Dell Pro 14 Black 2025

The Dell Pro 14 is a thin, light business laptop with great ports and strong battery life. The Ryzen 5 PRO 230 CPU is underwhelming for heavy work, but it handles everyday tasks fine. At USD 788 from Best Buy it's a decent deal, just don't expect gaming or blazing performance.

The Ryzen 5 PRO 230 is a 6-core chip clocked at 3.5GHz, and it lands in the 13th percentile for CPU performance in our database. That's rough. For everyday office work, email, and web browsing it'll feel fine, but don't expect to crunch huge spreadsheets or render video quickly. The Radeon 760M integrated graphics sit around the 60th percentile, which means light photo editing and casual games are doable, but this thing scored 17.3 out of 100 for gaming. It's not a gaming laptop and it doesn't pretend to be. The 16GB of RAM is about average for this class, and the 512GB SSD is on the smaller side at the 37th percentile. You'll want cloud storage or an external drive if you keep a lot of files local.

Against the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition, the Dell Pro 14 wins on ports and repairability but loses on display quality and CPU performance. The Surface has a much nicer screen and a faster Snapdragon chip, though it lacks Thunderbolt. The MacBook Pro M4 Pro is in a completely different league on performance and battery, but it costs significantly more. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 and Lenovo Legion 5i are gaming machines with discrete GPUs that crush this thing in graphics, but they're heavier and pricier. For pure business travel, the Dell holds its own. For anything creative or gaming-adjacent, look elsewhere.

Pricing is all over the place. In the US you'll see this listed anywhere from USD 788 to USD 1,449 depending on the vendor. That's a USD 661 spread for the same machine. Best Buy has the lowest price we found, and at USD 788 this is a reasonable deal for a portable business laptop with Thunderbolt and an NPU. At the high end of that range, you're getting into MacBook Air territory and that's a much harder sell. Canadian buyers face a similar situation with prices ranging from CAD 1,571 to CAD 2,188, a CAD 617 gap. Shop around before you commit.

The Dell Pro 14 is a business laptop that knows exactly what it is. Thin, light, and built for getting work done on the go. The AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 230 with its built-in NPU is the headline act here, aimed at folks who want AI acceleration without a discrete GPU sucking down battery.

Spec-wise it's a solid mid-range package. 16GB of DDR5, a 512GB SSD, and a 1920x1200 IPS display. Nothing flashy, but the port selection is genuinely good for a 14-inch machine. Thunderbolt, HDMI, Ethernet, and USB-A all present. That's rare these days.

Skip this if you need real CPU horsepower for tasks like video editing, code compilation, or heavy data analysis. The 13th percentile CPU score will frustrate you. Also skip it if you want to game, the integrated Radeon 760M just can't keep up. And if you store a lot of files locally, the 512GB SSD will fill up fast with no easy upgrade path on many thin laptops.

This is a solid pick for business travelers who need a light machine with real ports and all-day battery. The NPU is a nice future-proofing touch for AI features in Windows 11. But if your work involves heavy CPU loads, large local file storage, or any kind of gaming, this isn't the laptop for you. Buy it at the low end of the price range and you'll be happy. Pay full retail and you'll feel burned.