Review – Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7420 i7-12700H

Overall Build Impressions
The Dell Inspiron 14 Plus is very sleek and lightweight 14” laptop with a 16:10 screen and an aluminum case. Compared to my Dell Latitude E5470, it’s about .75” narrower, basically the same depth, and a bit slimmer. The Amazon listing says the color is “Atlantic Blue”, but the actual color is “Dark Green”. Either way, the color is very subtle and more of a dark grey-blue-green. As for the design, there are quite a few vents on this laptop with a large vented section on the underside, two rear-facing vents, and a large vent on each side. Port selection is somewhat limited with only 1 USB Type A on each side, a micro-SD slot and 3.5mm headset jack on the right, a full-size HDMI and a single USB C/Thunderbolt 4 port on the left. There is a barrel power connect on the left as well, but the laptop ships with a 90W USB Type C power brick, so unless you have a power brick from another Dell, you are limited to the Thunderbolt 4 port for power.

Screen
The screen is a 14” 16:10 2240×1400 display in a matte variety, or as Dell calls it, ComfortView Plus. There is some bleed toward the upper edge when viewing a black screen with the brightness all the way up, but when viewing any content, the black level, contrast, and colors seem quite good. There is display scaling set to help with normal viewing as the screen is 188PPI and native without scaling makes everything a bit too small for me. Not all applications look the best with scaling applied, so you may run into some situations where text looks a bit fuzzy or menu/window sizing is a little off.

Screen Color

Performance/Benchmarks
3DMark Time Spy v1.2 2021 Overall, 1784 Graphics Score, 8268 CPU Score
PassMark v10.1 4013 PassMark Rating, 23248 CPU Mark, 393 2D Graphics Mark, 3216 3D Graphics Mark, 2941 Memory Mark, 29877 Disk Mark
CPU-Z V2.0.1 697 Single Thread, 7059 Multi Thread
Cinebench R23 1786 Single Core, 14095 Multi Core
CrystalDiskMark v8.0.4 4963.91 MB/s Write, 5275.61 MB/s Read (SEQ1M Q8T1)
*Note – All Windows 11 Updates and latest drivers were installed prior to running benchmarks. The laptop came out of the box needing an hour or so of updates to get everything up to the latest.

Temperatures
The Inspiron 14 Plus comes with a dual-fan setup with large intake vents and several exhaust vents. Temperatures are kept under control mainly with a 45W PL1 setting. While plugged in (not on battery), CPU Package Power hits 80W under load during PL2, at which point Package temperatures hit 95C. After Tau time runs out and it drops to the 45W PL1, temperatures drop down to 76C under load. The bottom of the laptop stays relatively ok, though the section to the rear does get quite warm to the touch. The keyboard deck is never too warm (a problem with my Precision 7560). If you are doing anything intensive, make sure you have the intake/exhaust clear and place on a hard surface, ideally on a desktop and not a lap. The fan noise is kept to a minimum and is not a distraction during most all usage.

Temps during Cinebench R23 Benchmark

Power Consumption/Battery Life
Using my Kill-A-Watt, I measured the idle power consumption at the wall at 8.5W. The draw on load during the 3DMark TimeSpy benchmark was measured at a max of 93W during the CPU test for a few seconds before dropping down to a fairly steady 49W-52W for the majority of the test. The power brick got warm to the touch, but never excessive or uncomfortable.

Internals
Looking at the internals of this laptop, you can see the only three upgradeable parts. The SSD is a 2230 format WD SN740 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVME drive with a small copper heat spreader attached. There is only one DDR5 SODIMM slot available to upgrade the memory, as 8GB is onboard. The slot is filled with a Samsung DDR5 4800 stick from the factory. Wi-Fi is handled by an Intel AX211NGW card.

Keyboard/Touchpad
There is quite a bit of flex in the keyboard deck when pressing down compared to my Dell Precision 7730 and Precision 7560, though it’s plenty usable. Compared to some cheaper Dell Inspiron laptops I’ve used in the past (3000 series from 5 or 6 years ago), it’s much improved, though their business laptops are nicer to type on with better feel and feedback. I’m used to mechanical keyboards with an EVGA Z15 as my daily keyboard, so most laptop keyboards are a compromise to me anyway. The keyboard is backlit which makes it much nicer to use in dim lighting. The power button in the top right corner doubles as a fingerprint reader, though I have not set up Windows Hello to try that out.
The touchpad is quite large and is a Precision Touchpad with gesture capability. The surface is low friction and tracking is very good. I have had some issues with taps not registering, though, and the click point for the right/left click is not very well defined. This is pretty standard for clickpads like this, though, and this laptop is better than most with a firm, quiet click and no rattle or bounce. I prefer my Latitude and Precisions with separate left/middle/right mouse buttons below the trackpad and wish Dell would bring this back to the Inspiron line.

Webcam/Speakers
This laptop does have a physical shutter on the webcam for privacy, which is nice to see making its way onto the Inspiron lineup. Dell finally introduced a 1080p webcam to the Inspiron making a nice upgrade from the standard 720p that has been used for many years. The sharpness still isn’t quite up there with a standalone 1080p webcam, but lighting is handled well and the two microphones do a good job of picking up clear audio.
The Inspiron 14 Plus has two down-firing speakers toward the front and give a very filling sound, with the exception of not much bass at all. Highs are very clear and mids are present with no distortion noticed.

Webcam Privacy Slider

Network Transfer Speed
The Inspiron 14 Plus comes with an Intel AX211NGW tri-band Wi-Fi card. I connected to my AX router and was able to sustain 60MB/s transfer from my NAS to the laptop from approximately 10ft distance through one wall.

Final Comments
This is a very nice laptop and seems like a very solid choice, with a few personal quibbles. I think the chassis would be a little better suited to something like the i7-1260P (28W, TDP Up of 64W) where it could run in the higher performance TDP setting longer. Putting an H-series 45W, even with the TDP Up limited to 80W, it drops down the 45W very quickly and performance does suffer. The i7-12700H can be configured up to a max TDP Up of 115W, which is way more than this chassis can handle, so there is some performance left on the table with this processor that other laptops are able to make more use of. That said, as a whole, this laptop is very nice and would be a great choice for someone needing a powerful, compact laptop with an excellent screen. Amazon had this laptop for $1105 during Prime Day 2022, and that seems like a fair price to me. Dell currently lists this laptop for $1399 direct and at that price, I would probably be looking at other options (Latitude 5420/5430 for example).

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-Plus-7420-Laptop/dp/B09YBS4TVK?tag=tdb010-20/