Top 5 reasons to BUY or NOT to buy the Dell Vostro 14 3401

While not a lot of people like budget devices, they are the backbone of the industry, making the most profits due to their sheer sales numbers. The Dell Vostro 14 3401 is one such device, which is ideal for the non-demanding consumer, who just needs a laptop that works well, is affordable, and can handle daily tasks such as checking emails, doing presentations, and the usual office work.

Today we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Dell Vostro 14 3401.

Dell Vostro 14 3401: Full Specs / In-depth Review


4 reasons to BUY the Dell Vostro 14 3401

1. Design and build quality

The laptop is built entirely from plastic, but we were surprised by how durable it was. The lid also has a grippy texture, which makes carrying it around much easier. It is also very portable, weighing only 1.64 kg while having a profile of 19.9 mm, which is standard with many notebooks. To no surprise, the lid is unable to be opened with one hand, but once you do open it, you see averagely sized bezels with a webcam on top.

Input devices are average with the keyboard having medium-long key travel and clicky feedback. On the flip side, it does come with spill resistance, so accidental splashes won’t be as damaging. The touchpad has a rougher surface and the clicking mechanism rattles a bit.


2. I/O

The I/O coverage is very impressive. You get a total of three USB Type-A ports, with one 2.0 port and two 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, a single USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 1), an HDMI 1.4 connector, a MicroSD card reader, an Ethernet port, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.


3. Battery life

The battery life is decent with the small 42Wh unit lasting for a bit over 7 hours of Web browsing, 8 hours, and 20 minutes of video playback, and when it comes to games, the result is 1 hour and 7 minutes. Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.


4. Upgradeability

In terms of upgradeability, the laptop packs everything that you could ask for, including two SODIMM RAM slots, one M.2 PCIe x4 slot, and a SATA drive bay for “regular” drives.

Here is our detailed teardown video, which


1 reason NOT to buy the Dell Vostro 14 3401

1. Display quality

The laptop comes with two display options, both with a 14-inch diagonal. The base model has a TN panel with a resolution of 1366 x 768p. The laptop that we had was equipped with a Full HD IPS panel, which we would recommend, had it not used PWM across the entire frequency range. However, our Health-Guard profile fixed that issue completely. Otherwise, the panel has pretty good qualities, including comfortable viewing angles, a max brightness of 239 nits in the middle of the screen, and 226 nits average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 8%.

The panel covers 52% of the sRGB gamut.

In terms of color accuracy, the panel didn’t improve much once we applied our Design and Gaming profile. Here are the results with the stock settings (left) and with our profile applied (right).


Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Dell Vostro 14 3401 configurations with 14.0″ BOE V4PNY-NV14N4H (BOE097C) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS panel.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


All Dell Vostro 14 3401 configurations:

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