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- Slim but sturdy design
- Great battery
- Impressive image quality
- It’s on the pricey side
- Screen brightness could be better
The latest Dell Latitude doesnt look like a Dell Latitude. Hewn from aluminium, with a dark, brushed design and slim screen bezels, the 7400 2-in-1 laptop stands toe to toe with the best-looking laptops around. And build quality is superb: theres barely any give in the metal around the keyboard, while the 14in screen rotates with a smooth action.
Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1 review: Features
While most ultraportable hybrids dont allow full internal access, the Latitude does. Ten standard Phillips screws secure the base and handy indents behind each hinge allow the panel to ease free. Most components can be accessed, but the memory is soldered down.
Dell further flexes its business credentials with good connectivity. On the left side, two Thunderbolt 3 ports handle DisplayPort and charging, alongside a USB-A 3.1 socket and HDMI output. The right-hand side offers another full-size USB-A port, a microSD slot, a SIM card tray, an audio jack and a Kensington slot.
Security features dont stop there, with the webcam using Dells Express Sign-In feature. This combines the webcams facial recognition abilities with the machines proximity sensors to automatically lock the laptop when you walk away and unlock it on your return. It worked well in our tests. But if you want a fingerprint reader, youll need to pay £22 exc VAT, and note the lack of a Gigabit Ethernet port.
The Dells keyboard and trackpad are both fine rather than excellent. The keyboard has no number pad, but its layout is sensible: you get a double-height Return key, sizeable cursor keys and sensible options on the Function row. The buttons are fast and comfortable, with a nice snap to them, and theres no need to push down with huge force. Theyre also quiet despite the firm base.
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People with larger fingers may moan about the size of the keys, though. They arent the largest and seem even smaller thanks to curved edges. The backlight isnt great, either, with only two brightness levels and uneven lighting visible around the keys.
The glass touchpad is large and smooth, with good precision and a satisfying clicking action, but traditionalists should note that it doesnt have discrete buttons theyre built into the bottom of the pad.
Dell crams a 14in IPS screen into what many would consider a 13in chassis. That design decision, and the inclusion of a drop hinge, means that the panel has four impressively slim bezels. Its a ten-point multitouch screen with Gorilla Glass 5 that works with Dells active stylus pens although theyre sold separately.
The panel has a 1080p resolution, which means a density level of 157ppi. Thats fine for day-to-day work but means it cant match the sharpness of the MacBook Pros 2,560 x 1,600 display. Dell doesnt offer a 4K screen option but that makes sense here: it would add cost, reduce battery life and give few discernible benefits.
More importantly, this panel delivers fantastic colour quality. An average Delta E of 0.8 is a match for professional displays and, at 2.44, the maximum Delta E is barely beyond the point where human eyes can detect deviation. In short, colours on this panel have near-perfect accuracy.
The colour temperature of 6,196K is a fraction warm, but not far enough from 6,500K to make the screen look inaccurate. The Dell rendered a stonking 99.5% of the sRGB colour gamut and 70.6% of the Adobe RGB gamut. Thats fine for a laptop that isnt designed for photo and design work, and it means that the Latitudes panel will display any shade you will conceivably need.
The contrast level of 1,775:1 is fantastic, too one of the best results weve seen from an IPS panel. The Dell delivers incredibly deep black shades, vibrancy with every colour, clear and bright shades at the top of the range and subtle variations in between. More impressively, the Latitude has better Delta E and sRGB levels than even the Dell XPS 13, and better contrast than the MacBook.
Thats all great, but the Dell does have one major flaw: brightness. The panels peak of 213cd/m2 is dim. Its not a problem in an office, where thats enough backlight strength to keep the screen visible, but try to use the Dell outdoors and it isnt strong enough especially when combined with the panels glossy finish.
Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1 review: Performance
Our test Latitude is powered by a Core i5-8265U processor, a popular chip from Intels new Whiskey Lake-U range. Despite having four cores with Hyper-Threading, its a low-power CPU, which means a modest base clock speed of 1.6GHz and all-core and single-core Turbo peaks of 3.7GHz and 3.9GHz. The huge disparity between those speeds is due to a new Intel feature called Thermal Velocity Boost, which is designed to make the processor more reactive and laptops more responsive.
The CPU is paired with 8GB of LPDDR3 memory. Thats the bare minimum for day-to-day workloads, but Im glad its installed in a dual-channel configuration. Elsewhere, theres a 256GB Toshiba PCIe SSD and Intels integrated GPU, with no room for discrete graphics. You also get TPM 2.0 as standard, but if you want vPro protection, youll need to pay an extra £20 for a vPro processor.
Its a fine specification for general work, but cant quite square up to either the Dell XPS 13 or the MacBook thanks to an overall benchmark score of 89. Both machines included last-generation, low-power Core i7 chips that are little different from the Latitudes CPU, with the same core count and only marginally better speeds. Despite that, the XPS 13 and MacBook scored 96 and 150 respectively. The XPS has also now been updated with its own Whiskey Lake-U CPUs.
The Latitudes lower score is caused by thermal issues. We ran the tricky Cinebench benchmark and the processor quickly throttled, with all of its cores dropping to around 2.5GHz and sometimes lower. Thats a long way short of the chips all-core Turbo peak of 3.7GHz, and will have a significant impact on performance in sustained CPU-intensive tasks.
In a CPU stress test, with all cores running at 100% load and the machine in its default Optimised mode, the CPU throttled to 2.2GHz while the temperature rocketed to 93°C. The machine automatically switched to its Cool mode, which dropped the clock speed to around 1.9GHz and reduced the temperature to 89°C. Manually activating Dells Ultra Performance mode saw the speed recover to 2.1GHz. In the CPU stress test, the Latitude was usually silent and only produced a tiny bit of fan noise in Ultra Performance mode all easily manageable. The base became warm, but it was never too hot.
Running a full-system stress test caused more problems. In the Latitudes Optimised mode, the temperature returned to 93°C and the CPU ran at around 1.7GHz, with that speed maintained in Ultra Performance mode although fan speed increases saw the temperature drop to a more manageable 84°C. While fan noise remained modest, that heat has to go somewhere and that proved to be the left-hand side of the keyboard and base. Dont use it on your lap in this mode&
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Dell fits the Latitude with a 52Wh battery the same size as the XPS 13 and a little behind the MacBook. But the 1080p screen and the new CPUs more aggressive power management helped the Latitude last longer than either rival. In our video rundown test the Dell lasted for 16hrs 9mins way beyond the ten hours of the XPS and eight-hour lifespan of the MacBook.
The Latitude also scores well for portability. It weighs 1.3kg and is 14.9mm thick, which is especially impressive for a convertible: the Dell XPS 13 is 11.6mm thick and weighs 1.23kg, while the MacBook Pro arrives at 14.9mm and 1.37kg.
Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1 review: Price
Theres no escaping the price of the Latitude: we tested the cheapest model and its £1,599 excl. VAT price is according to Dells website discounted from £2,460. If you want to upgrade to a Core i7, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, youll be paying £1,899 excl. VAT.
And, as mentioned, Dell charges extra if you want a fingerprint reader (£22 excl. VAT). However, if you want to upgrade to NFC, a smart card reader and a fingerprint reader, the combined extra fee is a reasonable £29 excl. VAT. You can also add mobile broadband for £138 excl. VAT.
Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1 review: Verdict
So is it worth this money? Certainly, Dell deserves praise for bringing its Latitude series right up to date. This machine looks great and is both slim and sturdy, with a good convertible mechanism.
Its also more practical than the XPS 13 and MacBook. It has that convertible operation, and it has better connectivity alongside easy internal access. The battery is superb, too better than either rival. On the inside, the screen has fantastic colours and contrast, even if its not bright enough for outdoor use. And the components are good enough for mainstream work.
For intense CPU performance, the XPS 13 and MacBook Pro are better choices. But, if you want a daily driver with a great touchscreen, loads of versatility and convertible operation, the Latitude 7400 2-in-1 is an excellent option.
