Dell has gotten a lot right with the XPS 14 2026 thanks to the new Intel Panther Lake chips, a revised design, better speakers, and so on. In addition to performance, the super-efficient Intel Panther Lake SoCs also afford the Dell XPS 14 excellent battery life. We measured 16 hours and 45 minutes in our review. However, it now appears that the laptop has the potential to last almost double the time with Variable Refresh Rate (VRR).
When we measured the battery life of the Dell XPS 14 in our Wi-Fi web brwosing test at 150 nits, we noted that the laptop’s screen was operating at the full 120 Hz refresh rate by default. Hardware Canucks has now tested the Dell XPS 14 2026 at 150 nits with VRR enabled, and the battery life result is absolutely phenomenal. The media outlet measured an insane runtime of over 43 hours when using the laptop for simple web browsing using Chrome.
The new MacBook Air 15 M5, by comparison, only lasted for around 14.5 hours in the same test. The MacBook Air 15’s result is less than what we measured in our Wi-Fi web browsing test, where the MacBook Air 15 M5 lasted for 17 hours and 12 minutes.
Moving on, the Dell XPS 14 (2026) endured for around 20 hours and 21 minutes when playing a 4K YouTube video. The MacBook Air 15 M5 lasted for 14 hours.
Finally, the Apple M5 showed its efficiency advantage under maximum load. The MacBook Air 15 M5 kept going for 4 hours and 10 minutes while gaming. The Dell XPS 14 could only hold out for 2.5 hours.
It is now safe to say that the days of Apple MacBooks being the longest-lasting laptops are finally behind us. There are many Windows laptops that match or beat the latest MacBooks in terms of battery life. However, when it comes to performance/watt, the latest Apple M5 is unbeaten. So, Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm still have some work to do to catch up to Apple.
Buy the Dell 14 Plus | Apple MacBook Air 15 M5 on Amazon
Source(s)
Hardware Canucks on YouTube, Teaser image source: Dell, Mark Eder on Unsplash, edited
