Dell Precision 14" 3490 Gray

A featherweight workstation with heavyweight port selection, completely kneecapped by a storage capacity from 2012. Unless your job demands this exact Dell model, there are far better ways to spend your money.

The Core Ultra 5 125H surprised us with how well it handles sustained workloads without turning into a hot plate. It's not going to win any render races, sitting in the 68th percentile for CPU grunt, but for a 14-inch machine this light, it punches above its weight in single-threaded tasks. The integrated Intel Arc graphics are fine for driving the display and light photo work, but don't even think about gaming on this thing. Our database puts its gaming chops at a brutal 16 out of 100, which is one of the worst scores we've seen for a laptop marketed to 'creative and power users.'

The elephant in the room is the Apple MacBook Pro M4 Max. It's heavier and pricier, but its screen, performance, and storage options make the Precision look like a toy. On the Windows side, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is a direct competitor that offers a gorgeous OLED screen and a dedicated GPU for similar money, though you lose the workstation ISV certs. The HP OMEN Transcend 14 is another strong alternative if you need some gaming muscle on the side. The Precision 3490 only wins if you absolutely need those Dell workstation certifications in the lightest possible package.

Pricing is all over the map, from $1759 to $2870 depending on the vendor. At the low end, you're paying a premium for the Precision badge and ISV certifications. At the high end, you're getting absolutely fleeced. If you can snag it closer to $1759 from Newegg, it's a tough sell but justifiable for a specific niche. Any higher and you're in MacBook Pro territory, which will run circles around this thing in every metric except maybe port variety.

The Dell Precision 3490 is a weird one. It's got the heart of a workstation and the body of an ultrabook, but it stumbles on some basics that'll make you scratch your head. The one thing to know is this: the port selection and build quality are genuinely impressive for a 1.4kg machine, but that 256GB SSD is a joke at this price point. You're getting a solid Intel Core Ultra 5 chip and 16GB of DDR5 RAM, which is a fine combo for ISV-certified apps on the go, but you'll be playing storage Tetris before you even finish installing your Adobe suite.

If you're looking for a powerful all-rounder with a great screen and enough storage for actual work files, this isn't it. Go get an ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 or a MacBook Pro instead. This Precision is strictly for the ISV-certified crowd who travel light and live in the cloud.

The Dell Precision 3490 is a niche machine for a niche buyer. If you're an engineer or architect who needs ISV-certified drivers in a bag-friendly chassis and you live in a world of cloud storage, it works. For everyone else, the tiny SSD and mediocre screen are dealbreakers. Buy it only if your IT department forces you to, and even then, beg them to spring for a bigger drive.