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I've appeared on CBS News, in USA Today, and at many other outlets to offer analysis on breaking technology news. As far as performance goes, the unit I had was based on an Intel Core i5-1145G7 processor (Tiger Lake), which has four cores and eight threads, with a rated speed of 2.6 GHz and a maximum turbo speed of 4.4 GHz, manufactured on Intel’s 10 nm SuperFin process. You can get it with the higher-end Core i7-1185, which has a base speed of 3.0 GHz and a turbo of 4.8 GHz, which is what the higher-spec laptops I’ve been testing this year have had. Both processors have integrated graphics and support vPro, Intel's enterprise management feature. The unit I used had 16GB of memory and a 512GB solid-state drive, similar to the others. It also has options that let it adapt the battery usage to fit your behavior, or to maximize the performance if you need that for specific applications. One thing to note is that at full performance, the bottom of the laptop fan gets noticeably warm and the fan is a bit loud; still most people will choose to run it at balanced performance most of the time. In general, I found the battery life to be like the 9420, with more than 11 hours on PCMark 10’s modern office test when set for best battery performance. It should get you through a full day of general work with the screen at half brightness.
Idle runtime at minimum brightness (still readable, 22 cd/m²) is over 23 hours. Here, the competition lasts just as long or longer. This runtime has little significance for practical use, which is why it is not available for all models. I'm also including the ThinkPad X1 Yoga, a 2-in-1 that competes with the convertible version of the Latitude 7420. Finally, since our Latitude is a clamshell laptop without a touch screen, a comparison with the 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro is also useful. Many corporate users covet Mac laptops, too. Dell: Dell is a U.S. manufacturer (based in Texas) of computer hardware founded in 1984 and is one of the largest international manufacturers in terms of both market share and notebook models. Its product line includes desktops, notebooks, storage systems, monitors, servers, printers, consumer electronics and peripherals. Dell offers laptops that are suitable for various applications, such as business laptops, gaming laptops, ultra portables and workstations. Dell's business laptops from the Latitude and Precision series are an option for professional users and businesses. Dell Latitude 14 7420 has a Full HD IPS display, model number Innolux CHF07-140HCG (CMN1416). Its diagonal is 14″ (35.56 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 157 ppi, their pitch – 0.161 x 0.161 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 56 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels). The review machine didn’t have the LTE module to make use of the SIM slot, and as the standard for these isn’t a global one, the options for the LTE hardware will be different around the world.
Operating System
Dell employs two main approaches to keep the Latitude 9420's weight and size down. The first is rather obvious: use lightweight materials that are still strong enough to withstand the unavoidable abuse of a corporate road warrior’s daily routine. In this case, it's CNC-machined aluminum, with modern-looking diamond-cut edges and a hairline brushed finish. Unlike many consumer laptops with aluminum unibody designs, the Latitude's bottom cover is separate from the rest of the laptop and can be easily removed by loosening the eight screws that hold it in place. This allows IT staffers relatively simple access to service or replace the SSD, battery, system fan, and a few other key components. Dell claims that the Latitude 9420's chassis also prioritizes heat dissipation, with finely tuned sensors that adjust power consumption (and thus heat generation) to match the processing requirements of the task you're performing. Heat then gets shunted out through two pipes that vent to the side and rear of the laptop, replaced by cool air flowing in through the fan inlet on the bottom. In practice, I frequently noticed the fan spool up even when the laptop was idle, suggesting that the default cooling settings may need further tweaking to keep things as quiet as you'd expect from a premium ultraportable. Dell says IT managers can make these tweaks in the laptop's BIOS settings. (Photo: Molly Flores)
Dell Latitude 14 7420’s display doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment at any level. This makes it safe for your eyes even after long exposure. Those looking for the best possible performance are not well advised with this SoC. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon gets 8 to 20% more performance out of the nominally weaker i5-1135G7, as Cinebench R15 and R20 show. In my benchmarks, the 1145 tended to run 10 to 20 percent slower than the 1185-based systems, which wasn’t a surprise. On tougher tests, transcoding a 4K video to FHD took 3 hours and 15 minutes on the 7420 compared with two hours and 32 minutes on the 9420. A big Excel data table took 46 minutes to run, compared with about 41 on the other systems; and a MatLab portfolio simulation took 52 minutes, compared with 47-49 minutes on the others. One important thing to note: even this slower Tiger Lake chip performed notably better than the high-end 14nm Comet Lake chips that were in this class of machine a year ago. When I tested last year’s Latitude 7410 with a four core/eight thread Core i7-10610, the Excel data table took 63 minutes and the MatLab simulation took 73 minutes; so the difference is significant. Typical users should be quite pleased with the performance.
The unit I tried had a 2.1-megapixel 1080p webcam with a proximity sensor. I was a bit disappointed in the camera—even though it’s higher resolution than the 720p cameras I see on a lot of machines, the video was a bit softer in focus and had more of a tendency to whiteout than I’d like. It's adequate, but the cameras in the machines I've most recently tested from both Lenovo and HP are better than what I've seen from Dell. Dell's hardware offering includes a wide range of 7420 clamshell and 2-in-1 SKUs from 1,275 to 2,950 Euros with 11th-generation Intel Tiger Lake U CPUs and the options of vPro, 8GB or 16GB permanently soldered RAM, and M.2 PCIe SSDs. The touchscreen and 4K option of the predecessor are omitted, while the FHD touchscreen is only available in the 2-in-1 system. Dell's main competition for the Latitude 9420 2-in-1 is the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 5 (and the recently released Gen 6, which we will be reviewing in the coming weeks). Although it has an older 10th Generation Intel processor, Lenovo's 14-inch convertible has many of the same features as the Latitude, including optional QHD and 4K displays and Intel's vPro manageability technology. The keyboard is pretty traditional, with decent spacing between the keys, and there’s a good-sized touchpad. My biggest concern – and one that may just be a random problem – is that the touchpad frequently doesn’t work properly. Other similar machines haven’t had this issue. Thanks to its speedy SSD, the Latitude 9420 2-in-1 had no trouble with our PCMark 8 storage test, although these results are clustered together since most modern solid-state drives breeze through this benchmark.
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