Dell's Inspiron 14 7000 series laptop offers more style for mainstream buyers

Hey there. I'm Josh Goldman with CNET. And while there seems to be no shortage of aluminum clad laptops with chiclet keyboards these days, they all tend to come in with a price tag of least around $1,000. Dell managed to it for a bit less though with its Inspiron 14 7000 series. This 14-inch laptop starts at about $850. So, not necessarily a bargain but you do get a bit more than basics like a 1080p touchscreen with Gorilla Glass, a backlit keyboard and a nice thin aluminum body, giving it a more premium looking field than we're used to seeing from an Inspiron model. Inside is pretty average stuff for the money though, including a 4th gen core i5 processor, 6 gigs of memory, a 500-gig hard drive and integrate graphics. But the combination performs fine for entertainment, daily tasks like e-mail and web work, and basic photo and video editing. And it gets more than six hours of battery life under heavy use. Now, not everything is perfect like the display doesn't get all too bright. The keyboard brightness is a little uneven and the keys are shallow and there's only one other configuration option and it comes with the same slow spinning hard drive with no option for a high grade or solid-state drive. So, overall, we like what Dell's doing with the 7000 series but there's room for improvement. I'm Josh Goldman and that's a look at the Dell Inspiron 14 7000 series.