Intel chipsets on offer to keep things moving along nicely. Shopping for the best Dell laptop at this end of the market means you'll have to forget about hardcore gaming or video editing, but for a good-looking computer that will take care of the everyday basics, this is ideal.

How to choose

Choosing the best Dell laptop works the same way as it does for any other laptop: decide where your own particular sweet spot is in terms of price and power, and make your choice accordingly. Paying more will usually get you better performance and more longevity of course.

There's a balance to be struck between power vs portability that's worth considering – not only are more powerful laptops more expensive, they're more difficult to lug around, and if you want the top-tier laptop components, you'll also need a bigger laptop fit them all into.

The Dell badge gives you a certain guarantee in terms of quality, so whichever laptop you opt for it's going to serve you well – you just need to decide the sort of specs you need, the price you can afford, and the amount of effort you want to put into carrying it around.

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How we test

Testing Dell laptops is just like testing any other brand of laptops, for which T3 has a multiple stage testing process.

Firstly we evaluate the system from a design point of view. We're looking for how well-built it is, how big the bezels on its screen are, what sort of keyboard and trackpad it comes with, how many ports it has and more. If the case feels cheap and plastic we'll find out, as too if its keyboard is spongy and not good for typing.

Once the system is booted up we then specifically test the Dell laptop's screen. We're finding out its core specs, such as resolution and refresh rate, but also how it performs in terms of colour accuracy, viewing angles, response rate and brightness and contrast. If a laptop has a washed out, not very bright screen, we will find out.

From this point we test the system's core functionality and hardware in a mixture of benchmarks and real world usage tests. If the system is fast, intuitive and easy to use, with applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop running smoothly then we'll tell you. As too, if it has gaming credentials, what sort of score it gets in 3DMark, as well as how it runs modern AAA games like Cyberpunk 2077.

Penultimately, we test the system's battery life. We lean towards real-world battery testing here at T3 as we feel it gives the most accurate results, so we use a laptop to undertake our normal computing routine for a few days on end and see how far the battery stretches. If a system's battery has us running to a wall socket after only 6 hours we will let you know.

Finally, we sum up the whole system and compare it to other systems on the market that offer the same sort of performance or cost the same sort of money. We then bestow a star score on the Dell laptop (out of 5, with 5 being the best) and if it scores well we then consider it for our best Dell laptops buying guide.

Reviewer panel

Dell has released its first-ever portable screen. While the firm is known for its desktop monitors, PCs and laptops, this is the only separate portable screen to be released. The aim is to provide laptop users with an easy second screen that will still fit in their bag.

Portable screens are nothing new – we’ve seen everything from the Apple iPad used on Sidecar to cheap unknown brand versions with impressive-sounding specs. However, it seems the practice of using multiple displays is growing.

Once considered an opulence or the work of show-off traders, more users are coming around to the idea of dual screens. This is partly because it’s now easier than ever to link up a screen to your laptop, but also because in the world of email, Slack, Twitter and of course, work, they’re really useful.

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The Dell C1422H is a 14-inch FHD 60Hz display, weighing in at just 1.3lbs (590g) and under a quarter-inch (4.95mm) thick. Thanks to the USB-C connection, it can be powered from the laptop, or daisy chained to the power supply to use a single charger for both devices. It has a solid foot stand to keep it standing in place next to your laptop screen, which angles between 10 and 90 degrees and then folds flat for storage.

The Dell C1422H portable monitor is available from Aug 31 worldwide. Prices start from $349 (£255/AU$488).

Dell also launched a pair of video conferencing monitors and two 27-inch USB-C monitors. The Dell S2722DZ and S2422HZ both include a 5MP pop-up webcam in the top of the display, complete with noise cancelling microphones and dual speakers. When not in use the camera is hidden within the body and only pops up when needed. The 24-inch version features a FHD (1920x1080) resolution while the 27-inch is a QHD (2560x1440) display.

The 27-inch S2722QC and S2722DC are designed to easily connect to – and be powered by – a laptop, thanks to their USB-C port power delivery. The QC model has 4K UHD (3840x2160) while the DC has a QHD (2560x1440) resolution. They also feature USB 3.2 upstream and downstream ports, two HDMI 2.0 ports (HDMI 1.4 on the DC).

Prices for the Video Conferencing Monitors start from $439.99 for the 24-inch and $599.99 for the 27-inch and will be available from September 7 in North America (October 12 elsewhere). The 27-inch USB-C models start from $499.99 for the QHD and $619.99 for the 4K model. These will be available from today, worldwide.

Dell’s new X-series laptops are the thinnest GeForce RTX gaming laptops on the market. The Alienware X15 and Alienware X17 models, available from today, feature an evolved version of the signature Alienware Legend design, known as Legend 2.0. This has been made possible thanks to new cooling technologies and the use of a gallium-silicone liquid metal compound.

While this all sounds like science-fiction technology, gallium is very much a real thing (it’s on the periodic table and everything) and this compound can deliver a 25% improvement in thermal resistance. Additionally, a new quad fan design blows air through the system more efficiently and positively pressurizes the box, forcing the hot air out. The Smart Fan control also allows each fan to operate independently.

The new design is similar to that of the new Alienware m15 R6, featuring a dark core to reduce distractions when gaming. The new keyboard design features RGB lights per key by default and has removed the drop t keys but maintained full-size arrow keys. The X17 model also features a Cherry mechanical keyboard option.

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Alienware X15

Touted as the most powerful sub 16mm 15-inch laptop, the Alienware X15 is 22% thinner than the Alienware m15 R4. It features the latest 11th generation i7 and i9 Intel Core H-series processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs (up to 3080) with a maximum graphics power of 110W. The displays are available in full HD with 160Hz or 360Hz refresh rate or QHD (2560x1440) with 240Hz.

The X15 comes with a choice of 16GB and 32GB RAM as well as storage options from 256GB to 2TB. It also features Killer Wi-fi 6E connectivity and a new small form factor power adapter.

The Alienware X15 is available now with limited configuration options. The full range of options will be available from June 15 with prices starting from $1,999.99 (approx. £1,411/AU$2,577).

Alienware X17

This is the thinnest 17-inch laptop that Alienware has ever produced and also one of the most powerful, thanks to the clever thermal and fan technology. Like the X15 it features 11th generation i7 and i9 Intel Core H-series processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs (up to 3080) but with a 130W maximum graphics power.

The display options include full HD (1920x1080) with either 165Hz or 360Hz refresh rates, or a UHD (2560x1440) model with 120Hz. On the X17 RAM options go up to 64GB and storage is up to 4TB.

The Alienware X17 is available now with limited configuration options. The full range of options will be available from June 15 with prices starting from $2,099.99 (approx. £1,481/AU$2,703).

Dell has delivered some serious upgrades to its larger XPS models today, including the very latest 11th gen Intel chips, 4K touch displays and OLED options. After the Dell XPS 13 had a makeover earlier in the year, it’s now the turn of the 15 and 17-inch models to shine.

Previous versions have ranked among the best laptops on the planet and with these updates I expect them to continue that trend.

Both the Dell XPS 15 and XPS 17 feature the 11th gen Tiger Lake-H Intel processors up to i9 versions (11900H on the XPS 15 and 11980HK on the XPS 17) and graphics pushed up to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX3060 (RTX3050 in the XPS 15). 

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The Dell XPS 15 follows the XPS 13 by offering both a 4K UHD+ (3840x2400) and a 3.5k (3456x2160) OLED touchscreen display. While I still haven’t seen the XPS 13 screen in person, the deeper blacks should make the OLED an impressive display, so this larger option on the XPS 15 is likely to be jaw-dropping.

The Dell XPS 17 sticks with its impressive 4K UHD+ (3840x2400) touch display option on top of the standard FHD+ (1920x1200) display. Storage options have been upgraded to allow for up to 4TB (through 4 SSDs), and the four Thunderbolt ports are all Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C).

The XPS 15 starts from $1249.99 and the XPS 17 starts from $1449.99 in the US. Availability will be confirmed shortly.

Alienware laptops are known for their sheer gaming power, customization and sizable shells, but one of those things is about to change. The new Alienware X-Series are truly thin gaming laptops with some clever thermal management and look stunning in a silver finish.

To allow the new thinner design, the Alienware X17 uses a quad-fan design to increase the air flow both in and out of the device. These fans are a mixture of evacuative fans and Dell’s dual opposite outlet (DDO) fans, which pressurize the chamber to help move hot air away from the critical components.

In addition to the fans, the X-Series features a new thermal interface material, made of Gallium-Silicon matrix, which allows it to better dissipate the heat inside the laptop than in previous models.

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Full specs are still unknown but the X17 is expected to use 11th gen Intel Core processors and NVIDIA RTX 30-series graphics rather than AMD chips.

Dell also announced the Alienware m15 R6 and the latest version of the Dell G15. Both models will also feature the latest 11th gen Intel Core processors up to i9 and NVIDIA RTX 30-series graphics.

The Alienware m15 R6 features a choice of FHD 360Hz, QHD 240Hz and FHD 165Hz 15-inch displays. All models feature Wi-Fi 6 and ethernet courtesy of Killer networking and an HDMI 2.1 port for a 4k/120Hz external display.  

Other customizable options include up to 32GB DDR4 RAM, 4TB storage (dual-drive), a new smaller and lighter power adapter and an ultra-low profile mechanical keyboard, co-developed by Cherry.

The new G15 features a new thermal design, based on the Alienware technology – but not the same quad-fan design as the X17. As with the G15 Ryzen edition, it features the return of the Game Shift key to set the fans to maximum cooling during heavy gaming sessions. The 15.6-inch full HD display is also now available in a smoother 165Hz version.

The G15 will be available in the US from June 3, priced from $949.99. The Alienware m15 R6 will be priced from $1299.99. The Alienware X17 is expected later this summer, pricing is still to be confirmed.

The Dell Latitude 7320 detachable, announced today, is designed for business use but it may be the only company-issued machine you’d actually want to receive. This isn’t your average work laptop, it’s a detachable – a 2-in-1 laptop – so it works with or without its optional keyboard and it has a super-fast charging pen option, too.

Complete with all the top-level specs, the Latitude 7320 detachable features Intel’s 11th gen processors, up to the i7 vPro, with up to Intel Irish X graphics (for the i5 and i7 versions). The screen is a new larger 13-inch FHD+ (1920x1280) touch display with 500 nits of brightness and Dell’s ComfortView Plus technology for low blue light emission.

Touted as the ‘most powerful, secure, serviceable and most intelligent business detachable in the industry,’ the Latitude 7320 detachable has a shopping list of security features, including an optional fingerprint reader, express sign-in and an HD IR proximity sensor. There’s a 5MP 1080P front-facing camera for video calls and a rear 8MP 1080P camera too.

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For connectivity, there are two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a USB-C display port on the screen. It also has Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth while Mobile broadband, with an eSIM, is also an option. The screen has a kickstand, so it can support itself and the keyboard attaches magnetically. The keyboard also has a well for the stylus pen to sit, keeping it secure when closed against the screen. The stylus pen gives 90 minutes of use per charge and the beauty is that a full charge takes just 30 seconds. This is the fastest charging pen of its kind.

This Latitude squares off against the upgraded business edition of the Microsoft Surface Pro 7 (the 7+) that comes with 11th gen Intel processors up to the quad-core i7 G7. The Latitude 7320 detachable offers a larger screen but the starting price is also higher. We will have to wait and see how it performs.

The Latitude 7320 detachable is available now, priced from $1549 (£1114/AU$1985).

Dell’s spring releases are Ryzen to the occasion, with its first AMD Alienware machine in 14 years, two new G15 gaming laptops and four new gaming displays. The AMD Ryzen 5000 chips were released in November 2020 and offer up to 26% faster gaming performance than the previous versions.

The choice between Intel and AMD chips has been a contentious one for gamers but right now the Ryzen 5000 is the hottest chip on the market. With these on board, combined with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 GPU, the new Alienware M15 R5 and Dell G15 are seriously powerful gaming machines and could be the best dell laptops to date. In addition to the AMD version, a new Dell G15 featuring a 10th gen Intel chip is also available, giving users the choice.

Included in the release are four new gaming monitors, covering all sizes and shapes. The Dell 25 is a 25-inch display with a 240Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time, while the Dell 27 and Dell 32 are curved gaming monitors with QHD resolution, 165Hz refresh rate and 2ms response. The final screen, the Dell 34, is a wide format curved monitor with a WQHD 34-inch display.  

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Alienware M15 R5

Sporting a new Legend 2.0 industrial design, the Alienware M15 R5 gives a fresh new look the range. The dark core design darkens the interior of the laptop to minimize distractions and allow you to keep your head in the game. 

As with previous Alienware machines, the M15 R5 is very customizable. There’s a choice of displays with either an FHD 360Hz, QHD 240Hz or FHD 165Hz option, all with low blue-light technology. The 360hx and 240Hz options also have NVIDIA G-Sync and Advanced Optimus graphic-switching technology.

For the processor, the M15 R5 has a choice of two Ryzen 5000 8-core chips: the R7 5800H and the top of the range R9 5900HX. There’s also a choice on the GPU, between the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 8GB and the RTX 3070 8GB. Memory is in the form of 3200Mhz DDR4 and is user upgradeable, coming with up to 32GB. Storage is also a choice of single or dual drives with up to 4TB.

 The new ultra-low-profile mechanical keyboard has been developed with Cherry to provide a 1.8mm travel and a 15 million keystroke lifecycle. The M15 R5 also features Wi-Fi 6 and HDMI 2.1 for 4K/120Hz output on external displays.

The Alienware M15 R5 is available in the US from April 20, starting from $1793.98 / £1296 / AU$2343. UK and Australia availability to be confirmed.

Dell G15 Ryzen Edition

The new Dell G15 also sports a new look, with a smaller width than previous versions, thanks to the narrow bezel screen. It comes in four finishes using VOC waterborne paint, including Dark Shadow Grey, Specter Green with Speckles and Phantom Grey with Speckles. An Obsidian Black version is also coming soon.

Alienware-inspired cooling has been introduced to the G15 to better manage the airflow and it sees the return of the Game Shift key, to provide maximum cooling for heavy gaming sessions with a simple Fn+F9 press.

There is a choice of display, between 120Hz and 165Hz FHD versions. For the AMD version, there’s a choice of the 6-core Ryzen 5 5600H or 8-core Ryzen 7 5800H processors. The Intel edition offers either the 10th gen i5-10200H quad-core or the i7-10870H Hex core. Both come with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 6GB, while the Intel model also offers the choice of the GeForce GTX 1650 4GB. Memory is available in configurations of up to 32GB 2933MHz DDR4, with storage options of up to 2TB SSD.

The Dell G15 Ryzen will be available in the US from May 4, starting from $899.99 / £650 / AU$1175. The new Intel G15 will be available from April 13 in the US, also starting from $899.99 / £650 / AU$1175.

Dell gaming monitors

Despite being the smallest of the four, the Dell 25 gaming monitor is designed for some serious gaming. It features a 240Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time to keep up with fast-moving action. Meanwhile, its fast IPS technology ensures clarity and color consistency with 99% sRGB coverage. It has ultra-thin bezels on three sides and a downlight for ambient illumination. The price is still to be confirmed but it will be available in China from May 7 and the rest of the world from May 27.

The Dell 27 and Dell 32 are curved gaming monitors in 27-inch and 32-inch sizes respectively. They feature 165Hz refresh rates and 2ms response times. The final display is the Dell 34, a wide-view curved 34-inch gaming monitor with 144HZ refresh rate. All of these new monitors – including the Dell 25 – include variable refresh rates, making them suitable for console use, too. The Dell 27 and 32 will be available in the US on June 22, while the Dell 34 will be available on May 27. Prices are still to be confirmed.

In this Dell XPS 13 (2020) review, we'll tell you all about the most recent iteration of the XPS 13 that is scoring major points in our best laptops guide. 

As usual with Dell, this stunning laptop is available with a variety of configurations, so you can spec out the Dell XPS 13 to suit your needs and the amount you're willing to pay. Even at the low end of the options though, we're talking about a laptop with a premium build and a premium price.

If you own a 2019 XPS 13, there are no compelling reasons to upgrade: the new model is slightly smaller overall , with a slightly bigger screen and a slightly larger keyboard. While the CPUs are largely the same, the internal graphics get a small boost on the new editions.

If you're upgrading from something older, or dipping into laptop buying for the first time or after a break, then the 2020 XPS 13 becomes a much more compelling proposition. It scores highly in just about every category, as we'll explain in our thorough review. 

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Dell XPS 13 (2020) review: screen and design

There's no doubt about it, the Dell XPS 13 for 2020 looks great: the display bezels are thinner than ever, the keyboard is smart and stylish and surrounded by an appealing textured carbon fibre material, and the whole computer weighs just 1.27 kg (2.8 pounds). You can easily carry it around in one hand, and as you would expect it's very simple to slot this into a backpack or a briefcase. Your colour options are black with a silver backing on the lid or white with a 'frost' (white) lid.

Special mention to the screen which is stunning: bright, crisp, HDR-ready, all round fantastic. You can opt to go all the way up to a 4K (3,840 x 2,400 pixel) touchscreen model, as our review device had, or settle for a 1,920 x 1,200 pixel version, but either way we're big fans (though note that you'll need to use Windows' built-in scaling options on a 4K screen to stop the text being tiny). The laptop also uses the 16:10 aspect ratio, which we much prefer over 16:9 – it's not as good for movies, but you can fit more of your documents and webpages on screen at once.

The typing experience is of course very important for any laptop and again the Dell XPS 13 can't be faulted. The keys are nice and springy without feeling loose, everything is well placed and well proportioned, and we were typing for hours on this laptop without any discomfort at all. We've been impressed by the performance of the trackpad as well – offering just the right amount of responsiveness and even giving the MacBook trackpads close competition in terms of accuracy.

It's top marks for the design and the screen then, which will come as no surprise if you've been following the Dell XPS 13 line closely over the last few years. There's a webcam embedded in the top bezel above the display, and in terms of ports and connections you get a 3.5mm headphone jack, a microSD card reader, and two Thunderbolt 3 ports which also double-up as USB-C slots of course. That's not a huge amount of connectivity but it covers everything that you should need in terms of charging, outputting video to a second screen, and attaching headphones and peripherals.

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Dell XPS 13 (2020) review: performance and features

We won't take you through all the various configurations of the Dell XPS 13 for 2020, but our review laptop came with a 10th-gen Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage. It's an impressive selection of specs, but you can dial them down a little if you need something a bit more affordable for your next laptop purchase. We definitely didn't have any problems with web browsing, office work and image editing – it's going to be games and video editing where the XPS 13 struggles, though the Intel Iris Plus integrated graphics will certainly try and do its best. 

To be fair you're not going to expect top-end gaming performance if you buy a 13-inch laptop with integrated graphics, but we were impressed with how quickly the laptop did everything that was asked of it. The internal fans only occasionally (and quietly) kicked in during more heavy duty web browsing, which you can probably blame on the state of websites in 2020 rather than the XPS 13. As long as you aren't planning to edit 4K video or run Grand Theft Auto V on this, you should be fine – especially if you're going to go for the i7 and 16GB of RAM configuration.

Battery life wasn't brilliant in our testing, with 5-6 hours of standard use the norm. Our two-hour video streaming test knocked the battery level down from 100 percent to 68 percent, suggesting around 6-7 hours of non-stop movie watching. However, that was with the brightness on the 4K screen ramped right up – the lower-res display and a lower brightness setting should get you more time between charges (our friends at TechRadar reviewed the lower-res screen option and got more battery life). It's also worth noting that we reviewed this laptop during a sweltering heatwave here in the UK, which probably didn't help the thermals.

Thankfully, Dell keeps the pre-installed bloatware down to a minimum, so you're left with a clean version of Windows 10 and not much else. There is a useful CinemaColour utility, that can adjust the screen temperature based on what you're doing (watching movies, working at night), and you also get a Dell Mobile Connect tool that makes it slightly easier to integrate your Android or iOS phone with Windows.

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Dell XPS 13 (2020) review: price and verdict

You can check the widgets embedded on this page for the latest Dell XPS 13 (2020) prices, but at the time of writing even the cheapest configuration is going to set you back £1,399 (or $1,249) direct from Dell. That's a significant amount of money for a laptop, and if you want all the best components and features (including that 4K screen), then you're going to have to pay several hundreds of pounds (or dollars) more. It's worth checking our Dell discount codes to save on your purchase. 

There are plenty of cheaper Windows laptops around that can do everything the XPS 13 can do (or very close to it), but with the extra expenditure you're paying for the class and the build quality of this laptop, as well as that fantastic screen. If look and feel and display quality are important to you – remember you're likely to be spending a lot of time typing on this device – then we think the laptop is still very much value for money, even up at this premium end of the market.

Price aside, there are very few negatives when it comes to the Dell XPS 13 for 2020. Some extra ports would be handy, but then this is a very compact and light laptop, and trade-offs have to be made somewhere. Battery life isn't the best, but again there are ways to mitigate this (starting with buying a cheaper model with a lower-res screen): for most people, 5-6 hours away from a charging point should be enough, though the XPS 13 is in no way close to some of the best Windows laptops or Chromebooks in this department based on the testing we've done.

Overall though, it's hard not to be wowed by what Dell has managed to put together here: it's undoubtedly one of the best laptops of this size currently on the market, and if you're prepared to pay the price for this sort of quality then it'll last you for many years to come. It's difficult to see how Dell is going to improve on the XPS 13 the next time that it refreshes the range, but we'll be interested to find out.

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The Dell XPS 15 9500 is the 15-inch XPS laptop refresh for 2020, and because of its heritage and its predecessors it's immediately a best laptop contender: the XPS series has been a huge success for Dell, and the laptops from this sleek line are constantly impressing us.

If you need a bit more screen space than the Dell XPS 13 can offer you, then the Dell XPS 15 might well be the answer: the screen has been improved yet again, while as you would expect the internals have been refreshed to keep the laptop competitive in 2020 and 2021.

Whether you're after the best student laptops or the best laptops for work, the Dell XPS 15 9500 is versatile enough to be worthy of consideration by just about anybody – and it'll even do a bit of gaming as well, thanks to the discrete graphics supplied by Nvidia.

Dell XPS 15 9500 review: screen and design

The Dell XPS 15 9500 really is a gorgeous-looking laptop from every angle – the XPS line has been wowing users and winning awards for years now, and Dell very much knows what it's doing with the look and finish. This is a premium-level laptop in every area, from the soft and tactile typing experience to the carbon fibre finish around the nicely backlit keyboard. It's a computer that's stylish but subtle, professional and polished, and it feels really solid in use too.

Obviously with a 15.6-inch display this isn't going to be the most portable laptop in the world, and it's not the thinnest nor the lightest model at this size – but it's hard to quibble considering the craftsmanship on offer and the quality of the components packed inside. This particular model sticks to the traditional laptop form factor as well, with no option to fold the screen over into a tent or tablet-style configuration.

The screen is another standout feature of the Dell XPS 15 9500. With super-thin bezels all the way around (the top one hiding a titchy webcam), a resolution of 1920 x 1200 or 3840 x 2400 pixels, and 132 percent of the sRGB colour gamut covered, it shines: it's crisp, it's bright, and it makes use of the 16:10 aspect ratio that we much prefer for getting work done (it also looks fantastic when watching videos, after the working day is done). You can buy this laptop with or without a touchscreen, depending on what you need and how much money you want to spend.

Ports-wise you're well covered, with two Thunderbolt 3 ports, one USB-C port, an SD card reader and a 3.5 mm microphone/headphones combination jack. Everything is tastefully positioned and put together, including the stereo speakers either side of the keyboard (with another two underneath the chassis), the spacious trackpad, and the handy fingerprint sensor built into the power button. The lid has a silver finish with a reflective Dell logo, which adds another touch of class.

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Dell XPS 15 9500 review: performance and features

You can kit out the Dell XPS 15 9500 with a variety of internal specs, all the way up to a 10th-gen Intel Core i9-10885H processor, 64GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD drive at the time of writing on the Dell UK site. Our review model came with the 10th-gen Intel Core i7-10750H processor, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD drive, but whichever model you pick, this is a laptop that's able to get through some serious workloads. There are very few compromises in terms of power.

GPU grunt is provided by an optional Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti with 4GB of VRAM that you can have fitted: now that's not going to run the best games at the best settings – especially not at 4K – but it does mean that the best games are playable while you're on the go. For working with a little gaming on the side, it's ideal. In our testing the fans did occasionally kick in even for lightweight tasks like some web browsing, but they're not overbearing in terms of noise unless you're really pushing the laptop.

There's always a balance to be struck between performance and portability, and Dell has done well to get the components it has into a laptop that's so thin, light and quiet – gamers and serious professionals will want more, but they'll have to put up with chunkier and louder laptops in return. From working on images to sitting back and watching YouTube, we found the Dell XPS 15 9500 a delight to use with barely a hint of lag, and it's also worth mentioning the excellent speakers – they produce audio that's surprisingly crisp and rich, even at louder volumes.

In terms of battery life, the Dell XPS 15 9500 will last you a day away from the office and then some, provided your quite careful with settings like display brightness. Our two-hour video streaming test – during which we put the screen on maximum brightness, by the way – saw the battery dip from 100 percent to 71 percent, suggesting around 6-7 hours of constant playback time. If battery life is important to you, consider downgrading from the 4K display option (the screen that our review model came with), as a lower resolution screen won't suck up quite so much battery power quite so fast.

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Dell XPS 15 9500 review: price and verdict

The Dell XPS 15 9500 is competitively priced for what it is: a premium-level Windows 10 laptop with top-tier specs. Check the widgets on this page for the latest deals online, but if you really max out the configuration you can pay close to £3,000/$2,500 for this laptop; if you don't need all of the high-end specs and the 4K screen then you can knock that down by as much as a half. The Dell XPS 15 9500 can adapt to your budget.

We were really impressed with the 2020 XPS 15 during our time with it, but then we expected to be considering the previous models in the range. The display is a stunner, the laptop is really well built and a pleasure to use, and it coped with everything that we threw at it without breaking sweat. This will be in everyone's best laptop list right now and for some time to come as well (probably until the next version refresh).

Of course no laptop can be the best laptop for everyone, because we're all doing different tasks with our computers – some people will prefer to get by on something a lot cheaper than this, while dedicated gamers will be happy to pay more and get a graphics card that can do ray tracing and all the other cutting-edge tricks that are on offer nowadays. But for a lot of users, the Dell XPS 15 9500 really does hit a sweet spot.

Look and feel might not seem like big priorities when it comes to laptop buying – do you really need your laptop to look pretty? – but it really is the experience of using this latest XPS 15 that sets it apart from the rest. Whether you're watching movies, typing out essays, working on image or video editing jobs, or dabbling in a bit of gaming, it really is a joy to open up and interact with, and we're happy to recommend it. It even reaches, dare we say it, MacBook levels of polish.

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