Dell Pro 16 Plus 16" 8V43M Platinum Silver 2022

The Dell Pro 16 Plus is a purpose-built business laptop that excels at productivity with its generous 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and excellent port selection. The display is dim and the battery is small, so it's best suited as a desktop replacement for office work. Skip it if you need a machine for gaming or creative work, but for a corporate workhorse, it's a great value at the right price.

In our database, the 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM sits in the 93rd percentile for laptops, which is outstanding and means you can run a frankly ridiculous number of browser tabs and virtual machines without a hiccup. The 1TB SSD is also a standout, landing in the 82nd percentile. It's fast and spacious enough for years of projects and files. The Core Ultra 7 268V CPU is solid, performing in the 67th percentile. It's not going to top the charts against high-powered HX-series chips in gaming laptops, but for compiling code, data analysis, and heavy multitasking, it's more than capable and stays cool and quiet.

The integrated Intel Arc Graphics are fine for what they are, landing in the 65th percentile. You can drive a couple of 4K external monitors smoothly, and it'll handle light photo editing, but this is not a machine for 3D rendering or modern gaming. Our gaming score of 20.1 out of 100 tells the whole story there. The 16-inch IPS display is a bit of a mixed bag. The 1920x1200 resolution and 60Hz refresh rate are perfectly adequate for productivity, putting it in the 67th percentile for screens, but the 300 nits brightness and 45% NTSC color gamut mean it's not very vibrant or bright enough for comfortable outdoor use. It's a practical panel for indoor office work, nothing more.

Stacked against the Lenovo Legion Pro Series 7i Gen 10, the Dell is a completely different animal. The Lenovo is a gaming and creator beast with a powerful discrete GPU and a high-refresh display, but it's heavier, hotter, and pricier. If you need GPU power, the Dell isn't even in the race. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is a more portable and powerful alternative for someone who wants to game on the side, but it gives up the 16-inch screen and the business-focused vPro features.

A more direct competitor is the MSI Prestige series, which also targets professionals with a slim build. The Dell fights back with a better port selection and a more robust aluminum chassis. The Apple MacBook Pro M4 Max is in a different league for raw performance and display quality, but it's also in a different price bracket and runs macOS, which is a non-starter for many corporate environments. For a Windows-based work laptop, the Dell Pro 16 Plus carves out a nice niche as a no-nonsense productivity machine.

Pricing on this model is all over the map, with listings ranging from a reasonable $1,883 to an absurd $560,646, so you'll need to shop carefully. The sweet spot is clearly at the lower end of that range. At around $1,900, you're getting a well-built business laptop with top-tier RAM and storage, a current-gen Intel chip, and excellent connectivity. It undercuts similarly configured ThinkPads and HP EliteBooks, making it a strong value for IT buyers. Just make sure you're buying from a reputable vendor and not getting scalped by a marketplace seller with a wild price.

The Dell Pro 16 Plus is a business laptop that knows exactly what it wants to be, and that's a reliable workhorse for spreadsheets, coding, and all-day productivity. It's not trying to be a gaming rig or a creative powerhouse, and that focus is actually refreshing. With an Intel Core Ultra 7 268V, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, it's built to chew through office tasks without breaking a sweat. The 16-inch 1920x1200 display gives you a little extra vertical space compared to a standard 1080p panel, which is a nice touch for reading long documents or scrolling through web pages.

At 1.84kg, it's not the lightest 16-inch laptop out there, but the aluminum top cover and palm rest give it a sturdy, premium feel that should survive a daily commute. Dell is clearly targeting IT departments and professionals who need a secure, manageable machine with vPro and Windows 11 Pro. The built-in AI Boost NPU with 48 TOPS is a forward-looking feature for local AI tasks, though for most people right now, the real benefit is the snappy everyday performance from that new Core Ultra chip.

Connectivity is a strong point here. You get Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, a pair of USB-C and USB-A ports, and Wi-Fi 7. That's a port selection that means you can leave the dongles at home. The 55Wh battery is on the smaller side for a laptop this size, so don't expect to leave the charger behind on a long workday, but for a machine that'll mostly live on a desk or in a meeting room, it's a fair trade-off for the price point.

Creative professionals and gamers should absolutely skip this machine. The display's 45% NTSC color gamut is too narrow for any serious photo or video editing, and the integrated graphics will choke on modern game titles or GPU-accelerated rendering tasks. If you need a 16-inch laptop for creative work, look at the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 with a dedicated GPU and a better screen, or save up for a MacBook Pro. Frequent travelers will also find the 1.84kg weight and mediocre battery life a drag, so an LG Gram or a lighter ThinkPad would be a better fit.

If you're an IT manager deploying laptops for a sales team or a developer who needs a reliable machine for coding and virtual machines, the Dell Pro 16 Plus is an easy recommendation. The combination of 32GB of RAM, a fast 1TB SSD, and a great port selection at this price is hard to beat. It's a tool that gets out of your way and lets you work.

But if you're a student, a creative professional, or anyone who wants to kick back with some games after work, you should look elsewhere. The dim, color-accurate display and integrated graphics are serious limitations for those use cases. This is a laptop with a very specific mission, and for that mission, it's a solid performer.