Dell Latitude 7490

I think it looks pretty good. I don't do much more than Office type apps though.

 

Dell Pro Support has been very helpful. Glad I paid a bit extra for it. They authorized onsite replacement of the motherboard and fan for coil whine and finally a SSD replacement as well. I actually declined a full system exchange because my Innolux screen is perfect and don't want to enter that lottery. To my surprise (and relief) they gave me a brand new Samsung 256gb PM961 to replace the crappy Toshiba SSD. Did a fresh W10 install and updated all drivers. After a few runs of crystal disk mark my seq read speeds hover between 2500-3100 Mb/s and write speeds are now 1200-1400 Mb/s. Slightly higher than Samsung's quoted speeds for the 256gb. Coil whine is still present when under load but much better than before, barely audible. Will see how it goes over the next couple weeks before return period ends.

 

I have been okay with my Toshiba KXG50NZ512G 512GB drive. I have not done benchmarks, but it's certainly fast. Everything I use loads quickly - and that is mostly Office type apps. Boot time is ~10 seconds. I also have the same drive in my XPS 9370 and it feels faster even though it has a slightly slowed CPU (i5-8350U vs i5-8250U).

I doubt the average person would notice the difference between a SATA m.2 SSD and a Samsung 970 Pro under normal conditions.

 

Average person would never notice. It is principle though. I paid more for the "NVM-e class 40" config. The write speed of the Toshiba SSD is not even SATA 3 speed. We are talking SATA 2 speed! That is totally inexcusable in 2018 especially when they are charging more for NVM-e SSD. Lenovo is using the latest Samsung PM981 SSDs in their ThinkPad 480s and X1 laptops...

 

Just ran AS SSD on my machine and the score was 1588. I had run the same test with a PM981 and it was 4790! Maybe I'll try chatting in with support and see what they say, part number for a Dell 512GB PM981 is 9Y4V9.

Dell now has a Class-60 drive available. Saw it on a Precision workstation.

 

Yeah....that didn't go so well. Said they had to replace with the same exact drive. But they did offer me part number CXKCK.....which is a Western Digital 2.5" SATA 500GB 7200RPM drive. Um...... Called in and got someone different who is putting in a request for the Samsung....anything but the Toshiba. Sent them benchmarks between the Toshiba XG5 and the Samsung PM981. I do have another 7490 with a Samsung PM981.....so I know they can do it!

 

Has anyone considered swapping the plastic back for the carbon fibre back? I just wondered if you could source the part from Dell, how easy it would be to do yourself.

 

Posted yesterday that my 3rd 7490 refurb was nearly perfect, deleted my post when I noticed that my display flickers occasionally. It occurs randomly. Hard to describe. I opened the cover and saw that the IR cable was not fully connected so I made sure that was fixed and also pressed on the LCD power cable to make sure it too was properly / fully connected. We will see what happens. Has anyone else experienced this? Is it a faulty LCD cable or a faulty LCD?

I got the AUO non touch FHD SLP panel, it is a perfect panel in my opinion. Aside from this weird issue.

 

Joining the 7490 club and my unit arrives from Dell Outlet next week. I finally gave up on my Latitude e6420. It treated me well and still works great but it's time to move on.

Q1: Can Thunderbolt 3 be added after or is it integral to the motherboard?
Q2: I got the FHD screen without IR camera. Can the HD camera be swapped out with the HD IR camera?

Found answers:
Q1: No, it is integral to the motherboard
Q2: No, unless you also get a new bezel which is wider to accommodate the IR sensors. You'll also need a different cable to accommodate the IR sensors.

Thanks

 

Do you know if your panel is the same as this one:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Latitude-7490-i5-8350U-FHD-Laptop-Review.309000.0.html

They don't seem to mention if it's SLP or not in the review. Have you been able to compare your 7490 with one without SLP?

Screen quality is of paramount importance to me because of bad eyes, everything else comes second, and I can't afford e.g. a Carbon X1 with that beautiful screen, and the panel (AUO503D (D04YD_B140HAN)) in the review above would work for me, but not less quality than that!
It's just that I have no frigging clue on how to get it. Neither Dell or the re-sellers where I live (Sweden) specify exactly what panel you get for each configuration.

Can anyone help me please? I talked to a Dell tech guy in Finland (who was super nice!) but he had no clue and forwarded me to Denmark....where the call got interrupted.

Can someone elaborate what's so wrong with AUO?
I don't know so much about different panels so I'm genuinely interested to hear opinions.

In the review below they seem to have an AUO panel, and it performs very well just looking at the numbers (better than the touch panel that they also have a review on):
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Latitude-7490-i5-8350U-FHD-Laptop-Review.309000.0.html

FYI I have no affiliation with notebookcheck.net even though I've posted links to them two times now, it's just that they have the most (only?!) extensive review on the 7490's so far.

@jlp0202, now that I read your two posts (that I quoted) side by side, I see a bit of contradiction...