Dell’s Inspiron 13 7000 is a 2-in-1 device, meaning this 13.3in touchscreen laptop can also be used as a thick but relatively light tablet. It even comes with a stylus, which is something missing from many rival hybrid devices that keen drawers will appreciate.
Weighing just 1.7kg, and just 19.4mm thick, this is a supremely portable laptop. It’s made from a metallic silver material, which is actually a matt plastic rather than metal. It’s pleasant to touch, although it doesn’t give off the premium feel you get from metal chassis.
The small keyboard takes little getting used to, especially because there is an inch of unused space on both sides. It certainly feels like the keyboard could, and should, have been made slightly bigger, but after a short time we were used to its dinky proportions. Keys have a fair amount of feedback and there’s enough travel to make typing an efficient and pleasant undertaking.
The touchpad uses integrated physical mouse buttons, meaning you can press anywhere in the lower two-thirds of the pad and get a physical click. Dell touchpads have been hit-and-miss in the past, but the Inspiron 13 7000 marks a return to form.
Processing performance comes from the dual-core 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-4210U. The U suffix denotes its "ultra-low" power consumption. The maximum amount of power this processor will draw is 15W, meaning battery life is slightly favoured over performance. That’s not to say its performance is slow: paired with 8GB of RAM it managed an overall score of 35 in our benchmark tests.