- On today's episode of:
Wow, it's a laptop I might actually buy,
we've got the Dell Inspiron 14 and I think it's good,
I guess we're gonna find out soon.
First thing up is the charger
it is 65 Watts and it's type C.
I really like to see type C on these,
just because I don't know,
it's type C, you can plug lots of things into this.
You can charge your phone with it if you want to.
I did that over the weekend cause I forgot my phone charger.
It's awesome. Also 65 watts,
It isn't a particularly powerful laptop, but it's fine.
And that can go off to the side.
- [John] Wow.
- Okay. Oh, we have these instructions here.
Plug it in and turn it on. Excellent.
And here we have the laptop.
So this guy right here, I think comes in at $1050.
But the option that you probably want is $850,
which is much more reasonable.
- [John] The other one had so much more packaging.
- Yeah. This is another one of those,
the most expensive budget laptop you can buy once.
It's kind of heavy.
Like it's a, it's not a large machine,
but it's not as small as I was expecting.
There's no GPU in here or anything.
What do I even say about how this looks Johnno?
- [John] It's a laptop.
Like it's a laptop. Yeah.
- Yeah. It's the kind of thing where it's the laptop where
no one's going to know what it is.
It's just like, oh, that's a nice laptop.
- [John] It's a no-nonsense laptop.
- Yeah, no-nonsense is a good word for this.
Let's have a look at the I/O.
Micro SD slot, Type A, headphone jack,
go over to the other side.
There's our USB C power input, Type A port again.
and full-size HDMI. Don't know if it's 2.1,
I'm guessing no, but if it is,
editor put a big yes or check mark or something.
Here we go. (laptop strikes table)
There we go. (Alex laughs)
Okay. That's a bit, that's a bit squishy
Little bit.
(Alex grunts)
especially right here.
The rigidity is good on this half of the device.
And then over here, it's not quite the same.
Now we need to be fair.
Only the biggest competition for this is the HP Pavilion.
This is the Aero 13.
So this one right here has an all magnesium chassis
and it's, HP's a lot lighter.
And yeah, the HP is way stiffer.
Like I'm pressing with the same amount of force
and it's not giving at all. Dell, On the other hand,
you can see the difference right there.
I'm pushing with about the same amount of force.
Dell, isn't quite as well-built.
Oh, these are essentially the same price.
You can configure them slightly differently,
but like, same processor, same RAM.
But, what the HP can't do, go up far.
On the Dell. You can go (Alex grunts)
all the way around.
And also, it is a touch screen, which I really like to see.
This one right here, you can touch it all you want
and it's not going to do a whole lot.
I do of course wish we had the 16 by 10.
I always say that.
Just a little bit more on the bottom and the top.
I would have liked to see it, but, oh well.
This is a pretty nice panel, given what the price point is.
I guess it did just start right up there, Johnno.
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Okay. Let's test out this keyboard.
This is the kind of thing where when you have chassis
rigidity, that's resembling floppy noodle.
It's not a good sign for your keyboard,
but it's quite good.
Yeah. I really like this keyboard.
It's just, it's snappy.
I don't know how else to describe it.
They have like a really nice tactile bump and then it sort
of just turns to mush.
But it doesn't really matter because like,
yeah, parts of the chassis
aren't all that stiff and parts of them are.
But because you're getting that nice tactile bump right at
the start, the rest of the travel doesn't really matter.
So, good job Dell, your keyboards, which is here are decent.
Also they have a keyboard backlight standard.
That's one thing that this Inspiron 2-in-1 gets right,
that the HP Pavilion Aero 13 does not.
You can't really screw up the config in this
by trying to be cheap.
So there's a bunch of dumb stuff with the HP where like,
you don't get a keyboard backlight or you get 1x1 Wi-Fi
and just crap like that.
The things that you want to have are just in the Dell.
Also, there's only two configs of AMD one.
So you have $850 for the Ryzen 5. It's fine.
Eight gigabytes of Ram. Isn't great,
but I guess we'll find out later, if you can upgrade it,
what do we call this? People said in the last one,
that it was a mid range laptop, but like mid-range is weird.
- [John] What is mid-range now?
- Yeah. What even is mid range?
Is mid range like a $600 Flex 14?
Because this is way nicer than that.
As for the track pad though,
it's okay, this might be one of the ones
Sometimes.
- [John] Finger lube?
Yeah, sometimes you need a bit of finger lube.
It feels a little bit sticky there.
It felt kind of, oh, there we go.
Nice. Get some thumb grease in there.
Now it is better. Perfect.
Yeah. So sometimes these track pads come in and they're,
they feel kind of sticky. This one over here,
my finger was kind of skipping across it,
but you get just a little bit of your finger grease on
there and it feels good now. I like it.
You don't want it to Doritos it, John.
We want just a light finger lubing,
we don't want to grease her up. Hey, you can hear that.
It's.
That's a really gross feeling click.
Yeah. So like right here,
just a little bit of a click and you can hear it.
That feels pretty good.
But if you press a little bit further it's, ugh,
it feels like I'm breaking it.
I don't think I'm supposed to be able to do that,
but it just completely caves in.
They need something to support it underneath there.
Or maybe your unit's just broken. Oh, the HP is way nicer.
Like, can you just hear the difference?
Like,(HP track pad clicks) versus (Dell track pad clicks)
I can't tell if the HP looks better because the colors are
more saturated or because it's better at displaying
and the top down, it's no contest.
So, there we go. That's a bit more fair to what I'm seeing,
but it is the kind of thing where the HP is without a doubt,
brighter and just more colorful,
which is going to be particularly annoying,
given that the HP also has a matte finish.
So I feel like with this Dell,
there's going to be a lot of situations where if you're
in a bright area, it's just not going to be bright enough.
HP also has 16 by 10, like to see that.
Okay, let's try out the fingerprint reader here. Lock.
Okay. Not the snappiest ever, but that worked pretty well.
Actually, let's see.
Let's completely sleep it. I'm guessing there's no caching,
but we can see if I touch it.
Oh, that worked really well.
Yeah. If your computer is asleep and you just
press the power button,
by the time that your finger's coming off of it,
it signed you in. That was really good, actually.
So good job on the fingerprint reader, Dell.
It's much better than having it down here.
So then you have to like, press it and then come over here.
- [John] Just make it one button.
- Yeah. One button is so much better.
Play some games. I'm kind of curious if you can.
- [John] What are you gonna download?
- Well, what do you think I'm going to download John?
- [John] Counterstrike.
- No, I'm going to download Valheim.
It's the perfect test of every laptop.
I haven't used an APU, to game for a little bit,
like two generations. If you're able to game on this,
that's really great news for all the kids
whose parents get a laptop like this for work.
Let's try 1080p, low.
This right here,
it looks pretty Runescape-y.
And I definitely need to turn down the resolution.
Okay. 720.
Okay. This, this works.
It feels like it's close to 60 FPS, but like,
this is the sort of thing where you can play this game.
You can hop on a server with your friends.
And as long as you don't make a mansion,
you're going to be able to play Valheim just fine.
It won't be an amazing experience.
But if your dad or mom gets this laptop for work,
you can happily start gaming on it and it'll do it, like
Games don't get better with what hardware you have.
Well, they do, but, same game at the end of the day.
Okay. I can dig it.
That's said the HP here will do the same basic thing.
I'm guessing the Dell is going to have a tiny bit more FPS
because there is more intakes here
and you have this nice exhaust vents at the back.
And also the screen does lift it up a bit to give you a bit
more air underneath. But I don't want to say that for sure,
because I haven't actually tested them.
Now.
Can the Dell Inspiron 14,
take on the HP Pavilion Aero 13 in Crab Rave?
(Crab Rave starts playing)
Sounds pretty good. That sounds really good.
(music continues) One second. It's down firing.
I need to get rid of the mouse pad.
Okay. (HP plays Crab Rave)
So we have the Dell here. (Dell plays Crab Rave)
Ooh, yup.
Not even close.
Yeah. (Crab Rave stops playing)
Well Dell, good job on the speakers
on your Inspiron 14 here,
they completely blow HP's out of the water.
(Crab Rave starts then stops)
Now, of course,
we do need to, you know, as is tradition,
bring out the big dingus, Inspiron
(Inspiron plays music)
(XPS plays music, then stops)
The Inspiron sounds better,
which I think means something's wrong with my XPS.
- [John] (John laughs) Uh oh.
(Computers alternate playing music)
- Okay, yep.
Hey Linus! You know how the surface laptop studio
had much better speakers on this the other day?
It's because the stupid audio drivers were broken.
- [Linus] It's amazing how much audio is like
in software now.
- [Alex] Yeah. Cause this sounded way better.
I was like, what's wrong?
But now this is just, it blows it out of the water.
- Oops.
- [Alex] Now.
So yes, in a shocker to nobody,
Dell's more expensive flagship laptop
is better sounding than their laptop
that's one third of the price.
Although if your drivers aren't installed
the Inspiron 14's better.
Now I really want to take this thing apart, because you only
have two configs of this.
So there's the Ryzen 7 that has the 16GB of RAM
and the Ryzen 5 that has 8.
Now what I would want to do is get
the cheaper Ryzen 5 version, 850 bucks.
You're good. Like you use it for a year or two,
and then when you have a little bit more money saved up,
you can upgrade it 16 gigabytes of Ram throw in like
a 1 terabyte SSD or something,
and then it's wicked for a long time.
Or if I can't do that,
then I dunno,
buy a laptop that you can upgrade the RAM on.
This is the kind of laptop that I would actually buy,
because I own a desktop.
I don't need something very powerful.
I would buy something like this
and it's going to be good enough.
And having the ability to upgrade it down the road
would be awesome because then, you know,
I can hopefully use it for like six years or something.
And if the track pad breaks, who cares?
You just buy a new one and chuck it in.
- [John] Is that plastic?
- Yeah, this, this is plastic.
I think the chassis also is plastic. Let's see.
Oh, this looks good. Awesome.
One RAM, two RAM you can upgrade them.
Bippity boppity, your SO-DIMM slot to date.
There you go. There's a stick of RAM.
Is this her SSD right here?
- [John] You're blocking it with your hat.
- Sorry, dad hat, lttstore.com.
I'm going to take it out,
cause I actually don't know if the SSD,
because it's so freaking small. It is! That's so cute.
Little 512 gigabytes right there. It's adorable.
And the nice thing is that, although they put this,
although they put this super small SSD in there,
there is enough room that you can put a full blown SSD one,
if you want.
I hate it when they only have room for the small SSD.
(Alex coughs) Microsoft.
Yeah. So I guess if you're looking
for a laptop that's $850 and has a touch screen,
this is an excellent option.
I would say it's a toss up for me.
If I would choose the Dell or the HP.
I really like the fact that I can easily get into the Dell
and repair it down the road.
This is a sort of laptop where if you just want any laptop,
it's a very solid option.
Like no frills, but like good enough quality
that you're never going to be mad at it.
And pretty good power, like eight cores. It played Valheim.
I dig it. Anyway. That's all we have time for today.
And that's all you have time for too,
because the video's over.
Have a good night.
- [John] Is it on?
- Is it on?
- [John] Yeah it's got an LED flashing on the bottom light
- It is on.
Yeah, you might want to turn off there.