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Terms Apply. Promotion ends 3 December 2023. Items are subject to availability. Max 5 units per customer. Lastly, the bottom panel is home to the speaker cutouts and the ventilation grill, which is placed right beneath the cooling fan. In this case, the heat is being exhausted from the left side of the notebook. The maximum measured brightness is 435 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 414 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 9%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6600K (average) – ever so slightly colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB. 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. Hard drive retention: Hard drive retention is not available on models with a soldered hard drive, including XPS 9315 2in1, Chromebooks or Venue tablets, except the Venue 11 Pro.
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. The results of our Handbrake video editing trial are clustered close together, and although the Latitude 7420 tied for last place the differences were negligible. Handbrake is another tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video to a 1080p MP4 file. It’s a timed test, and lower results are better. The advantage of subnotebooks is that the entire laptop can be small and therefore easily portable. The smaller display also has the advantage of requiring less power, which further improves battery life and thus mobility. The disadvantage is that reading texts is more strenuous on the eyes. High resolutions are more likely to be found in standard laptops.» To find out how fine a display is, see our DPI List.Overall, even to the naked eye, colors seem somewhat faded, and both brightness and saturation could use a boost. Working in a bright environment would be challenging. Subjectively, the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 appears best with the display set at 85% to 100% brightness, in a modestly lit kitchen nook. In the same room, the Inspiron 16 2-in-1 only needs the level set to 50% to 60% to achieve the same effect. In fact, adjusting a photo on each unit to the same size (compensating for the 16-inch display’s size advantage), a scene of trees on a sunny day appeared brighter and with richer colors on the 16-inch unit, probably because the Inspiron 16 is capable of displaying 96% of the sRGB gamut to the Inspiron 14’s 64%. Jump into work: Power on by opening the lid, then stay synced thanks to Modern Standby capability. Log in instantly with ExpressSign-in proximity sensor or optional fingerprint reader in the power button.
Despite this very credible set of features, the display limits an otherwise excellent system. Screen brightness came in at around 277 nits at 100% brightness, the lowest of our comparison units. Plus, our Datacolor Spyder tests showed the Inspiron 14's panel covering only 64% of the sRGB gamut and 48% of the Adobe RGB gamut, also lowest in our comparison group. (More on this later.)
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To test the webcam, we paired up with an older laptop using the earlier 720p standard. That display, when viewed in a window next to the Inspiron 14’s, was notably soft. That said, the Inspiron 14’s more limited color and brightness detracted from a Zoom session. I've been a computer-tech writer and editor for several decades, and a photographer who writes about photo techniques and equipment for over a decade. My first job in the tech press was as a writer for Compute! magazine, where we used Commodore 64s from Circuit City as word processors. I next became the editor of Computer Dealer, offering advice to computer retailers, then moved on to Personal Computing as an executive editor, where I developed the magazine's benchmark suite. I held several positions at the massive Computer Shopper magazine before becoming editor in chief. While at Computer Shopper (owned by CNET Networks at the time), I edited bi-annual issues of Technology Review as a joint project with Fortune magazine. Compared with the higher-end Latitude 9420 I tested recently, there are trade-offs for this slightly lower end model, but they are small. The Inspiron 14 does quite well on battery rundown, coming in basically within the margin of error with the Microsoft Surface Pro and the HP Spectre. And face it, anything above the Inspiron’s 12:33 hours is icing on the cake. The two units that exceeded 14 hours on the battery test were the Asus Flip and the Lenovo Yoga. The Latitude 7420's direct competitors include other high-end business subnotebooks such as the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon G9, ThinkPad T14s, the HP EliteBook 840 Aero, and - as dGPU models - the affordable MSI Modern 14 and the ThinkPad T14 Gen2.
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. Our temperature development and power consumption results below show that the maximum power consumption of the CPU in the Dell is 50 watts ("Ultra Performance" mode). The CPU also heats up to almost 90 °C, which suggests that the 64-watt PL2 is not achievable under low temperatures. Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Graphics Cards and the corresponding Benchmark List. The built-in speakers are adequate, despite some distortion at higher volumes, but since the audio is more satisfactory when using a decent set of headphones, my inclination would be to use the speakers only in a pinch. Dell does offer an optional Dell Mobile Adapter Speakerphone that might be just the thing for frequent conference-callers.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. Standard wireless connectivity comprises an Intel Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) chipset with built-in 2x2 MIMO support and Bluetooth 5.1. The Latitude 7420 supports eSIM, so if you opt for the optional mobile broadband and your carrier supports eSIM as well, you won't need to use the physical slot. First responders and public safety organizations eyeing the Latitude 7420 may appreciate that the LTE version supports the dedicated, high-capacity FirstNet LTE bands.
The unit I tested had a carbon fiber weave design, which I don’t find as modern as the aluminum case in the 9420, but it’s a good-looking laptop and carbon fiber is about 0.2 pounds lighter. Measuring 0.68 by 12.65 by 8.22 inches (HWD), the 7420 is a bit bigger than the 9420 two-in-one I tested (0.54 by 12.2 by 8.5 inches), but still pretty small (HWD). It’s actually lighter, with a starting weight of 2.7 pounds. The unit I tested, which has a touch screen, weighed 3.0 pounds, 3.8 pounds with the charger; the Lenovo Carbon X1 and HP EliteBook 840 Aero are both a little lighter, but this is an easy machine to carry. The bezels around the screen are noticeably larger, but that certainly doesn’t impact the usability of the machine. It has a solid, modern look. We strongly recommend springing for the upgraded 4-cell, 63-watt-hour battery in our review unit, since the base model comes with a 3-cell, 42-watt-hour battery that likely won't last as long. I've appeared on CBS News, in USA Today, and at many other outlets to offer analysis on breaking technology news. The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light. In addition to the great display, you get decent speakers, comfortable input devices, and pretty wide I/O, which not only offers two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, but also an optional SIM card slot, a MicroSD card slot, and more.Moderate, easily adjustable performance, but not for continuous loads - the Latitude handles light to moderate office work. Flagship business laptops aren't meant for hardcore gaming, and the Latitude 7420 is no exception. It's nice to see Intel's newer Iris Xe integrated graphics outperform the older UHD Graphics of the ThinkPads, but the Dell's scores in our 3DMark and Superposition gaming simulations are nothing to get excited about.
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