Dell announced a new lineup of affordable laptops today at IFA in Berlin, countering the MacBook Neo’s dominance in this price point with lightweight hardware and snazzy colors. Case in point: the 2026 Dell 14S, with an all-aluminum, solid build and marathon battery life, targeting students and everyday users.
Review: Dell XPS 13 (2026)
Dell already took a stab at challenging the Neo earlier this year with the XPS 13 (2026), starting at $699 for the lowest-tier configuration with 8GB of RAM. XPS is Dell’s more premium lineup, however, so scaling that device up to 16GB and an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor brings the price up to $1,499 — firmly outside of “budget” territory.
Conversely, the Dell 14S commits to a more affordable price point, capping out at 16GB of RAM and sticking with the Intel Core Series 3 processors — a step down in terms of raw power, but offering fantastic battery life.
Everyday powerhouse
Intel’s “Wildcat Lake” processors aren’t designed for next-level performance, but they are exceedingly efficient, with up to 27 hours of battery life on the Dell 14S in its local video playback test. We’ll have to test this ourselves when the 14S is available, but I would estimate that it comes to close to a day and a half of use with regular tasks — precisely what these laptops are designed for.
For students or everyday users who work out of the browser and stay within the typical lineup of Microsoft productivity apps, performance should also be sufficiently snappy, as long as you’re using it for these kinds of tasks.
In my testing of the XPS 13 with 8GB of RAM, for example, I found performance to be fine within those parameters, but there were inherent limits to processing power after a certain amount of tabs were open in the browser, or with several different apps open at once.
There are other trade-offs compared to the XPS as well, including the lack of a touch screen, dual speakers instead of the the XPS’ quad setup, and support for Wi-Fi 6 only. The display on the 14S is still quite good for this price point, though: the high-end configuration featuring a 2.8K resolution, 120Hz refresh, and up to 450nits of brightness, proving Dell understands the assignment here when it comes to a premium experience.
The aluminum build also feels solid, and the square keys and oversized trackpad look unsurprisingly similar to their competitor. The Velvet Green colorway is the most bold, with the Dusty Rose (pinkish/rose gold), Washed Denim (blue), and Linen (silver) sticking to a pastel palette. In-hand, the 14S doesn’t feel cheap at all, and there’s very little flex to the chassis or display.
Dell’s two-pronged approach to competing with the Neo makes sense from a marketing standpoint: the XPS 13 offers a premium laptop that can be scaled down to match the Neo’s price point, and the 14S meets it right where it is with perhaps the closest device I’ve seen yet in terms of sheer physical similarity.
But again, 8GB of RAM on a PC is just not the same as it is on a Mac, which leads me to the same concerns I had with other lightweight PCs with similar hardware: sustainable performance several years into the future.
Also: I tried buying a MacBook Air from Apple today – shipping was delayed by over a month
In terms of pricing and availability, Dell wouldn’t comment on it just yet, but stressed that it would be competitive with the Neo. With Apple’s recent price increases, I would estimate the 14S to start at $699 and go up to $849 for the configuration with the Intel Core 7 and 2.8K, 450nit display.
In terms of release date, Dell says it will be available this fall.
