
Think of a Dell laptop and you’ll probably picture a grey machine that’s been built for stability and reliability. It’s not going to be an exciting PC, but this is a brand that makes much of its business credentials, and when you’re likely to be supplying the portable PC fleets of large businesses, what you need is solid, dependable performance on a large scale.
This version of the old reliable Inspiron sees Dell embrace the nascent Qualcomm platform in the form of the Snapdragon X Plus processor, rather than the Elite model found in something like the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (you can find the Elite in Dell’s Inspiron and Latitude ranges, but we’re reviewing an X Plus here). Snapdragon has many benefits for a portable machine that’s likely to be used in business situations, such as extended (like, really extended) battery life and mostly silent operation, and Dell has capitalised on them. But is enough to make this one of the best laptops for office workers and writers?