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Dell Inspiron 14z Ultrabook: An Ultrabook in Name Only, With an Optical Drive

12.07.2012
Intel's original concept referred to ultraportable, ultraslim Windows laptops with a premium design and strict constraints on thickness and specs. But these days, vendors seem to label every semislim ultraportable they sell as an Ultrabook, and Intel has stretched the definition to include laptops that aren't in the same aesthetic league.

The Dell Inspiron 14z is a case in point: It's nice laptop--but it isn't an Ultrabook. Sure, it makes the thickness cut (barely) at 0.83 inch, and it has a 32GB SSD boot drive for quick startup, but it weighs 4.2 pounds and comes with a tray-loading DVD-RW drive. This laptop reminds me of the , another very portable laptop that doesn't walk, swim, or quack like an Ultrabook.

Our review model Inspiron 14z, priced at $900, carries a third-generation Intel i5-3317U processor, 8GB of RAM, an AMD Radeon HD 7570M graphics card, a 500GB hard drive spinning at 5400rpm, a tray-loading DVD-RW drive, built-in Wi-FI 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0, and the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium.

The Inspiron 14z Ultrabook performed well in our WorldBench 7 benchmark test suite, with a score of 120, meaning that it as about 20 percent faster than our reference model, which packs a second-generation Intel i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 1TB hard drive. The 14z also delivered creditable overall performance.

The other three models listed here--the , the , and the --are , a more natural competitive set for the 14z in view of it heaviness, its optical drive, and its discrete GPU.