Dell Latitude 10 review

We’ve seen plenty of Windows 8 tablets since the OS launched last year, but the Dell Latitude 10 is the first designed primarily for business. What differentiates a business Windows 8 tablet from a consumer one? Judging by the options available for the Latitude 10 on the Dell website – and the box full of accessories that came with our review sample – it’s flexibility.

The Latitude 10 can, within reason, be tweaked and specified like any laptop. The “Essentials” tablet is available for as little as £375 exc VAT, and you can upgrade the storage from 64GB to 128GB and add all manner of extras to your basket, from a powered desktop dock with a Gigabit Ethernet socket and USB sockets to a stylus for note-taking and handwriting recognition.

The most intriguing of the accessories, however, is a removable battery, which clips into a bay on the tablet’s rear panel. This feature is only available on the pricier “Standard” edition reviewed here, but it’s one of the Latitude’s key selling points. Two different battery types are available: a two-cell 3,880mAh unit, and a four-cell battery that doubles this capacity, delivering a mighty 7,760mAh for an extra £23 exc VAT. In concert with the Latitude’s low-power, 1.8GHz dual-core Atom Z2760 CPU, the stamina delivered is impressive.

With the larger unit in place, the Dell’s final result of 27hrs 8mins in our light-use battery test is the best we’ve recorded. It even outlasts the 21-hour lifespan of the previous record-holder – the Acer Iconia W510 – which needed two batteries to survive that long. The standard battery pack didn’t let the Dell down, either. It lasted for 12hrs 35mins in the light-use benchmark – as long as a third-generation iPad.

Tablet hardware

Exciting though these figures are, the Latitude itself is about as plain as tablets get. There’s a matte-black rear and a glossy façade, and the larger removable battery adds an ugly hump on the rear. The Dell weighs 658g with the standard battery installed – more than the Acer’s 566g – and this figure increases to 860g with the larger power pack clamped to the rear.

The 10.1in 1,366 x 768 IPS display is bright, going right up to 448cd/m2 at its maximum setting. That is far brighter than the Acer Iconia’s 285cd/m2 result, and the Latitude goes on to deliver intense, accurate colours and a contrast ratio of 734:1.