Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7420 laptop review: For power users on a budget

[Redaktion]

The Inspiron 14 Plus packs a lot of power for a 14-inch laptop with its 12th gen Core-H CPU and GeForce RTX graphics. It's a good solution for users who want something more powerful than a standard Ultrabook yet cheaper than an Asus Zephyrus G14 or Razer Blade 14.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Inspiron-14-Plus-7420-laptop-review-For-power-users-on-a-budget.643267.0.html

[NikoB]

Normal PL2 for 12700H is 115W by Intel datasheet. 2 coolers+2 pipes and we have low performance with big weight 1.7kg for 14"..

And again - slow ram tuning in bios - slow throughput for DDR5 4800 and afwul mem latency is...133+ ns!

And again boring 60Hz screen with huge response time...although for 14" it's not important in principle, almost always 12"-14" is used as a system unit by connecting a normal full-fledged keyboard and monitor. But even here there is an ambush - it is too noisy at the slightest serious load, even in PL2 mode...

name laptop for $1450+ as a budget? Hmm..
taking into account the low autonomy and the heavy PSU of almost 0.5kg, the point of buying this garbage is completely lost for me.

taking into account the low autonomy and the heavy PSU of almost 0.5kg, the point of buying this garbage is completely lost for me. Wouldn't it be easier to buy the Legion 5 Pro instead trinkets? With a full keyboard, a luxurious 165Hz screen and tons of ports? Well, it's harder, so what? What difference does it make to carry 2.1 or 3 kg, in both cases the weight is already too big ...

[NikoB]

On Newegg Legion 5 Pro with 5800H+16Gb/1Tb SSD + GTX3070 price 1490$...what do you choose?

[LL]

1450 euro with a 3050 is now "On a budget"?! it is certainly not!

[RobertJasiek]

1450 euro with a 3050 is now "On a budget"?! it is certainly not!

These days, some manufacturers also launch some devices with fantasy MSRPs so that then they can pretend that €1000 or €2000 price drops resulted in "budget" prices. Furthermore, some retailers use fantasy prices and fake precision to the last cent with random changes every few hours. They will continue to do so as long as at least one idiot customer pays whatever the price is. They do not care for having abandoned their reputation and losing other endconsumers as customers because there is too much oligopol in the market so that we have to choose between bad and worse manufacturers and retailers. In other words, we endconsumers must be educated about true values of products at any time, like in a global flea market.

[NikoB]

The problem is, Robert, most buyers are illiterate and always will be. The task of civil activists in each area of human activity and social systems like me (I spent years of life for it work, but I see that most of the humanity, alas, does not change, but it only gets worse and worse and more resembles social animals, and not Homo sapiens with a capital letter) is to guide them on the right way to the best of their ability. But many simply do not want this, they do not want it on purpose, because understanding is the way of labor and effort, and most people try to avoid them as much as possible in their existence, which professional scammers have skillfully used for centuries and millennia, who have now grown to the level of mega-corporations in their art. As well as the powerful castes around the world has reached the maximum skill in managing the brainless herd.

And the hardware market is just a small part of this gigantic civilizational problem based on human stupidity, laziness and, therefore, illiteracy in judgment, which populist scammers and marketers use extremely effectively.

Surprisingly, in the era of the Internet accessible to the majority of the population of the planet, people have become even dumber and lazier in the search and analysis of information. I encounter this all the time, and I have long noticed that each new generation (the very ones who live without getting out in social networks) is getting dumber and illiterate in judgments. Paradox!

[daithi]

I see you mention the SSD included is PCIe3 speeds. Does the laptop/motherboard support an upgrade to PCIe4?

[NikoB]

I see you mention the SSD included is PCIe3 speeds. Does the laptop/motherboard support an upgrade to PCIe4?

Can you sensibly explain why you need a pci-e 4.0 x4 SSD in a model for which even pci-e 3.0 x2 is essentially redundant?

[nameRedacted]

The SSD does support PCI4. The ½TB SSD it came with was doing 5¼GB/s, but was running super hot. I swapped for a KC3000 and I'm getting 6½GB/s.
___

I bought this laptop to use it with an external Thunderbolt GPU. I chose it because it had a good single-core performance in my 800€ budget, and was available in variant without a dGPU.

I knew I was bringing a hell of tinkering onto myself and that I could build a tower for a similar price and get 15-20% more performance. – I opted for Hard Mode.

The laptop is indeed running quite hot, but the performance is satisfactory. I turned off Hyperthreading to squeeze more single core performance before thermal limits kick in.

Advantage it has for my use case, is nifty battery-degradation protection. – You can set up battery range (e.g. don't charge over 70%, and don't START charging over 50%). Good for me, who mostly uses it docked.

Aesthetics are really nice. Pale dark green is lovely. Chassis is quite sturdy but the keyboard is a bit wonky in the middle. – That's about right for the price.

---

With my eGPU – Radeon 6750XT via TH3P4G3 dock – I get 105FPS @3440x1440 in Assetto Corsa with CSP, FSR87% and otherwise Very High settings. Witcher 3 plays at 60fps with slight FSR. // i don't recommend it for gaming unless you're a masochist

What this laptop shines at, is video transcoding. In FFMPEG it *rips* through my HEVC encoding queue thanks to Intel Quicksync.

So, quirky. Can be used for anything, but with usually some faffle in one way or another. But feels great and looks great – especially when it's off. ^_^

[lmao]

Advantage it has for my use case, is nifty battery-degradation protection. – You can set up battery range (e.g. don't charge over 70%, and don't START charging over 50%). Good for me, who mostly uses it docked.

don't forget to run it 70 -> 10-15 -> 100 -> 1 hour on 100 -> 70 about once a month