Dell Inspiron 2-in-1 7445 Review: Speedy, Sturdy Convertible in Need of a Brighter Screen [CNET]

Dell’s convertible Inspiron straddles the line between budget and midrange. The AMD-based Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 starts at $730, and our test system offers significant upgrades and still rings in at a reasonable $950. Both configurations can frequently be found at Dell with a $200 discount. It delivers the performance and build quality that you’d expect from a midrange laptop, but there’s one item that’s unmistakably budget level. And it’s a big one — the display.

The 14-inch display offers a modern and roomy 16:10 aspect ratio and sufficient 1,920×1,080-pixel resolution, but it’s very dim. It’s a basic, 250-nit panel common to entry-level laptops, and it didn’t test much higher than its rated brightness. If it had a brighter display, I could make a broader recommendation for the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 as an affordable and well-built two-in-one for students. 

The dim display, however, leads me to my first geographically specific laptop recommendation: the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 is suitable only for students who attend a northern school, as I did, where most of the academic year is cold and gray. Students at an SEC school or elsewhere in the south, where you spend most of your time outdoors or in sun-filled classrooms, will need a brighter display.

The Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 line is based on AMD processors from the chipmaker’s “Hawk Point” Ryzen 8040 series released at the end of 2023 alongside Intel’s “Meteor Lake” Core Ultra chips. Since then, competition has stiffened among laptop AI processors, with Qualcomm releasing its Snapdragon X laptop chips earlier this summer. And looking ahead, we expect to see a flood of laptops this fall with AMD’s own “Strix Point” Ryzen AI 300 series and Intel’s Lunar Lake line that promise greater application, graphics, AI and battery performance. 

The baseline $730 Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 configuration has an AMD Ryzen 5 8640HS CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Our $950 test system bumps you up to a Ryzen 7 8840HS processor while doubling the RAM to 16GB and the SSD to 1TB. 

Dell also sells an Intel-based Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7440 that starts at $1,148. The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 starts at £599 in the UK and AU$999 in Australia. 

Based on AMD’s Zen 4 architecture, our test system’s Ryzen 7 8840HS is a 28-watt chip with eight cores and 16 threads. It has a base frequency of 3.3GHz and a boost speed of up to 5.1GHz. It’s AMD’s second-gen AI chip with an NPU for on-device AI acceleration. The NPU is capable of 16 TOPS, with the CPU maxing out at 38 TOPS in total, which is just shy of Microsoft’s minimum 40-TOPS threshold for its Copilot Plus PC platform. (See our TOPS explainer for more information about this metric for measuring AI performance.)

While the Ryzen 7 8840HS isn’t the most recent AI chip you can find in a laptop, it does afford the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 some but not all of the same AI features you’ll find on a Copilot Plus PC. The Inspiron 14 offers Windows Studio Effects of blurred backgrounds and automatic framing for video calls but not the portrait light effect or creative filters. It uses the Image Creator tool in Paint but not the Photos app for generating images with text prompts. It also has the Live Captions feature for real-time captions — including English translations of 44 foreign languages — of the audio playing on the laptop.

The Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 was competitive on CNET Labs’ benchmarks with Intel Core Ultra laptops and the Microsoft Surface Pro 11, which is the first convertible laptop we’ve tested with a Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite X processor. Its single-core performance on Geekbench 6 outpaced that of the Core Ultra-based HP Spectre x360 14 and Microsoft Surface Pro 11, although each of these systems had better multicore scores because they each have more physical cores than the Inspiron 14’s Ryzen 7 8840HS chip. The Inspiron 14 also edged the HP Spectre x360 14 on PCMark 10, which offers an overall assessment of a computer’s performance, including web browsing, video conferencing, photo editing and video editing. (PCMark 10 is not compatible with Snapdragon-based laptops, which is why you won’t see a PCMark score for the Surface Pro 11 in the charts below.)

The Inspiron 14’s graphics performance was unremarkable but in line with the other systems here that have integrated GPUs from Intel or Qualcomm. Perhaps its least impressive result came on our battery life test, where it trailed the pack by a considerable amount. Still, it lasted more than 9 hours on our online streaming battery drain test, which ought to be enough to get you through a day at work or school without needing to recharge. 

Good news, bad news design

First, the bad news. The display is a basic 250-nit panel commonly found on budget laptops. It looks dim and has poor color accuracy. In testing, it hit a peak brightness of 265 nits, which is a bit higher than its rating but not by any appreciable margin. And its color performance was equally underwhelming. In my tests with a Spyder X Elite colorimeter, it covered only 64% of the sRGB gamut and 48% of the AdobeRGB and P3 color spaces.

The display’s wide viewing angles prevent it from looking totally washed out and dull. I could sit in front of the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 and work for long stretches with the text looking clear. Images were more of a mixed bag, with details quickly lost in the darkest and lightest areas.

Under artificial light, the display was easily visible, but I had the brightness slider maxed out at all times. Again, the wide viewing angles helped keep text and images visible. When I ventured outside or in my sunny breakfast nook, however, even the wide viewing angles couldn’t prevent the display from looking dim and dark. If only Dell had outfitted the system with an average 300- or 350-nit display, the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 would be a more widely useful convertible.

Now, the good news. The Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 may have a budget-level display, but it looks the part of a mainstream two-in-one. It boasts an all-aluminum body and feels well constructed. Its chassis has a solid feeling with little flex. Along with the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 solid build, however, comes a heavier-than-average weight. The Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 tips the scales at 3.7 pounds, which is a half pound (or more) heavier than other 14-inch convertibles. The HP Spectre x360 14 weighs 3.2 pounds, and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 8 is even lighter at 3.1 pounds.

Dell offers two color options for the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445: midnight blue and ice blue. We received the former, and it looks sharp. It’s a deep, dark blue with a metallic sheen. Judging by Dell’s site, the ice blue color looks like a silvery light blue that also looks pretty nice. Both colors offer an appreciated twist on the standard black, gray or silver color options that are far too common.

In addition to the color, I like the gently rounded edges and corners of the Inspiron 14’s keyboard deck and covering behind the display; they lend the machine a polished look and make it comfortable to hold when it’s closed. The softly sloped front edge also makes it comfortable to rest your wrists against when typing. 

In contrast, the display bezels are raised and create a lip against the glass of the display. This little lip makes the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 a bit uncomfortable to use in tablet mode. I wish the bezels sat flush against the display to create a seamless transition from display glass to display bezel.

The keyboard is excellent. The firm keyboard deck aids the typing experience, but the keys themselves offer a plush but firm response with just the right amount of travel. And it’s one of the quietest keyboards I’ve ever used. The touchpad is average. It feels a bit undersized, and the mechanical click response is too firm and with too much travel.

The speakers, too, are merely average. They have enough oomph to fill a small room, but bass response is missing, which is typical of stereo laptop sound. They suffice for video calls and watching YouTube videos, but you’ll want to use headphones or a Bluetooth speaker for music.

The 1080p webcam delivers crisp, properly exposed images and also has a physical privacy shutter. It lacks an IR sensor for facial recognition logins, but the power button at the top right of the keyboard doubles as a fingerprint reader, so the system isn’t completely devoid of biometrics for easy, secure logins.

The ports also offer a bit of good and bad news. This time, I’ll start with the good. You get a pair of USB-A and a pair of USB-C ports, which is an ample and varied selection. There’s also an SD card reader, which is usually offered only on pricier content-creation machines these days, and an HDMI port. Now, the bad. The USB-C ports are not USB4 but USB 3.2 Gen 2 delivering only a fraction of the transfer speed of USB4 — 10Gbps versus 40Gbps. The HDMI port is also behind the times. It’s an HDMI 1.4 port, which supports a maximum resolution of 1080p. Thankfully, the USB-C ports offer DisplayPort 1.4 connectivity, which can output to two 4K displays at 60Hz or a single 8K display at 60Hz or a 4K display at 120Hz.

The dim display isn’t enough to kill my enthusiasm for the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445, which offers a solid, all-metal chassis and competitive performance for its class. I’m much more forgiving of the panel’s limited brightness, however, when Dell’s revolving discount lands on it and drops the price to $750. Because at that price, it’s expected the system will offer a mix of mainstream and budget features and design elements. And with a decidedly mainstream design and performance, I’m then willing to give a bit on the display, which is dim but aided by wide viewing angles to make it one of the better entry-level, 250-nit displays I’ve seen.