Dell 16 Plus 2-in-1 Review: The Mini-LED Display Shines but There’s Little Else to Get Excited About

7.3/ 10
SCORE

Dell 16 Plus 2-in-1

$1,450 at Dell

Pros

• Bright, striking mini-LED display
• Strong productivity performance
• Sturdy chassis

Cons

• Poor battery life
• Subpar speakers
• Mushy keyboard

At the beginning of 2025, Dell introduced a sweeping rebrand to its laptop product stack in an attempt to simplify its offerings. One of the results of the rebrand was the midrange Dell Inspiron 16 Plus getting renamed simply as the Dell 16 Plus, positioned beneath the high-end Premium models but above Dell’s entry-level «base» machines.

In the case of the Dell 16 Plus 2-in-1 convertible, the rebrand isn’t purely superficial. It comes with some changes to the Inspiron design, many of which are improvements, although there are a handful of steps in the wrong direction. The addition of a full-size number pad is an excellent use of the real estate afforded in a 16-inch laptop, for example, but it means the speakers have been inverted to fire downward, negatively affecting sound quality. On the plus side, the weight and thickness are reduced, but the Dell 16 Plus is still heavy for its size. And while it includes a vibrant mini-LED display, you pay a penalty in battery life for it.

The overall result is a machine that feels in many ways like a reboot, with some clever design choices alongside several that need at least another generation of refinement. Given its price and some of its limitations, it doesn’t measure up to similar midrange options like the Lenovo Yoga 7 14 Gen 9, our top pick for the best two-in-one laptop. The higher-end HP Spectre x360 16 remains our favorite big-screen two-in-one and is regularly on sale.

What’s in a name?

Gone are the days of the XPS, Inspiron, Latitude and other familiar Dell PC names. The company’s new lineup is divided into its consumer-oriented Dell brand, Dell Pro for professionals and Dell Pro Max, which offers high-end, workstation-style machines. Inside each brand are the aforementioned base, Plus and Premium tiers, putting the Dell 16 Plus in the middle tier of the home consumer Dell brand, with this model priced at $1,450 (although it’s frequently available for $1,250).

The Dell 16 Plus comes in a handful of configurations, most of which are fairly modular. The review unit I tested was built around Intel’s Core Ultra 7 258V Lunar Lake chip, although three other options are available, with a Core Ultra 5 at the low end and a Core Ultra 9 as the priciest option.

The choice to include a Lunar Lake chip in a 16-inch convertible rather than a higher-performance Arrow Lake model may seem a little strange until you consider the struggling battery life. Even with the more energy-efficient Lunar Lake option, the Dell 16 Plus performed woefully in our battery rundown test, which may have contributed to Dell’s choice to select Lunar Lake silicon.

Our machine came with 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM and a 1TB SSD, although lower-cost configurations with half of each are available. There are also two display options, the excellent 2,560×1,600 mini-LED provided in my model or a 1,920×1,200 IPS. While I didn’t get the chance to test an IPS model, that display tech at that resolution on a 16-inch display sounds like a recipe for fuzzy, grainy text, images and graphics.

The Dell 16 Plus 2-in-1 starts at 999 in the UK and AU$1,498 in Australia.

Dell 16 Plus 2-in-1 performance

The Dell 16 Plus performed well in productivity testing, particularly on single-core benchmarks. CPU benchmarks in Geekbench 6 followed the trends I’ve seen from other Lunar Lake models: stronger single-core performance than multi-core performance because of the lack of Hyper-Threading. On my anecdotal tests, it felt snappy enough for basic Windows tasks, including multitasking with a variety of open apps and windows being juggled.

That said, it’s not a laptop built for graphics processing, like high-end gaming, 3D modeling or video editing. While the integrated Arc 140V graphics made a solid showing for a machine that lacks a discrete GPU, don’t expect reasonable frame rates in demanding triple-A games. I ran benchmarks in Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and Black Myth: Wukong, and even on low settings, the Dell 16 Plus struggled to hit 25 frames per second, often dipping significantly lower.

If you’re looking to play some less demanding strategy titles or just want to load up Fortnite and don’t need it to look obscenely sharp, the Dell 16 Plus is a fine, casual option. Just don’t expect a visual showcase befitting that large, pretty 16-inch mini-LED panel.

The real disappointment is the battery life. The Dell 16 Plus lasted just less than 9 hours on our battery rundown test. While not abysmal, it fell well short of other laptops in this class, unsurprising given the combination of the relatively small 64-watt-hour battery and high-res, mini-LED display. Given how dramatically heavier use would shrink that run time, you’re not likely to get a full day’s use out of the Dell 16 Plus without having to top it off at some point.

A mixed bag of features and design

The overall aesthetic of the Dell 16 Plus is about as understated and unobtrusive as it gets. It comes in Ice Blue, which is nearly indistinguishable from silver, and Midnight Blue, which may as well be black. Outside of the centered Dell logo on the lid, the laptop is almost entirely free of visual flourishes.

For a 16-inch two-in-one convertible, it’s fairly heavy, coming in at 4.5 pounds. Hardly a brick but it’s heavier than other 16-inch two-in-ones, including the 4.3-pound HP Spectre x360 16 and the 4.4-pound Lenovo Yoga 7 16 Gen 9. Still, it’s lighter than last year’s 4.9-pound Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 and the 16-inch MacBook Pro, which weighs 4.7 pounds. Despite the weight, it’s fairly slim, at a nearly uniform 0.7 inches, although that too is very slightly thicker than much of the competition.

The keyboard is a perfect example of the mixed execution that defines so much of the Dell 16 Plus. On one hand, it makes good use of the space of a 16-inch model by providing a full-size number pad, a very welcome feature for many. On the other hand, it feels in some ways like a throwback to the bad old days of chiclet keyboards. Feedback is minimal with mushy keys and very little travel. The spacebar is the worst offender and frequently failed to register my inputs when typing at full speed.

Unfortunately, widening out the keyboard compared to its Inspiron predecessors meant moving the speakers to be down-firing. The resulting sound is a bit hollow and muffled, as though audio was being broadcast from inside a cardboard box. While the volume range is strong, at higher volumes, that boxed-in phenomenon becomes even more pronounced, especially when streaming movies or TV.

The massive lower section where the trackpad is positioned also hinders the overall feel. It feels as though you’re reaching across a significant gulf to type, and the trackpad itself is also something of a disappointment. It lacks haptics, and the surface feels a bit grainy to the touch.

The mini-LED display shines and is a welcome surprise on this midrange Plus model and not exclusive to Dell’s Premium tier. While it lacks the perfect blacks and infinite contrast ratio of OLED, as well as some of the high-level color accuracy and saturation, it’s nonetheless a lovely touch panel and a big improvement over traditional LED/IPS alternatives. It’s very responsive and really shines in tablet mode, with the keyboard folded beneath it, leading me to wish the keyboard were fully detachable.

Unlike OLED, the mini-LED display is backlit, contributing to one of its main strengths: brightness. Clocking in at 467 nits in my testing, it’s a great choice for outdoor or bright indoor workspaces. The built-in full-HD webcam is serviceable although it struggled slightly in brighter lighting.

The Dell 16 Plus features only the biometric basics. The power button has a fingerprint sensor but the webcam does not have an IR sensor for facial recognition.

The port selection is somewhat limited but also covers the basics. There’s a single Thunderbolt 4 port (down from two on the previous Inspiron), a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, HDMI 2.1 and an audio jack. No SD card reader or Kensington Security Slot is available on any of the Dell 16 Plus configurations.

Is the Dell 16 Plus 2-in-1 worth buying?

If you consider Dell’s rebrand a fresh starting point, there’s plenty of room to be optimistic about the current direction its mid-tier two-in-ones, including the Dell 16 Plus, are taking. However, optimism about potential future iterations doesn’t mean the current generation is a good value proposition.

While there are a number of things to recommend the Dell 16 Plus, its hindrances, like the subpar battery life, unfortunate keyboard design and underwhelming speakers, mean it slips below the level of some of its competition. In a crowded field, the Dell 16 Plus fails to stand out, and it’s not priced in a way that would justify looking the other way, where many of its faults are concerned.