Dell Latitude 7400: Top-Tier Business Portable

When we reviewed the Dell Latitude 7300 recently, we judged the 13.3-inch business laptop excellent but just short of Editors’ Choice material.

- M. David Stone

The Latitude 7400 offers the same appeal, including Intel’s IT-friendly vPro management technology and Thunderbolt 3, HDMI, and USB 3.1 Type-A ports, with a 14-inch display. Like its near twin, this is a top corporate ultraportable in a field packed with first-class contenders such as Lenovo’s ThinkPad T490 and ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7, but it doesn’t quite dislodge the Carbon as our Editors’ Choice pick.

SCORES OF CONFIGURATION CHOICES

The Latitude 7400 can sit anywhere on the spectrum from underpowered to overkill, depending on options. The $1,299 base model is in the former category, with a 1.6GHz Core i5-8265U processor, a meager 4GB of RAM and 128GB solid-state drive, and a suboptimal 1,366-by-768-pixel screen. By contrast, my $2,335 test unit was loaded and ready to show off.

Key features of the review unit included a 1.9GHz (4.8GHz turbo) Core i7-8665U chip, 16GB of memory, a 512GB NVMe SSD, and a full HD (1,920 by 1,080) nontouch, anti-glare display with Dell’s SafeScreen privacy feature, which narrows the viewing angle of the display to discourage people close by from reading sensitive information.

Dell offers three other 1080p display options, including a SafeScreen touch panel (available with the aluminum lid finish only) and both touch and non-touch displays without SafeScreen (available with aluminum or carbon fiber finish). There is no option for 4K resolution. Dell says the non-touch panel without SafeScreen is a “super low power” unit that’s 50 percent more battery-friendly than a standard 1080p display without sacrificing brightness or color quality.