Whereas Dell’s Latitude line has all the time been synonymous with enterprise laptops, the Latitude 9440 2-in-1 (begins at $1,919; $3,093.60 as examined) has some DNA from its shopper flagship. The brand new convertible sports activities a design extra knowledgeable by the futuristic Dell XPS 13 Plus than its conservative company predecessor. It is each an improve and a glow-up, with new options, added controls, and a sturdy laptop computer design. We simply want the 2-in-1 elements received a bit extra consideration, because the machine modifications from elegant to awkward as quickly as you fold again the display screen for pill mode.
Configuration Choices Galore
Enterprise laptops just like the Latitude sequence are hardly ever bought off the shelf, with producers promoting a variety of choices for every thing from processors and storage to connectivity and different exterior options. The 9440 2-in-1 is not any exception. The bottom mannequin sells for $1,919 and comes with a thirteenth Gen Intel Core i5 CPU, 16GB of reminiscence, a 256GB solid-state drive, and a 2,560-by-1,600-pixel IPS contact display screen. Our evaluation unit steps as much as a Core i7-1365U (two Efficiency cores, eight Environment friendly cores, 12 threads), 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD and sells for $3,093.60.
Different choices embrace as much as 64GB of reminiscence, as a lot as 2TB of storage, a fingerprint reader within the palm relaxation, 5G cellular broadband to occupy the SIM slot, and a number of other battery and charger decisions.
As a enterprise machine, the Latitude can be accessible with a variety of software program choices, starting from the Microsoft 365 suite to Adobe Acrobat and a 12-month subscription to McAfee Enterprise Safety. CPUs with Intel’s vPro IT manageability tech can be found on most configurations, as is a subscription to Dell Apex Managed Machine Service, in addition to one other prolonged service choice that features next-day onsite help.
Slick Enterprise Laptop computer, Tacked-On 2-in-1
Dell payments the Latitude 9440 2-in-1 because the “world’s smallest 14-inch industrial PC,” and whereas we did not examine it to each potential rival a fast survey reveals that its 0.64 by 12.2 by 8.5 inches are in truth extra compact than the 14-inch HP EliteBook 840 G9 clamshell and the Lenovo ThinkBook 14s Yoga Gen 2 convertible. The Dell even has a smaller footprint than the ultraportable Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11.
Whereas it might be bodily smaller, it is not lighter. At 3.4 kilos, the aluminum chassis is nearly a pound heavier than the X1 Carbon. Neither is it essentially the most snug 2-in-1 to carry in pill mode: The tapered clamshell design leaves loads of exhausting edges to cope with while you attempt to maintain it, and the palm relaxation’s sharp edge is much more uncomfortable while you’re feeling it dig into the criminal of your arm.
Ergonomics apart, the 2-in-1 design is greater than practical. The 360-degree hinge makes it straightforward to flip between laptop computer and pill modes, with presentation-friendly tent and kiosk modes in between. The display screen’s QHD decision seems implausible in any mode, and the IPS panel is simply as vibrant and colourful in panorama and portrait modes, with none shade shifting as you modify your viewing angle. The contact sensitivity is great, and Dell’s practically bezel-free InfinityEdge design is straightforward to carry and grasp with out by accident triggering something on the contact display screen. And you will find no cause to hesitate with utilizing contact right here—Dell has added anti-smudge and anti-glare coatings to the glass-covered show.
Total, the look is excellent, with a near-black graphite end that may take a look at dwelling in any work atmosphere, and an sudden toughness regardless of the slim design. Dell says the Latitude 9440 2-in-1 has handed MIL-STD 810H assessments in opposition to journey hazards like shock and vibration; since it is not a rugged laptop computer I would not attempt getting it moist or taking it right into a mud storm, nevertheless it ought to survive bumps, bruises, and desk-height drops.
Contact Controls: Cease, Collaborate, and Hear
As talked about, the 9440 borrows the “zero-lattice keyboard” design that debuted on final yr’s XPS 13 Plus, and whereas it is undoubtedly totally different in appear and feel to your common enterprise laptop computer, I’ve to confess it is rising on me. Lit with mini LEDs to supply greater brightness with out hurting battery life, the sq. keycaps sit flush with the floor of the deck, leading to a chic and barely futuristic look. Not like the XPS 13 Plus, nevertheless, the Latitude’s keyboard would not span edge to edge however is flanked by a pair of slim stereo audio system.
The keyboard is top-notch. Dell has clearly paid consideration to laptop computer keyboard critics: The design promotes easy typing with no studying curve, ample journey for every keystroke, and a usually snug expertise. The one actual criticism is the palm relaxation, whose exhausting edge will dig into your wrists for those who aren’t cautious. I am all for clear traces and glossy designs, however a slight softening of the perimeters would go a great distance towards bettering this convertible’s consolation.
The huge touchpad stretches from the keyboard to the lip of the palm relaxation, with out even a slim strip framing it on both facet. Referred to as a Collaboration Touchpad, it gives haptic suggestions together with 4 glowing LED icons that solely present up throughout video calls. These glowing glyphs are quick-access controls for Zoom and different videoconferencing instruments, letting you rapidly display screen share, chat, mute and unmute the microphone, and toggle webcam video.
The webcam in query combines full HD 1080p decision with IR face recognition for Home windows Good day safe logins and a built-in shutter to stop snooping while you’re not utilizing it. Urgent F9 in on a regular basis use or the touchpad management throughout a Zoom name triggers a bodily shutter inside the highest bezel. The quilt has an easy-to-spot crimson shade, so when the digicam is offline. A white LED signifies that the webcam is lively.
Any Port You Need…as Lengthy as It is Thunderbolt
One facet of the Latitude 9440 2-in-1 that is not heavy on options is its port choice, which consists of a trio of Thunderbolt 4 ports as an alternative of frequent connectors like USB Sort-A or HDMI. Every of the three USB-C connectors can deal with the AC adapter cable or cost different gadgets with Energy Supply or accommodate a DisplayPort monitor dongle. If it’s essential to use an older port kind, you possibly can all the time discover docking stations and adapters, however it’s kind of of a nuisance.
Contemplating how a lot Dell’s XPS 13 Plus clearly influenced the brand new Latitude’s design, I suppose we should always be glad about the three.5mm audio jack on the laptop computer’s proper flank. The ultraportable jettisoned that very important connector on the belief you’d use solely Bluetooth headphones or audio system.
Talking of Bluetooth, you get that and Wi-Fi 6E for wi-fi connectivity. For those who roam the place there is no Wi-Fi to be discovered, the abovementioned 5G cellular broadband is a $214 add-on while you configure your system.
Testing the Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1: Enterprise-Prepared Efficiency
For our benchmark charts, I’ve in contrast the Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 with two different enterprise convertibles, the HP Dragonfly Folio G3, and final yr’s mannequin, the Dell Latitude 9430 2-in-1. I rounded out the charts with two main ultraportables, the 13-inch Apple MacBook Professional M2 and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11. All these laptops earned excessive rankings, and most gained Editors’ Selection awards, so the competitors is fierce. All are thin-and-light laptops with built-in graphics somewhat than discrete GPUs; 16GB of RAM appears to be the usual, however the brand new Latitude boasts 32GB, which ought to give it a multitasking increase.
Productiveness Assessments
The primary benchmark of UL’s PCMark 10 simulates a wide range of real-world productiveness and content-creation workflows to measure total efficiency for office-centric duties akin to phrase processing, spreadsheeting, internet looking, and videoconferencing. We additionally run PCMark 10’s Full System Drive take a look at to evaluate the load time and throughput of a laptop computer’s storage.
Three benchmarks give attention to the CPU, utilizing all accessible cores and threads, to charge a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 makes use of that firm’s Cinema 4D engine to render a fancy scene, whereas Geekbench 5.4 Professional by Primate Labs simulates in style apps starting from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine studying. Lastly, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to transform a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p decision (decrease occasions are higher).
Our closing productiveness take a look at is workstation maker Puget Programs’ PugetBench for Photoshop, which makes use of the Inventive Cloud model 22 of Adobe’s well-known picture editor to charge a PC’s efficiency for content material creation and multimedia functions. It is an automatic extension that executes a wide range of basic and GPU-accelerated Photoshop duties starting from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving a picture to making use of masks, gradient fills, and filters.
Intel’s thirteenth Gen U-series processors have confirmed to be a combined bag performance-wise. In comparison with their twelfth Era predecessors, the efficiency positive factors are typically clear however different occasions nonexistent; typically that is all the way down to the specifics of the construct, with components like chassis airflow enjoying a job. In any case, you should not assume {that a} laptop computer with thirteenth Gen Intel silicon will all the time beat one with twelfth Gen. Certainly, final yr’s Latitude 9430 2-in-1 edged this yr’s 9440 in our CPU benchmarks.
In additional application-oriented somewhat than artificial efficiency assessments, nevertheless, the brand new Dell did advantageous, posting glorious scores in PCMark 10 and Photoshop. It is clearly a advantageous alternative for on a regular basis jobs like Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint and even for gentle media modifying, if not fairly as much as the usual of the mighty M2 chip within the MacBook Professional.
Graphics Assessments
We take a look at Home windows PCs’ graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark: Night time Raid (extra modest, appropriate for laptops with built-in graphics), and Time Spy (extra demanding, appropriate for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
For extra graphics perception, we additionally run two assessments from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses each low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like picture rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Automotive Chase assessments, rendered offscreen to accommodate totally different show resolutions, train graphics and compute shaders utilizing the OpenGL programming interface and {hardware} tessellation respectively. The extra frames per second (fps), the higher.
Built-in graphics are the secret relating to most convertibles and ultraportables, however you will see a wide range of leads to our primary rendering assessments even when they’re all in need of the devoted GPUs of gaming laptops. Apple primarily constructed a strong GPU into the M2 chip and crushed it in our GFXBench assessments, whereas the Latitude 9440 2-in-1 can be advantageous for workplace work if not hardcore gaming or workstation-class CAD or CGI.
Battery and Show Assessments
We take a look at laptop computer battery life by enjoying a regionally saved 720p video file (the open-source Blender film Tears of Metal) with show brightness at 50% and audio quantity at 100%. We be certain the battery is totally charged earlier than the take a look at, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
To measure show efficiency, we additionally use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Home windows software program to measure a laptop computer display screen’s shade saturation—what share of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 shade gamuts or palettes the show can present—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per sq. meter).
In our video rundown, the Latitude 9440 2-in-1 lasted a powerful 16-and-a-half hours, trailing the exceptional stamina of the MacBook Professional however handily beating the opposite Home windows programs together with its predecessor. That is an extended runtime than half of the programs in our greatest enterprise laptops roundup and qualifies it for our checklist of laptops with the longest battery life.
The Dell’s show high quality is sort of ample, too, a bit shy of cellular workstation or OLED shade constancy however greater than wealthy and vivid sufficient for productiveness work. Its brightness can be fairly excessive, as one of many few laptops to promote 500 nits of brightness after which exceed that quantity in testing.
Verdict: A Staff Participant, Not an MVP
We discover loads to love in regards to the Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 in laptop computer mode. The show is first-rate, delivering glorious shade and brightness, and the keyboard is a big win as properly, with a frameless design and an infinite touchpad with one-touch Zoom controls. Its battery life can be close to the highest of our charts. However in pill mode, the 9440 reveals its faults, with a hard-edged palm relaxation and a bit of additional heft. Dell’s simplified port choice is okay if you have already got a group of adapters or a docking station, however maddening for those who simply need to plug in an HDMI monitor. And apart from battery life, the convertible fails to point out a significant efficiency increase from Intel’s thirteenth Gen {hardware} versus the equal twelfth Gen Core i7 chip we examined within the Latitude 9430 final yr.
That is not sufficient to maintain the Latitude from a superb rating, nevertheless it does hold it from Editors’ Selection honors. Company consumers loyal to Dell can be completely glad, however we take into account the HP Dragonfly Folio G3 a greater premium 2-in-1 and the all-but-flawless Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon a greater ultraportable.
