Asus AeroActive Cooler 6 Review: A must-have for serious gamers

The Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro launched recently, and it’s one of the best phones that I’ve ever used. It has pretty much everything and the kitchen sink thrown into a single device, and it launched alongside a set of pretty incredible peripherals. One such peripheral is the Asus AeroActive Cooler 6, which cools the phone via a built-in fan. In the most extreme conditions when externally powered, Asus says that the phone can be cooled by up to 25°C, though most users won’t need anywhere near that kind of cooling capability.

But what’s the point of the AeroActive Cooler 6? For long gaming sessions, its purpose is two-fold. First, it cools down your phone to prevent it from thermal throttling, extending your game session for as long as you need it. The second reason is that it makes the phone more comfortable to hold for longer periods of time, as there won’t be as much heat to transfer to the edges of the phone. It has buttons on the back too that you can bind to touch inputs in your games if you want to use it, so it’s not just a cooler attachment.

If you have the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro and are looking for a peripheral for it, then the AeroActive Cooler 6 is probably one of the first you should go for. It, sadly, doesn’t come in the box, despite how essential we’d deem it for mobile gaming. It keeps the phone cool and prevents it from throttling while playing your favorite games for long periods of time, and what’s more, pairs nicely with the Asus Kunai 3 Gamepad, too. It also comes with its own compatible case in the box, though you can use it with and without that case.

Asus AeroActive Cooler 6

The Asus AeroActive Cooler 6 is probably the first peripheral you should pick up if you have the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro. It keeps your phone cool while adding additional buttons and powers itself from the side USB-C port.

Features:

Pros: Cons:

See at Asus

About this review: I received the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro from Asus on the 17th of June, 2022 alongside the AeroActive Cooler 6. My colleague, Aamir Siddiqui, also received the device from Asus, along with the cooler. While the company provided us with review units, it did not have any input into the contents of this review.

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Features and Cooling Capabilities

The Asus AeroActive Cooler 6 has a few features up its sleeves that make it unique. For starters, there are four cooling modes, though the last one is inaccessible unless the phone is charging. The reason for this is that each cooling mode uses more energy, so while you’re cooling your phone you’re draining your phone faster. The side USB-C port isn’t able to provide enough power to support the “frozen” cooling mode, so the phone needs to be plugged in at the same time. This plugging in needs to happen through the cooler’s port, since the phone won’t let you switch to “frozen” if you connect the cooler on the side port and then charge through the ROG Phone 6’s bottom port.

As well, the cooler has a little stand built at the charging port that can be flipped open to let the phone stand up. It is a bit flimsy — I’ve had it come off a couple of times and had to click it back in. Despite all of that, the Asus AeroActive Cooler 6’s obvious primary job is to keep the phone cool and prevent thermal throttling, so how does it fare? As it turns out, quite well from our testing.

What’s more, the cooler even has RGB lights built-in too that can be configured from the phone’s Armoury Crate app. You can make it match the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro wallpapers if you’d like, or just tune it whatever other way you want.

Gaming

First and foremost, this cooler is obviously primarily aimed at gamers. Between its aesthetic (alongside the overall ROG aesthetic) and the trigger buttons on the back that can be mapped to touch inputs, it’s clear what Asus was going for here. We tested it both in Genshin Impact and when emulating The Simpsons: Hit & Run via AetherSX2, and received phenomenal results.

With the cooler enabled, we were able to consistently play Genshin Impact for over half an hour at basically 60 FPS, something that this phone barely struggled to achieve without the cooler. Without the cooler, the temperature measured around the phone was around 37° C towards the sides where your fingers rest, while the SoC was hitting more towards 45°C.

As for The Simpson’s Hit & Run, we tested both with and without the cooler. Without the cooler, the phone reached 43°C after half an hour. This temperature is still fine, but the phone is hot to the touch and might be uncomfortable over longer periods of time. Attaching the cooler and using it in “frosty” mode (the second-highest mode, and the highest you can use it at when not connected to power), we found the temperature fluctuated around 36°C/37°C at its peak. Finally, when connected to power with bypass charging mode enabled and the cooler in “frozen” mode, the phone would move up and down between 31°C and 35°C.

The Asus AeroActive Cooler 6 gives pretty impressive results for intensive gaming sessions.

No matter what, these are pretty impressive results for intensive gaming sessions. Even using it in its second-highest mode, it’ll keep your phone much cooler than it otherwise would have been without the cooler, protecting your phone’s internals from overheating and ensuring that the chipset can consistently maintain high clock speeds.

CPU Throttling Test

CPU Throttling Test is a freely available app on the Google Play Store, and it repeats a simple multithreaded test in C for as short as 15 minutes. We increased the length of time to 30 minutes. The app charts the score over time so you can see when the phone starts throttling. The score is measured in GIPS — or billion operations per second. It’s essentially a test that can measure the sustained performance of a chipset. While the phone does heat up, it’s not unbearably hot and is perfectly usable even at the hottest that it achieved.

With the AeroActive Cooler attached, I noticed as well that the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro did perform better than you would expect. It achieved a maximum of 377 GIPs, whereas, without the cooler, the maximum it achieved was 341 GIPS. That’s nearly a 10% increase in maximum performance, and the average was also similarly higher with the cooler attached. It’s not a necessity, but it’s clear you’ll definitely have some benefits when using the cooler on your phone.

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The AeroActive Cooler 6 isn’t for everyone

It’s not all good for the Asus AeroActive Cooler 6 though, and there are a few things that I wish it had. For starters, it would make total sense to both extend the length of the cooler just a little bit, and to exhaust air out the top and bottom instead of at the sides. The buttons on the back can be harder to reach when playing games since the ROG Phone 6 is a long phone, and hot air being expelled over your fingers is an uncomfortable experience during longer sessions.

Again, too, there’s the issue of the stand. It’s a flimsy stand that only allows for one viewing angle, and it’s just a little bit wider than 90° on a table. It’s pretty impractical. It might have made more sense to have a stiffer hinge but located on the opposite side to the hinge’s current position at the bottom, and get more movement in there.

Finally, while I understand it’s an Asus peripheral, I would absolutely love it if it were more “universal”. Many people could get use out of something like this, though to even make proper contact with the phone it needs to be shaped to it. There are some competitors (like the Razer Phone Cooler Chroma or the GameSir X3), but the first is just a cooler, and the second is a full-fledged controller. Both of those also need external power, whereas this cooler can be powered by your phone. I understand the logistical difficulty in making a one-size fits all solution, but it’s such a good peripheral that I feel like I can be picky a bit and hope for it to come to other devices, too!

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Should you buy the Asus AeroActive Cooler 6?

This is the first peripheral you should pick up for the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro

If you have the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro and are looking for your first gaming-related peripheral to pick up, then make this the first. Between the buttons on the back and the extended cooling capabilities of this fan, it’s hard not to recommend it. It makes games so much more playable over a longer period of time, and you really notice the long-term improvement in performance when playing intensive games on your phone.

Asus also plans to launch one of these coolers for the Asus ROG Phone 5 and 5s, so if you have one of those devices and really want a cooler for your phone, then you can hold off and wait. It’ll make use of the pogo pins on the back of the phone, though the company hasn’t said when it intends on launching it just yet.

If you’re looking to cool your ROG Phone 6 on the go for long gaming sessions, then you can’t go wrong with the Asus AeroActive Cooler 6. I love it, and it’s been a fantastic addition so that I can play games without worrying about burning my hands off or damaging my phone from the heat while ensuring that performance stays at full pelt. It’ll come to the U.S. market at a later date, but you’ll soon be able to purchase it in Europe for €89.99.

Asus AeroActive Cooler 6

The Asus AeroActive Cooler 6 is probably the first peripheral you should pick up if you have the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro. It keeps your phone cool while adding additional buttons and powers itself from the side USB-C port.

See at Asus

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Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 Review: Feature-filled audio brilliance

Huawei’s FreeBuds Pro were some of the best earphones that I’ve ever reviewed — and for a couple of different reasons. They sounded good, their active noise canceling was powerful, and they even had a somewhat unique design (nearly as unique as earphones can get, anyway). Now the company is back with the second iteration after announcing them at its launch event in Berlin, and they’re every bit as good as their predecessors. These earphones are co-engineered with French audio company Devialet, which you may remember as having co-engineered the Huawei Sound, as well.

On the technical side, there are a couple of unique things that the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 pulls off that you won’t really find anywhere else. The biggest is that this debuts a feature that the company dubs the “Ultra-hearing True Sound Dual Driver”. This combines two drivers; a planar diaphragm for treble and overtones, and a quad-magnet dynamic driver for medium and lower frequencies. They have a wide sound range, from as low as 14Hz to as high as 48kHz. Huawei’s “True Adaptive EQ” technology can automatically tune the Huwaei FreeBuds Pro 2 to your ear canal structure, wearing posture, and volume level.

Of course, there’s also some pretty impressive active noise canceling too, that aims to tune itself based on your surroundings. You can hear the difference too when walking between different settings, and the company says these can cancel out up to 47 dB of noise. In essence, these earphones pack a lot of punch in the specification table, and they manage to keep their word on a lot of the greatness that they promise.

Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2

The Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 are an excellent pair of noise canceling earphones with amazing sound quality and a lot of audio customization features. They stand out from the crowd too thanks to their unique and shiny colors, though iOS users beware; there's no app for you.

Features:

Pros: Cons:

See at Amazon

Honor FreeBuds Pro 2: Specifications

Specification	Honor FreeBuds Pro 2
Build	N/A
Dimensions & Weight	Per earbud: Length: 29.1 mm Width: 21.8 mm Height: 23.7 mm Weight: About 6.1 g ± 0.2 g Charging case: Length: 67.9 mm Width: 24.5 mm Height: 47.5 mm Weight: About 52 g ± 1 g
Speaker drivers	11 mm dynamic driver + planar diaphragm driver
Microphone(s)	4 microphone array
Connectivity	Bluetooth 5.2
Battery & Charging	Earbuds only: ANC on: Up to 4 hours ANC off: Up to 6.5 hours Earbuds + Case: ANC on: Up to 18 hours ANC off: Up to 30 hours Both wired and wireless charging
Other Features	Active noise cancellation support (47dB peak) USB Type-C port for charging Touch controls
Colors	Silver Blue Silver Frost Ceramic White

About this review: Huawei sent me the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 on the 28th June, 2022 for review. The company also flew me out to Berlin for its launch event, paying for my flights and accommodation as it did for other media persons. However, it did not have any input into the contents of this review.

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Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2: Design

The Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 feature the same design as their predecessor, with a “typical” earbuds design and squared-off stems. That aside, the design is functional and they’re comfortable to use for long stretches of listening. I will say that while these are called the “Silver Blue” colorway, they look more like lavender or violet. They do not look blue in person whatsoever, so bare that in mind if you want a “blue” pair of earphones.

They have the same squared-off stems too, and they can be controlled with squeezes. Volume can also be controlled with a swipe up or swipe down of the front of the earphone, though it can be a bit finicky to get working and you may find yourself pushing them out of your ears a bit. Squeezes work very well, though!

Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 are comfortable to use for long stretches of listening

Touch controls aside, the design is functional and they’re comfortable to use for long stretches of listening. I had to downsize the silicone tips to the smaller ones included in the box, though there is a larger set too if you need them. It may not necessarily be a “one size fits all” solution, but that’s why there are options included in the box for you, too. It’s not a big deal, anyway, just that I found the regular ones would often get pushed out of my ears over time.

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Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2: Audio, Battery, and Software

Everything else when it comes to a pair of earphones is irrelevant if they don’t sound good, and  I’ll always forgive a pair of earphones for lacking in features if they have good sound. After all, that’s what people are actually buying them for. Given Huawei’s previous proficiency in audio (between the Huawei Sound and the Huawei FreeBuds Pro), I expected to be impressed by these earphones, and impressed I indeed was.

The Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 served as an excellent travel partner

These earphones sound incredible and are comfortable to use for long periods of time. I’ve already killed them twice from listening constantly, something I typically don’t end up doing with earphones as I generally take them out as they get uncomfortable over a few hours. I was listening with active noise canceling while traveling, and they served as an excellent travel partner in keeping me entertained and watching TV shows, movies, and listening to music.

If you want to check out the playlist I’ve been primarily listening to with these earphones, you can check that out here on Spotify. Songs like Car Seat Headrest‘s Famous Prophets (Stars) sound amazing at the minimal bass guitar-focused bridge, with a clear and distinct difference between the lows and the highs. Modest Mouse‘s Float On is done an excellent service in its recreation of the plucky chorus guitar, and the cacophony of instruments in the second chorus of No Halo by Sorority Noise comes through clearly, something that poorly tuned earphones and headphones may struggle with.

I only have a couple of criticisms of these earphones, and they’re fairly minor. The first is that the mids on these earphones with the default tuning sound a little bit quieter than I would like, and the low-end is tuned a little bit high. Otherwise, I think that Huawei and Devialet did an excellent job in tuning the audio of these earphones. The lows don’t overpower the mix, which is the only time that it would really be a problem. The audio quality is superb too, thanks to LDAC audio support.

Audio quality is superb on the FreeBuds Pro 2

When it comes to active noise canceling, the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 does a great job. There’s supposed to be a specific noise cancelation curve that works on airplanes, though I didn’t notice much of a difference when I was on a plane versus normal noise-canceling earphones. That’s not to say they did a bad job, I just didn’t notice anything in particular that “wow”ed me in that instance. They successfully block out audio from around me pretty well and have served me well on other modes of public transport too like the bus and the train.

One thing that I’ve noticed is interesting is that the AI detection for different settings of applying ANC does actually work. I walked into a shop with the earphones in (and no music playing) and could hear the shift in noise cancelation versus what had been in my ears when outside. It didn’t really change anything in terms of how loud I was perceiving my surroundings to be, but it was doing something.

I am impressed by the microphones

The company also has been touting its microphone abilities with these earphones, and I must admit that I am impressed. I was on a Discord call with some friends on my earphones, and when I stepped outside they noticed that my audio quality had dropped significantly. They asked me what was wrong with my microphone, and we were having a full conversation about how I was using a pair of Bluetooth earphones and not my normal phone microphone. That’s when we realized it was cutting out frequencies around my voice to make it clearer against all of the background noise around me. It didn’t sound good, but I could be heard and understood while on a busy street surrounded by cars, motorbikes, and people, and that’s all that mattered.

If you want to modify settings on these earphones, you’ll need the Huawei AI Life app. You can update your earphones, change gestures, run a “fit test” (though these don’t tend to be great, either), or change the noise-canceling mode. There’s no iOS app though, so Apple users beware. It’s on Huawei’s AppGallery too, so you’ll need to download the APK externally.

In terms of battery life, these have been pretty good, though I’ve run them dead once already. They last four and a half hours on a single charge, but so long as you’re frequently docking them in the charging case then you should be completely fine. I only need to charge up the case every few days, anyway.

Are the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 worth your money?

If you need a pair of earphones, the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 are some of the best wireless earphones you can get. They cost £169 in the U.K. (and €199 in the rest of Europe), making them a little bit pricey, but in line with similar competition. These are a premium set of earphones that you can’t go wrong with if you pick them up, and the host of customization options mixed with a useful app makes these an excellent pick-up if you need new earphones. Even if you don’t like how they’re tuned out of the box, Huawei offers an equalizer in the AI Life app so you can make them sound exactly how you want them to.

As a result, I don’t have any real complaints about these earphones. They sound great out of the box, are comfortable to wear, and the active noise canceling does a wonderful job at blocking out sounds around me. Sure, claims of specific noise cancelation curves for airplanes and the like seem gimmicky, but the point still stands that they do the job excellently. Throw all the marketing terms you want at it — if it works, it works, and most consumers don’t care nor need to know about the technology that powers it.

Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2

The Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 are an excellent pair of noise-canceling earphones with amazing sound quality and a lot of audio customization features. They stand out from the crowd too thanks to their unique and shiny colors, though iOS users beware; there's no app for you.

See at Amazon

In short, I love the Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 for their sound quality and their comfort, and the pinch gestures are a lot more comfortable to use than touch controls. These are very much a pair of earphones that everyone can find love for, and they’re one of the best pairs of wireless earphones I’ve used in recent years. Sound quality is what matters most, and Huawei nails not only that but all of the additional extras as well. I’m excited to see what the company can pull off with its partnership with Devialet.

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Pixel Experience 12 Hands-On: This is what you get with the official builds

For many smartphone enthusiasts, the software on the Google Pixel devices is the epitome of the vanilla Android experience. Compared to a barebone AOSP build, it has a number of innovative features that are hard to port to other devices. This is where the Pixel Experience custom ROM comes in.

Originally started as an experimental project by XDA Recognized Developer jhenrique09 back in 2017, the custom ROM has grown in popularity quite exponentially, thanks to the desire of users to mimic the software experience of the Google Pixel lineup. jhenrique09 decided to open-source the codebase so that other developers could contribute and port Pixel Experience (often stylized as “PixelExperience” and “PE”) to more devices. Now, the project strives to be a custom ROM on the level of an OEM ROM, providing reliability, stability, and improving on existing features on a device with polish and care.

For this hands-on, we tried out Pixel Experience 12 based on Android 12L primarily on the Redmi Note 7 Pro, a device that stopped receiving updates with Android 10. This shows how an aftermarket ROM can easily extend the lifespan of a device, which is long abandoned by its maker.

Pixel Experience: Installation

The Pixel Experience project offers device-specific installation packages in the form of ROM ZIP files, which can be sideloaded using a custom recovery like TWRP after unlocking the bootloader of the target device.

In case you don’t want to use TWRP, or there’s no official TWRP build available for your device yet, you can also opt for the Pixel Experience recovery image. It’s not as feature-rich as TWRP, but it’s enough to get the job done. The PE recovery is specifically useful for installing Android 12(L)-based OTAs, as TWRP has yet to support Android’s new encryption scheme.

Unlike most other custom ROM distributions, Pixel Experience comes with the essential set of Google apps and services preinstalled. As a result, you don’t need to flash a GApps package separately.

Pixel Experience: First boot and setup wizard

After a successful installation, you should be greeted with the Pixel-styled boot animation as soon as you reboot your phone. The setup wizard on the first run is Pixel-themed as well, and it guides you through selecting your preferred UI language, the time zone, and configuring security settings (e.g. enrolling your fingerprint). Since the Google Play Services are available out of the box, you will also go through the setup process of restoring your Google account and your apps.

Pixel Experience: Launcher and preinstalled apps

The first thing you notice after booting up the ROM is the launcher app. For Pixel Experience, it’s the vanilla Pixel Launcher app right from Google. Not only the launcher, but the wallpapers, icons, font, and many other Pixel goodies are also preinstalled. For a veteran Android modder, it might not be the most customizable experience, but for the vast majority of users, it’s likely more than fine.

Talking about preinstalled apps, you won’t find many. Pixel Experience developers don’t ship any in-house apps for basic productivity tasks, as Google’s offerings will eventually make them redundant. Apart from an actual Pixel’s standard suite of apps, you will find very few third-party apps. The official maintainers’ code of conduct provides strict guidelines in this regard.

For the camera app, though, some device maintainers include a known Google Camera port in their releases. This is because the untouched Google Camera APK is very likely incompatible with the camera sensors found on the particular non-Pixel smartphone. If a suitable stock camera port exists for a particular OEM, you may find it inside as the default camera app on the Pixel Experience ROM for your device as well.

The ROM supports OTA updates. The built-in updater periodically queries the PE download servers and notifies you after finding a newer build than the installed one. As mentioned earlier, if you have the PE recovery installed, then you can install the OTAs just like a regular Pixel smartphone.

Pixel Experience: Plus variant

The original goal of Pixel Experience was to offer a custom ROM that was stable while also including the features that are available on Pixel devices. However, some modding community members have avoided it due to it not having some core custom ROM features that people have grown to expect. This led to the creation of Pixel Experience Plus — an official variant that features some additional functionalities.

The “Plus” edition offers per-app volume settings, network traffic monitor, notch hiding support, and several other UI enhancements. You can use additional gestures like three fingers swipe for taking a screenshot. There is a dedicated LiveDisplay panel too, for tweaking color profile, display mode, reading mode, and color calibration.

In terms of granular customizability, Pixel Experience Plus is way ahead of the vanilla variant. For example, you can easily modify the status bar icons without the help of an additional SystemUI tuner app. The volume and power button actions are customizable as well, thanks to a number of built-in templates. You can also tweak various aspects of the lock screen, e.g. toggle media cover art, music visualizer, device controls, and a plethora of other details.

Pixel Experience: SafetyNet

The Device Requirements charter for the Pixel Experience project prohibits official maintainers to spoof the device fingerprint. As a result, you won’t find a custom Pixel-derived fingerprint on non-Pixel hardware.

Although the ROM doesn’t ship any su binary, there are plenty of factors (stock firmware cross-flashing, the unlocked bootloader state on modern devices etc.) that can lead to SafetyNet failure. With that said, an untouched instance of this custom ROM should pass SafetyNet out of the box on officially supported phones.

A Google Pixel 4a running official Pixel Experience ROM passes SafetyNet

Pixel Experience: Download

If you’d like to try Pixel Experience (or its Plus variant) on your device, you can download the ROM from the project’s official download portal linked below. There are more than a hundred entries in the current roster — each having its own wiki page detailing flashing prerequisites and installation instructions.

Pixel Experience Download Portal

Just because your device isn’t listed there does not mean that you can’t get to enjoy Pixel Experience by now. Because of its open-source nature, there are a number of unofficial builds for many devices on our forums, many of which will eventually end up becoming official builds as development progresses. Most of them are, by now, perfectly stable as daily drivers, with the occasional minor quirk.

Last but not least, XDA Recognized Developer ponces maintains an unofficial GSI port of Pixel Experience. In case you have a Project Treble-compliant device, which has yet to receive official PE support, you can give the GSI a try.

Support Pixel Experience

When building a custom ROM, it’s very tempting to include a truckload of features in it. The problem is, that can often affect the stability of the ROM. Pixel Experience strikes the right balance between user experience and reliability without compromising the overall speed and stability of the phone, which makes it a popular choice among custom ROM enthusiasts.

The project is and has always been a community effort, riding on the back of volunteers dedicating their own resources for the general good of the community. If you want to help the team translate the custom ROM into your language, you can do so by following the instructions here. You can also contribute towards infrastructural costs by donating to them.

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Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (2022) review: A mainstream laptop with a lot of value

Dell’s new Inspiron 14 2-in-1 has been a delightful mainstream laptop to use over he last few weeks, and I really like the improvements that have been made over the last one. The screen is 16:10, and there are some neat design changes like a three-sided touchpad. There’s a ton of value too. This unit costs just over $1,000, and that’s the higher-end model. Starting at $849.99, you still get a laptop that has a Full HD webcam.

It’s not perfect though. The biggest issue is that frankly, it doesn’t have a great screen, so if you need a super color-accurate work flow, this is not the laptop for you. It also doesn’t have Thunderbolt, so you’ll have to make sure that USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 is enough for you.

But again, this offers a lot for $1,050. While we’re seeing more and more laptops with 1080p webcams, they’re still somewhat rare at this more mainstream price point, so it’s a real value indicator.

Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1

The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 is a mainstream laptop with a premium build, coming in at a low price point and packing an FHD webcam, a 16:10 display, and 12th-gen processors.

Features:

Pros: Cons:

See at Best Buy

Navigate this review:

• Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (2022) pricing and availability
• Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (2022): Specs
• Design: It has a full-size SD card reader
• Display: It’s 16:10 now, but it needs work
• Keyboard: The touchpad design is unique
• Performance: It has Intel’s 12th-gen U-series processors
• Should you buy the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (2022)?

Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (2022) pricing and availability

• The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 starts at $849.99

The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 only comes in two configurations on Dell.com and Best Buy, which cost $849.99 and $1,049.99. The entry tier comes with a Core i5-1235U, 8GB DDR4, a 512GB SSD, and a 1,920×1,200 display. The other one swaps out the CPU for a Core i7-1255U and swaps out the dual 4GB modules of memory for two 8GB modules.

There should be more configurations coming at some point though. The spec sheet in the reviewer’s guide that Dell sent me promises other options, including Core i3 configurations, up to 32GB memory, and up to a 2TB SSD. It’s possible that Dell is just starting out with some more common configurations, which many companies are doing right now.

Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (2022): Specs

Processor	12th Generation Intel Core i7-1255U (12MB Cache, up to 4.7 GHz, 10 cores)
Graphics	Intel Iris Xe Graphics
Body	0.62” – 0.70” x 12.36” x 8.96” (15.70 – 17.86 x 314 x 227.50mm), 3.61 lbs. (1.63kg) with 54W battery
Display	14.0-inch 16:10 FHD+ (1920 x 1200) Truelife Touch Narrow Border WVA Display
Memory	16GB, 2x8GB, DDR4, 3200MHz
Storage	512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
Ports	1 HDMI out 1.4 1 USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A 2 USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C with PowerDelivery and Video 1 3.5mm Headphone/Microphone combination jack SD Card Reader
Input	Precision Touchpad Spill resistant, backlit
Multimedia	Integrated Widescreen FHD (1080p) Camera with Camera Shutter and Temporal Noise Reduction Stereo Speakers with Waves MaxxAudio Pro tuning Integrated Dual Array Microphones
Battery	4-Cell Battery, 54 Whr (Integrated) 65W Power Adapter (Type-C)
Color	Platinum Silver
Security	Fingerprint Reader with Windows Hello (Optional) Webcam privacy shutter
OS	Windows 11 Home
Price	$1,050

Design: It has a full-size SD card reader

• It’s made out of aluminum and comes in Platinum Silver
• There’s a full-size SD card reader

The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 looks like a Dell laptop. When I say that, I mean that if you had me draw you a picture of what I’d expect a typical Dell laptop to look like, this is what I’d end up with. It’s made out of aluminum and comes in the traditional Platinum Silver color, with the shiny Dell logo stamped in the lid. Given the inexpensive price, it feels really premium.

One thing that’s neat about many Inspiron models is that the hinge is designed so that it lifts up the base. That means that when the lid is open, the base isn’t actually lying flat on your desk. Since it’s lifted up, it allows for better airflow and therefore, better performance.

The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 is part of a dying breed of 14-inch laptops with a full-size SD card slot.

It’s a bit heavy at 3.61 pounds, although frankly, when I looked at the spec sheet, I was a little surprised to see that it weighed so much. It really doesn’t feel heavy, and believe me, I tend to be pretty sensitive when it comes to different weights in laptops. This one felt comfortable to carry around. If it does feel a bit heavy, there’s a lighter option available that does come with a smaller battery.

There’s an interesting port selection on this laptop, including two USB Type-C, one USB Type-A, HDMI, a headphone jack, and an SD card reader. I know; an SD card reader. It seems like full-size SD card readers are so rare these days, and when you do find one, it’s usually on a 15- or 16-inch laptop that’s designed for creators that are going to be editing video. If you’re looking for a 14-inch laptop with a full-size SD card reader, you’ll spend a good amount of time looking before you find another one.

Neither of the two USB Type-C ports are Thunderbolt, which is a shame. Interestingly, they’re USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, which I don’t think I’ve actually seen in a product. To go on a bit of a tangent, here’s the strange and insane way that USB generations work. USB 3.0 supported 5Gbps speeds, and that was rebranded to USB 3.1 Gen 1. When USB 3.1 came out, USB 3.1 Gen 2 was the actual new standard with 10Gbps speeds. Then USB 3.2 came along and, you guessed it, everything got rebranded again. USB 3.1 Gen 1 (originally USB 3.0) became USB 3.2 Gen 1, and USB 3.1 Gen 2 became USB 3.2 Gen 2. The new one was USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, which supports 20Gbps speeds.

USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 has been mostly skipped in favor of USB4, which supports 40Gbps speeds. Still, if it’s not going to be Thunderbolt 4 / USB4, it’s nice that it’s USB 3.2 Gen 2×2. The non-Thunderbolt laptops I usually see aren’t even that.

Display: It’s 16:10 now, but it needs work

• The 14-inch display is now 16:10, but the color gamut isn’t up to par
• The webcam is 1080p

The screen on the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1, as the name suggests, is 14 inches measured diagonally. The big change over last year’s model is that the aspect ratio is 16:10 now, instead of 16:9. That means that it’s taller and has more surface area, which is fantastic. The resolution is 1,920×1,200.

Unfortunately, that’s all that changed. The color gamut tests seem to show almost the exact same results that we saw on the previous model.

It supports 64% sRGB, 46% NTSC, 48% Adobe RGB, and 48% P3. Those numbers are low enough that I’d suspect something was wrong with my sensor, but I went through those rounds of confusion when I reviewed last year’s model. I ran a factory reset, tested other displays to see if I’d get different results, and so on.

The thing is, the display doesn’t seem like it should be that bad, at least if you’re not putting it next to something else. In fact, it feels pretty high-quality with a wide viewing angle. That’s what it is though. There are two key issues here. One is that you’ll value color accuracy if you care about photo and video editing, so if that’s your jam, you’ll want to stay away from this laptop.

Another key issue is that if you use a portable monitor, the experience is kind of jarring. I’m using a 15.6-inch portable OLED monitor next to this and it’s so clear that one is better than the other.

Brightness maxes out at 283 nits, which isn’t particularly bright and will cause issues with outdoor use. In fact, you should be able to see that from a bunch of the images in this article. Contrast maxed out at 1,290:1, which is fine.

One thing that’s really great is the webcam. This laptop comes with a 1080p camera, something that’s still somewhat rare at this price point. It’s really nice to see in the age of working from home and video calls. It’s also got a privacy shutter for when you don’t want it accidentally turning on.

Keyboard: The touchpad design is unique

• It has standard Chiclet-style keys, and there’s a power button in the fingerprint sensor

The keyboard on this laptop is pretty solid, using the same Chiclet-style keys that you’d find on any Dell laptop. I really like the feel of this one; it requires just the right amount of force to press a key, and it’s not too deep. Naturally, it’s backlit as well.

The three-sided touchpad gives it a unique look.

You’ll see in the top-right, the power button doubles as a fingerprint sensor. Unfortunately, I still have to point out that unlike every other company that puts a fingerprint sensor in the power button, Dell’s don’t scan you when you press the button. This laptop scans you after it boots up, so it’s not quite as seamless as the experience is on other laptops. There’s also no IR camera, so this is your only method for biometric authentication.

The big story here is that touchpad. I’ve never seen another one like it, as it’s a pretty unique design. There’s a slab of glass that spans across the entire palm rest, and as you can see from the image, the touchpad is cut out of it on three sides. It’s pretty neat. It doesn’t seem to affect usage in any way; obviously, you can’t click the top corners, not that you would anyway. It’s pretty cool, and it’s something that looks a little bit different. I like it, and even aside from the three-sides touchpad, I like the glass on the palm rest.

Performance: It has Intel’s 12th-gen U-series processors

• Intel’s new 12th-gen U-series processors are great for productivity

This is a strange time for Intel-powered laptops. If you bought a 14-inch laptop just a year ago, it came with an Intel 15W processor, also known as the U-series. With 12th-gen, there are new 28W P-series parts that are going in some ultrabooks. I’ve seen other laptops that go so far as to include a 45W H-series CPU with no dedicated graphics.

Interestingly, there are trade-offs to all of these. Some of the ones with H-series processors actually don’t benchmark as well as this laptop, which has 15W U-series processors. After all, there’s a lot more power going through a chassis that’s not really designed to handle it. For the ones that get higher wattage CPUs and have better performance, it comes at the cost of battery life. That’s why we’re seeing some laptops, like the new Lenovo Yoga 9i, ship with a 75WHr battery.

Intel's 12th-gen U-series is perfect f productivity.

For productivity, U-series certainly seems like the way to go. It’s the best on battery life, and it doesn’t run into performance issues over time. I will say that for photo and video editing tasks, you should move toward higher-wattage processors. If you ask me, P-series makes sense for photo editing, and H-series paired with dedicated graphics is best for video editing. While I’ve now tested several laptops with H-series processors and integrated graphics, I wouldn’t actually buy any of them.

And yes, I do notice this laptop choke up on certain tasks, like with a Lightroom Classic export. That’s what I mean by a productivity laptop. This thing is great for work in the web browser, Office, Slack, OneNote, and so on.

For benchmarks, I ran PCMark 10, 3DMark: Time Spy, Geekbench, Cinebench, and Crossmark.

	Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 Core i7-1255U	Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 Ryzen 7 5700U	Lenovo Yoga 9i Core i7-1260P
PCMark 10	5,305	5,320	5,616
3DMark: Time Spy	1,507	1,256	1,678
Geekbench 5 (single / multi)	1,711 / 6,700	1,151 / 6,091	1,736 / 9,525
Cinebench R23 (single / multi)	1,724 / 6,797	1,233 / 7,768	1,638 / 7,757
Crossmark (overall / productivity / creativity / response time)	1,428 / 1,450 / 1,464 / 1,265

As you can see, the PCMark 10 score is similar to the previous generation’s AMD model, although those Ryzen 5000 processors took a huge performance hit when they weren’t connected to power. You can also see that this year’s model shows some meaningful gains in other areas, such as single-core CPU tests, which are very important for real-world performance. I also threw in the Lenovo Yoga 9i because I wanted to demonstrate the difference between U-series and P-series processors.

Intel’s 12th-gen processors have a new hybrid architecture, and now has a total of 10 cores and 12 threads, whereas previous generations had four cores and eight threads. That’s a big deal, but one thing that’s changed is that only two of the cores are performance cores, or P-cores. The rest are efficiency cores, or E-cores. If you want more than two P-cores, you’ll have to go to the P-series.

As far as battery life goes, it’s pretty great. With the power set to balanced and the screen on medium brightness, the best I got was six hours and 52 minutes, which is really fantastic. On average, it exceeded five hours, which is still really good when compared with the rest of the market. Of course, this is all while using it for productivity. When I started editing photos, battery life dropped to a little under four hours.

Should you buy the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (2022)?

As I mentioned throughout this review, there are pros and cons to this laptop, and those apply to different use cases, so it’s not for everyone.

You should buy the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (2022) if:

• You’re looking for something that’s great at productivity
• You need a work from home laptop
• Battery life matters to you

You should NOT buy the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 if:

• You need Thunderbolt
• You’re doing creative work like photo and video editing

Probably the biggest factor to consider is the display. If colors really matter to your workflow, then this is not the laptop for you. If you’re looking for something for work, then the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 is pretty sweet.

The post Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (2022) review: A mainstream laptop with a lot of value appeared first on XDA.

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