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How long does the 2026 Dell XPS 14 battery life last on a full charge with that Intel Panther Lake chip? As part of our Dell XPS 14 review, we put it through our Tom’s Guide battery test and compared it to the longest-lasting laptops we’ve reviewed.
In this video, Tony goes over the battery life results for both the Dell XPS 14 OLED and Dell XPS 14 LED machines, how the stamina stacks up against the previous non-XPS generation, and also gives some context on the power of Panther Lake.
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There's a lot of hype around Intel's new Panther Lake chips, no doubt fueled by Intel claiming
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laptops like the 2026 Dell XPS 14 I have here are capable of up to 31 hours of battery life
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So of course we're running through our Tom's Guide battery test and today I'm going to talk
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about what we found. Spoiler, it's not quite as straightforward as the title of this video may
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suggest. In case you're new here, at Tom's Guide we run a standardized battery test across every
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laptop for the times guide battery test the screen is locked to 150 nits the laptop is connected to
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wi-fi and it just keeps surfing the web until it dies this way our battery life test results are
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consistent and easy to compare we even keep a running list of the best laptops for battery life
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which i'll link below so does the dell xps 14 earn a spot on that list the short answer is yes
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but there's also a very important caveat dell is offering the xps 14 with two different display
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specs we actually got both in for testing and they provided drastically different results the dell xps 14 with a 1200p led display had a runtime of 20 hours and 41 minutes even though that doesn quite match the big claims for Panther Lake Core Ultra Series 3 machines
1:09
it honestly doesn't matter that result is absolutely insane this is officially one of
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the longest lasting Windows laptops we've ever tested in our top three in fact but the XPS 14's
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battery life is significantly less impressive for the OLED model that actually cost a couple hundred
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more. It only lasted 12 hours to 23 minutes, which is by no means
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bad, but it kind of seems bad considering the LED version lasts over
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8 hours longer. It doesn't help that other Panther Lake laptops out
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lasted the OLED XPS 14. The Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Pro lasted 15 hours and 17 minutes
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while the ASUS ZenBook Duo lasted 14 hours and 23 minutes. But stepping away for a sec from Dell
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if I'm Intel, everything about all these battery life scores I'm rambling off is
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It's actually amazing news. Windows laptops have historically not been the best for battery life
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especially compared to MacBooks When it comes to stamina this new Panther Lake chip is the real deal And not only are the results now keeping up with Apple laptops in the case of the non XPS 14
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it also blows past the current-gen 14-inch MacBook Pro M5 in terms of battery life
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We did a video here on the channel about the MacBook Pro M5 battery life around the time when it launched
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and I'll remind you that in that video, the battery lasted for 18 hours and 14 minutes
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After running more tests and prepping for this comparison, the battery life average is still epic 18 hours
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MacBook Pros have generally been the best laptops for battery life for several years now
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but by lasting over 20 hours, the Dell XPS 14 is seriously trying to switch up the script
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This budding Windows laptop versus MacBook battery life battle is gonna be a fun one to follow
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So now's a good time to subscribe to our channel if you haven't already. Going back to the OLED XPS 14
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I need to make sure it's very clear that a result of over 12 hours is still impressive
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And it's even better when we look at it next to the previous gen, Dell 14 Premium
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This 2026 Dell lasted exactly 4 hours and 7 minutes longer than last year model The 14 Premium tapped out at eight hours and 16 minutes running Intel Lunar Lake chip That the kind of jump that makes me almost forgive Dell
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for trying to switch up the Dell XPS branding, almost. If you want my full 2026 Dell XPS 14 review
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that's linked down in the description, alongside links for both the OLED and LED configurations
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in case you're interested in checking them out. I think the story here is pretty simple
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If battery life is your top priority, The LED version of the Dell XPS 14 is an absolute monster and one of the longest lasting Windows laptops we've ever tested
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But if you're eyeing the OLED model, you'd be trading off a lot of endurance for that nicer screen
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So let me know in the comments what matters more to you, longer battery life or a nicer display
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Either way, we'll keep running these benchmarks on every major machine that comes through
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So make sure to like, subscribe, and don't miss the next battery life test
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