Dell’s first Windows 11 ARM laptop is priced like a Chromebook

By Alan Truly Published March 15, 2023

Dell just launched a new Inspiron 14 laptop with a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, and it’s priced like a Chromebook, costing only $500. The advantage of using a Qualcomm chip is the long battery life, and Dell claims the Inspiron 14 can last for 16 hours on a single charge.

The budget laptop includes a respectable 8GB of memory and 256GB of SSD storage, which should be sufficient for productivity and browsing. A 14-inch antiglare screen has an LED backlight and offers 1080p resolution.

A woman using a Dell Inspiron 14 laptop. — Qualcomm

The 3.2-pound weight isn’t bad for a large laptop, and Dell didn’t skimp on ports, with two USB-C, one USB-A, a headset jack, and a Micro-SD card reader. Wireless connectivity is up to date, supporting Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, meaning all of your devices should connect easily.

Recommended Videos

The laptop comes with Windows 11 Home in S mode. That means you’ll be limited to apps available on the Microsoft Store. That isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, but it’s worth considering if you rely on older x86 apps you download from the internet.

The 14-inch laptop offers three configurations, but an AMD Ryzen 7 5825U bumps the price to $550, and a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1255U tops out at $650.

The Dell Inspiron 14 Windows 11 on ARM laptop. — Dell

While the ARM chip isn’t as fast as an Intel or AMD processor, it’s much more efficient. It does, however, support Windows Studio Effects to enhance video calls with background blur, automatic framing, and a trick that makes it appear like you are maintaining eye contact even when you’re looking at the screen instead of the webcam.

The Dell Inspiron 14 is available on Dell’s website, and ready to ship today.

Computing Writer

Alan Truly is a Writer at Digital Trends, covering computers, laptops, hardware, software, and accessories that stand out as…

Topics

Computing

Qualcomm is set to ratchet up chip prices in September, and your next gadget upgrade could bear the brunt

The price hike could touch every Snapdragon-powered device category.

The new Qualcomm Snadragon 8 Elite Gen 5

I want you to sit with this for a second. Qualcomm, the company whose Snapdragon chips sit inside your Android phone and tablet, your Windows laptop, your Meta smart glasses, your Galaxy Watch, and your wireless earbuds, reportedly sent a letter to every major customer telling them prices are going up by double digits.

The price hike will be in effect from September 1, 2026, a recent Bloomberg report claims. Essentially, all the companies placing their chip orders after that will pay a higher price.

Computing

Stop fighting with your roomie over outlets and get one of these multi-port chargers before you head back to school

One plug, zero drama, all your devices charged by morning.

Satechi ChargeView

Your room has one wall outlet, and you have multiple devices that need power by morning. Phone, laptop, tablet, earbuds, they're all vying for the same socket, and the bricks you own are single-port relics that hog it for just one gadget. You could throw a power strip at the problem, but then you're staring at a tangle of multiple bricks and cables that's enough to give you the sweats. A good multi-port charger cuts all that mess, and could be the only thing standing between you and a dead phone or laptop before your morning classes.

Back-to-school season is a smart time to buy one. You're already thinking about what'll go on your desk or in your bag, so it's the natural point to replace a pile of single-port bricks with one charger that does it all. I dug through the current crop of multi-port chargers so you don't have to, and here are five worth your money.

Computing

OpenAI’s rogue AI hack was just the beginning, Hugging Face warns

OpenAI’s rogue AI has come back to bite it

Hugging Face already knows what it is like to be attacked by an autonomous AI agent. If one of its co-founders is right, plenty of other companies are going to find out soon. Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of Hugging Face, has called the recent cyberattack carried out by OpenAI models a “wake-up call” for the technology industry.

Speaking to the BBC, Wolf warned that AI-driven intrusions could become one of the most common forms of cyberattack and said many companies have yet to realize how dramatically the threat has changed. This arrives after OpenAI disclosed that its models escaped a restricted cybersecurity evaluation environment and compromised Hugging Face while trying to obtain answers for the ExploitGym benchmark. So Wolf’s comments now give us a better idea of what the attack looked like from the other side.