Dell Plus 2-in-1 14 inch CoPilot+ Laptop Review

Performance

This laptop uses Intel’s latest Core Ultra 7 Series 2 processor, which features the Arrow Lake architecture and 8 performance cores. This makes it adequate for handling Microsoft’s new CoPilot+ features such as:

• Cocreator: local AI helps generate images as you draw in the Paint application
• Live Captions: local AI transcribes and translates over 40+ languages in real-time when watching videos
• Windows Studio Effect: local AI helps enhance your webcam video, by blurring the background, auto framing, and noise cancellation in real time

This is somewhat unique for a Windows CoPilot+ PC, as the first Surface branded CoPilot+ PCs utilized ARM processors, specifically Snapdragon X CPUs. This created some issues at launch with existing Windows applications, like VPNs, that were not initially compatible with ARM processors. However, this laptop’s Intel’s x86 architecture is already compatible with most existing Windows applications, meaning they can run natively without requiring emulation.

When testing the Live Captions feature (which isn’t obvious to enable, you need to press the Windows key + CTRL + L) with a German YouTube video, the NPU processor averaged around 5-10% utilization. Therefore, the NPU appears to be very efficient and this is a cool feature if you work with audio or video content in another language.

The Windows Studio Effects also work well for doing a portrait background blur (which looks a little more realistic than a traditional background blur) and automatically centers you as you move around the frame. It uses around 15-20% of the NPU will in use.

The CoPilot+ features are still confusing almost a year later after their initial announcement. For example, “Image Creator” was shown as a way to create AI images locally. However, if you open Paint and select the Image Creator option, you’re immediately prompted to buy a Microsoft 365 subscription so you can get AI credits (with no mention that you can go to the CoPilot website to create them for free from a non-CoPilot+ computer). The actual local AI-powered feature is supposed to be in the Photos app, but it was missing in this Dell PC (to be sure, I compared the screens to another CoPilot+ PC I own and the feature is definitely absent on this Dell machine). Is it due to the Intel processor? These inconsistencies make it hard to recommend a CoPilot+ PC for the AI features alone.

I am happy to see that Microsoft is adding some local AI text rewriting and summary tools (similar to macOS) with a feature named “Click To Do”. Unfortunately, these features weren’t ready for the processor used in this particular laptop at the time of this review. Yet another inconsistency between CoPilot+ PCs.

This system also features Intel Arc graphics, which while not as good a dedicated NVIDIA or Radeon GPU, can still handle casual games like Stardew Valley. The Cinebench R23 benchmark test were performed while the laptop was connected to power.

Cinebench Multi-Core score: 7030 Cinebench Single-Core score: 1881

Outside of Microsoft’s confusing Local AI features, I downloaded LM Studio and tested the deepseek-r1-distill-qwen-7b model locally (which utilized 5.5GB of the machine’s 16GB of RAM). Unfortunately, it ran solely on the PC (not the NPU, probably a LM Studio limitation for now) and produced 9 tokens/sec. Not impressive, but not terrible, either. By comparison, a Surface CoPilot+ laptop with the Snapdragon X Elite processor achieved about 17 tokens/second, but to be fair, LM Studio is able to utilize the NPU of this processor.

Battery Life

When streaming YouTube videos, the system estimated about 12-16 hours of battery life, so this laptop would be ideal for students attending online classes (or in-person classes) with limited AC connectivity as well as adults walking from meeting to meeting.

In the interest of maximizing battery longevity, I was generally happy that Dell offered a charge limiting feature in the BIOS. With that feature, you could limit the battery charging to 80% so your battery does not sit at 100% for long periods of time (which can be hard on a lithium battery) when left connected to the charger. Unfortunately, I was disappointed to see that this option is missing in the BIOS and in Dell’s Windows applications. I hope this is not a trend for Dell’s future machines.

Design

The Dell Plus 2-in-1 14-inch laptop features a matte aluminum exterior that looks solid and professional. The 14-inch display is reflective like most touchscreen displays, so a bright light behind you cause a huge reflection on the screen making it harder to see. The screen can get bright — up to 300 nits — which is good for overcoming indoor lights, but less effective outdoors. The monitor can achieve a 1920 x 1200 resolution which is good for multitasking, although I did find that I needed to reduce the default zoom level of 150% in Window’s display settings. The laptop is not overly heavy at 3.5 pounds.

This particular model is a 2-in-1, so the monitor can be folded behind the keyboard to use it as a tablet although no stylus is included with the unit. You can also prop it up in a “tent” style for viewing videos. The speakers are located underneath the keyboard, so if you’re setting it on a cushiony surface (which you probably should avoid as it restricts airflow), the sound will be muffled. The keyboard is adequately backlit for late night typing and it is comfortable to use. The power button also doubles as a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello.

Unboxing

Set aside a good half of the day for the initial set up of this system. The first boot requires a significant Windows 11 setup process which took about an hour, followed by another 2-3 hours of installing Windows Updates and Dell driver updates. And in typical Windows fashion, you need to stay in front of the computer while it updates, otherwise the process will come to a hault at various advertising screens prompting you to purchase a Microsoft 365 license or a OneDrive storage upgrade. This is more a Microsoft problem than Dell’s.