Dell Latitude 14 7000 Series (E7450)

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Pros Rugged, MIL-SPEC-grade construction. Removable battery. Bright, crisp 1080p screen. Two pointing devices. Solid-state drive offers decent storage. Good connectivity. Comfortable keyboard. 802.11ac + Bluetooth 4.0. Compatible with wired and WiGig wireless docks.

Cons No touch screen. Bottom Line The Dell Latitude 14 7000 Series (E7450) business ultrabook has plenty to keep you productive at work, including a bright 1080p HD screen, a rugged build, a fifth-generation Core i5 power, and 10+ hours of battery life.

By Joel Santo Domingo

The Latitude 14 7000 Series (E7450) ($1,509.09 as tested) updates the Dell Latitude E7440 Touch with a fifth-generation Intel Core i5 processor. Both are ultrabooks that should appeal to you if you're a midlevel businessperson who needs to stay productive on the road. It has many of its predecessor's strengths, including premium features, excellent battery life, and MIL-SPEC ruggedization. The Latitude E7450 trumps last year's model in performance, and it's our Editors' Choice for business ultrabooks.

Design and Features
Some design choices on the Latitude E7450 are decidedly old school. The ultrabook measures 0.8 by 13.25 by 9.25 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.59 pounds. It's s MIL-SPEC rated, which means it was tested to make sure it could handle damp, dusty, high-vibration, and extremely hot and cold environments, so it is more than qualified to survive the day-to-day physical demands of an enterprise-class business laptop. If you drop it on the floor from a coffee shop table or accidentally tip your water bottle over the keyboard, the laptop should be fine after a short rest to dry out. It has a charcoal-gray top lid and black keyboard deck, and a wide touchpad, along with an integrated pointing stick. While many laptops (even those oriented for business) have eliminated dual pointing devices, this is still a welcome feature if you're accustomed to using a pointing stick as your mouse. The two rows of separate mouse buttons that sit below the space bar and below the touchpad are a more traditional setup than the one-piece touchpad found in consumer laptops and even some business models like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch (2014) and the Lenovo ThinkPad T440s. The newest versions of the Lenovo X1 and ThinkPad T Series have reverted to separate mouse buttons for the pointing stick, so we surmise that business users and IT buyers have made their preference for traditional controls clear to PC manufacturers.

The 14-inch, 1,920-by-1,080-resolution LCD screen is bright, and text is particularly sharp, while the matte finish helps quell reflections. It's not a touch screen as in the previous iteration, which may be a drawback for businesses that have transitioned to Windows 8.1 Pro. You can still configure this laptop with a touch screen for an additional $168. Dell will preinstall Windows 7 Professional at no cost, or have your IT guys install it after purchase, since the same license covers one or the other. Keep in mind that Windows 10, which is coming this summer as a free upgrade, is expected to lessen reliance on a touch screen as well.

The port selection is excellent. The E7450 has a mini DisplayPort, an Ethernet port, a headset jack, an HDMI port, a Noble security port, an SD card slot, a Smart Card reader, and three USB 3.0 ports. The USB ports are black instead of the usual blue, but there aren't any USB 2.0 ports to confuse your users, so it's fine. The ultrabook works with Dell's E-Port docking port replicators for external peripherals and WiGig wireless dock, or you can simply use the built-in ports for multi-display support. The system comes with a standard Dell 802.11ac Wi-Fi card with Bluetooth 4.0 for wireless connections.

The 256GB solid-state drive (SSD) offers a good amount of space, and is quick to boot and launch applications. The drive is unencumbered by bloatware, as your IT department will dictate the software load while setting up your laptop. Our review unit came with a standard 3-year warranty with on-site service after remote diagnostic.

Performance
The Latitude E7450 runs on a fifth-generation Intel Core i5-5200U processor with Intel HD Graphics 5500 graphics. It helped the system achieve a very good score of 2,681 points on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional test, which is competitive with rivals like the HP EliteBook Folio 1040 G1 (G4U67UT) (2,775) and the Lenovo X1 Carbon Touch (2015) (2,646). These are much better performers on the same test than the HP EliteBook Folio 1020 (1,464), which has an Intel Core M CPU. Multimedia test scores are also strong (3 minutes on Handbrake; 5:22 on Adobe Photoshop CS6), though the latest 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro was a bit quicker (2:38 on Handbrake; 4:17 on CS6). You're unlikely to play many games, but the system's 3D test results were more than adequate for a business system.

Battery life is excellent at 10 hours 12 minutes in our battery rundown test, thanks to the removable 4-cell (52Whr) battery. That's about 2.5 hours longer than the Dell E7440 Touch. The 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro adds an hour, but most other Windows laptops lasted anywhere from just over 7 hours to a little over 9 on the same test.

The Dell Latitude 14 7000 series (E7450) is a solid, long-lasting business ultrabook. It's designed to keep you productive, whether you are filling out TPS reports or designing your latest e-commerce site. Its 10 hours of battery life means that you can complete the presentation on your commute to the office, and still have hours of power for the presentation itself. The only thing that the pricier Dell Latitude E7440 Touch has over the E7450 is a touch screen, and that's no problem if you use Windows 7 or plan to upgrade to the Windows 10. We have no reservations awarding the E7450 our Editors' Choice for business ultrabooks.

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