Huzzah! It’s a momentous occasion! For the first time since the disastrous Windows RT days, Dell has rejoined the Windows on Arm party. The laptop manufacturer recently unveiled its first laptop with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 processor, and at just $499 it won’t break the bank.
Laptops with power-efficient Arm processors tend to have stellar battery life and lightweight, fanless builds. They’re designed for people who are always on-the-go. The new Dell Inspiron 14 takes much of the same design cues as other Snapdragon-powered laptops. It’s thin, fanless, and—based on the specs and price—likely a good budget laptop all around.
The Inspiron 14 comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage. That’s enough oomph for day-to-day tasks like checking e-mail, browsing the web, watching YouTube, and so on. The 14-inch display has a resolution of 1920×1080 and an aspect ratio of 16:9. The manufacturer even included a spiffy 1080p webcam, which is perfect for videoconferencing calls. The port selection is solid, too. You’re getting two USB Type-C ports, one USB Type-A, a microSD card reader, and a headphone jack.
As far as laptops go, it’s pretty basic, and Arm-based laptops work best with software from the Microsoft Store. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some folks are perfectly happy with a barebones machine. It’s designed for everyday use so if you consider yourself a power user, you should probably look elsewhere. This machine comes in just one configuration. It costs $499.99 and, according to Dell’s webpage, you can expect it to arrive by March 23rd.
Author: Ashley Biancuzzo, Associate Editor
Ashley is a professional writer and editor with a strong background in tech and pop culture. She has written for high traffic websites such as Polygon, Kotaku, StarWars.com, and Nerdist. In her off time, she enjoys playing video games, reading science fiction novels, and hanging out with her rescue greyhound.