Robot or human?

Intel’s new silicon and a honed thiết kế make a great combo

ByMark Pickavancelast updated 6 August 20

Price, availability & value

If you are willing to accept previous generation hãng sản xuất intel technology và relatively little storage space, a Dell Latitude 7490 can be bought for as little £1,119 ($1,049).

Bạn đang xem: Robot or human?

However, if you’d lượt thích something with more current silicon inside and SSD storage, then the cost is £1,219 ($1,209). A flagship model, with a core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM & 512GB of storage is £1,529 ($2,039). Compared with what Lenovo, HP & Toshiba ask for similarly specified hardware, that price seems, lượt thích the whole 7490 series, very competitive.

Lenovo has the ThinkPad T480, although it doesn’t offer the same processor on that mã sản phẩm (yet). It isn’t on the Lenovo X1 Carbon either, and that costs more for a lower spec.

On price, the HP EliteBook 1040 G4 is a good fit, even if it is still using hãng intel 7th-gen silicon on that model.

Asus has the excellent ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490UA that can be found for a little more, but comes with a vi xử lý core i7 class CPU, 16GB of RAM và double the storage of this review model.

As with most of the Dell range, customization options are available at the point of purchase, but with this series, the amount of RAM and storage is fixed for each model.

If you don’t lượt thích the combinations on offer, some memory và storage enhancements are possible by the kết thúc user.

Design

For good or bad, the Latitude 7490 is made mostly of plastic.

Where others obfuscate the exact nature of their devices with paint and thin metal facings, Dell embraces plastic as its material of choice, & the surface finish achieved with it is admirable.

Poorly designed plastic machines flex và buckle, but the Latitude 7490 feels ridged & robust in all the critical areas, like the hinge, và where you place your palms to type.

The screen hinge is strong and allows the display to lớn lie entirely flat. What value this might have on a machine that doesn’t have a cảm biến display we’re unsure, but there might be some advantage we’ve overlooked. Some 7490 models vì have cảm ứng displays, we’re told, although at the time of writing we couldn’t find any on the UK or US Dell sites.

Because of the 180-degree hinge travel, Dell kept the rear of the 7490 entirely clean, with no ports or vents whatsoever at the back. All the ports are on the sides, và the vents are underneath. Therefore, it’s worth bearing in mind that you should never place the machine on a soft surface where the vents could become blocked, as it would undoubtedly overheat.

The ports haven’t changed at all from the 7480 series, with triple USB 3.1 (Gen 1) Type-A ports & a single Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C. There is also an RJ-45 Ethernet port, Smart card slot, microSD card & SIM card receptacles.

The đánh giá machine didn’t have the LTE module to lớn 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.

Xem thêm: Sơ Đồ Mạch Sạc Acquy Tự Ngắt Khi Đầy, Mạch Sạc Tự Động 12V Có Tự Ngắt

Not providing a full-size SD thẻ slot is mildly annoying, but adapters for Type-A USB ports don’t cost much.

The keyboard và trackpad are both better than we’d anticipated & exude the quality we’d expect from a more expensive brand. We especially liked the trackpad, which has keys at both top và bottom instead of using a flexible lower edge.

Given the amount of gutter space khổng lồ the left & right of the keyboard, maybe a wider design could have been employed. That said, the keyboard thiết kế works well enough for typing, even with large hands.

Another strong point is the AU Optronics 14-inch IPS panel that’s a decent brightness và has a healthy color gamut. It also doesn’t use pulse-width modulation (PWM) khổng lồ adjust brightness, with the negative impact that can have on eyesight.

Ergonomically, this is one of the smaller machines in this category, if only by a few millimeters. There are smaller machines, like the Lenovo X1 Carbon, but this device is certainly very portable.

As a replacement for the previous 7480 models, the new 7490 looks much the same from the outside, but has had a complete overhaul internally.

New hãng sản xuất intel Kaby Lake R processors have gone beyond what designers could previously imagine with a 15W budget, and the reviews model had an Intel bộ vi xử lý core i5-8350U quad-core 1.7GHz (Turbo 3.6GHz) processor under the hood, which is the equal of many desktop CPUs.

Technically this cpu can take 25W in a sprint, but also gear down to 10W should longevity be the primary objective.

Here is the Dell Latitude 7490 configuration sent to lớn lrocrevn.com Pro for review:

CPU: Intel core i5-8350U quad-core 1.7GHz

Graphics: hãng intel UHD Graphics 620

RAM: 8GB DDR4 RAM (2400MHz)

Screen: 14-inch 1,920 x 1,080 resolution IPS

Storage: intel 545s M.2 256GB SATA SSD

Ports: 3 x USB 3.1 ren 1 (1 with PowerShare), 1 x USB Type-C, 1 x HDMI 1.4, 1 x Gigabit Ethernet, headset/mic combo jack, SD 4.0 memory thẻ reader, external uSIM card tray (optional)

Connectivity: Dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, công nghệ bluetooth 4.2

Camera: 720p

Weight: 1.4kg

Size: 331 x 220.9 x 17.9mm (W x D x H)

Battery: 7,500mAh

The three main pieces of the security puzzle are a Smart card reader, NFC sensor & fingerprint reader. Those who also want face recognition can địa chỉ it as an option, but the đánh giá machine just had a simple 720p 2 chiều camera.

Those who are inherently paranoid, and we all should be by now, will be concerned that the camera doesn’t have a privacy cover.

The fingerprint reader is a high-quality device that rarely misread in our tests. As this is likely to be the security mechanism most people will use, it’s a big plus point that it works reliably.

Specifications

The Intel bộ vi xử lý core i5-8350U quad-core CPU is rapidly becoming the darling of laptop designers. It delivers much of the power that the Intel core i7-8550U offers but has a lower unit cost & a less detrimental impact on battery life.

The 8GB of DDR4 system memory và 256GB of storage is enough to run, but heavy users might find that storage gets somewhat snug after a few months use.

The Dell policy on memory and storage is that these things aren’t generally adjustable in the customization part of the purchase path, và therefore if you want more, then you need khổng lồ choose a different model. Or, get a screwdriver out and source the parts for a user upgrade.