Dell Latitude E7440 review

The Dell Latitude E7440 is the larger of Dell’s recently announced duo of Latitude 7000 Series business-oriented Ultrabooks, the other being the 12.5in Latitude E7240. Boasting a higher-resolution screen than the E7240, a Haswell CPU and plenty of upgradability, the Latitude E7440 makes an aggressive play for the business laptop crown. See also: what’s the best laptop you can buy in 2014?

The chassis

It’s certainly an attractively crafted machine. It measures 21mm thick at the bulkier, battery-housing end of the chassis, and weighs 1.63kg – which is admittedly rather portly by ultrabook standards.

The design is tasteful, though, if rather plain and understated, and there isn’t a sharp edge to be found; every corner of the E7440’s chassis is carefully rounded off. The aluminium lid is honed to a brushed, matte finish, and the rest of the chassis is supported and strengthened by a metal skeleton and reinforced steel hinges, lending the Latitude E7440 a pleasingly sturdy-feeling exterior.

For the most part, the ergonomics are sound. The backlit keyboard’s chunky, well-spaced keys are concave and grip your fingers, giving way to each keystroke with a satisfying, tactile click. There’s a wide shift key and dedicated page up and page down keys, and the responsive trackpoint is married to a pair of large, dedicated buttons beneath the space bar. The touchpad has an ever-so-slightly textured matte finish and discrete left and right buttons that feel substantial and responsive. Our only criticism is that there’s a little flex in the centre of the keyboard, but this is barely noticeable in normal usage.

The hardware

The E7440’s Full HD screen is impressive. It’s easily as good as the ThinkPad X1 Carbon’s 1600 x 900 display: its maximum brightness of 342cd/m² is almost identical to that of the X1 Carbon, and its colour accuracy is the same (both scored an average Delta E of 4). However, its contrast ratio of 1038:1 blows the X1 Carbon’s score of 647:1 out of the water. Image quality is excellent, boasting saturated colours and pin-sharp images. The only niggle is that the panel crushes the darkest greys into black to give images an artificially bold, stark look.

Inside, the Latitude boasts an attractive array of components. The base model is well equipped for its price of £839 inc VAT, with a 1.9GHz Core i5-4300U CPU, 4GB of DDR3L RAM and a 500GB SATA HDD. Our review unit, which sat at the top end of the range at £1,269, had a 2.1GHz Core i7-4600U, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB Toshiba SSD.

The components acquitted themselves well in real-world use. The Toshiba SSD makes for a spritely system – it provided swift sequential reads and writes of 486MB/sec and 403MB/sec respectively in the AS SSD benchmark – and application performance is spot on, with the Core i7 CPU powering the Latitude E7440 to a respectable 0.71 in our Real World Benchmarks suite.

Battery life is good, too. The Haswell CPU helped the Dell last for 9hrs 3mins in our light-use battery test, and 2hrs 12mins in our heavy-use test. By comparison, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon’s Ivy Bridge Core i7 expired after 7hrs 43mins in our light-use test and only 1hr 51mins under heavy use.

Connectivity

The E7440 is one of the few ultrabooks that doesn’t compromise on connectivity. Two USB 3 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet socket, HDMI and mini-DisplayPort are positioned along the rear edge, and there’s another USB 3 port, a Kensington lock slot and a 3.5mm headset jack on the right flank, plus both SD and smart card slots on the left. Wireless connectivity is equally generous: there’s dual-band 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4 and integrated mobile data (the SIM slot is hidden just below the Latitude’s removable battery).

Unlike most Ultrabooks, the E7440 is easily upgradeable. After clipping out the removable battery, it only requires the removal of two screws to prise open the access panel. Once you’re inside, internal upgrade opportunities abound. There are two RAM slots (one of which is filled with a single 8GB DDR3 SODIMM), and those hoping to upgrade the SSD can do so easily, since the mSATA SSD is fixed, via a caddy, into a standard 2.5in SATA drive bay. There are a pair of mini-PCI slots alongside, one occupied by the Intel Wireless-AC 7260 card, the other filled with a Qualcomm 3G card.

Best for business?

Despite our minor criticisms, the Dell Latitude E7440 has all the hallmarks of a top-flight business machine. Competitive battery life and performance are bolstered by fine connectivity and upgradeability, and Dell has packed the lot into a sturdy yet lightweight chassis. There’s stiff competition in the sector – not least from Lenovo’s innovative, multitalented hybrid, the ThinkPad Yoga – but as a pure business laptop, the E7440 is a resounding success.

Related Posts

How to Screenshot on a Dell PC or Laptop Samsung Galaxy S7 Review: A Great Phone in its Day, but Don’t Buy One “Your Payment Requires Additional Review” in Zelle – What Does it Mean? Private Internet Access Review Pluto TV Review—Is It Worth It? ExpressVPN Review – Unbiased and Tested In-House CyberGhost Review How to Use GIPHY in Slack How To Fix Mac Preview Images Not Showing