Dell Latitude 7490

The SLP panels are now available. I was waiting for that. This is what I put together at Dell Premiere:

i5-8350 (1.7Ghz quad core), Windows 10 Pro, ThunderBolt 3, 8GB, 512GB NVMe, 14.1" FHD (1920 x 1080) Anti-Glare, SLP Panel, IR CAM/Mic, WLAN w/ASA, Narrow, Mag Alloy, Non Touch, backlit keyboard, Intel Wireless-AC 8265 Wi-Fi + BT, 60 Whr long life battery, fingerprint reader, 3 year ProSupport.

$1,986.39 plus 8% California tax and other fee is $2,121.50.

Would hope that will give me 16-20 hours of battery.

 

The 7490 series has now hit the outlet with 8th gen cpus.

 

Perhaps we will have some hands on experiences on the heat/noise/battery characteristics of the quad cores now.

 

I'll be ordering an outlet model with one of the quad core i5s as a replacement for my wife's E7440 next time a coupon pops up (barring them all selling out quickly.)

 

The outlet updates inventory at (+/- 15 minutes) 15:30 CST and 0130 CST. You will usually find the best deals on the 0130 update as you will not be competing with the dell reps who will often pull the best systems/deals and set them aside.

 

I don't have a 7490, but I did receive my 7390 2 in 1 last week with the I7-8650U quad core. Coming from a E7450 with an I7-5600U. (both systems with 16GB ram and 1TB SSD, the E7450 had a Samsung 850 Evo SATA SSD while the 7390 has a SK Hynix PCIE Class 40 SSD).

As far as heat, the system does get pretty warm to the touch on the bottom when connected to the TB16 dock, driving 3 external monitors and running my usual array of apps (am a sys admin so basically vmware, windows, and various storage subsystem management apps as well as a few dozen RDP and SSH windows). The fan tends to stay on full speed while docked and battery charging, once battery is fully charged the fan will slow down and occasionally stop. The noise from the fan is a higher pitch but lower db sound than the E7450. Overall I don't notice it much (I'm next to a noisy road so the exterior noise is louder than the fan) but I'd imagine in a quiet office, you'll hear the fan. While on battery power, the fan rarely comes on so it's virtually silent. If you listen carefully to the bottom, you'll hear a little bit of what I'm guessing is coil whine. It's not bad though.

Battery wise, I got the 60 watt hour long life battery, So far in a week of use, I'm seeing about 10 to 12 hours for general web browsing. Watching youtube or netflix videos brings it down to about 8 hours of run time. This is significantly more than on my E7450 which got only about 3 hours of general browsing or 2 hours of video. but that's on a 3 year old battery with 24% wear.

There are a few bugs that I'm hoping Dell can fix with firmware or driver updates. I don't know if these apply to 7490 as well but I'll list them anyway
1) System won't go into hibernate. If you force it to hibernate, when you wake it, it will BSOD and reboot.
2) If system is in sleep and you plug it into the TB16 dock, it crashes and won't power back up for a few minutes. Power button has no effect when this happens.
3) When I leave my Yubi key MFA token inserted in the USB port of the laptop and have the TB16 dock connected, if I try to boot or reboot, it does not get to boot screen. The yubikey led flashes, the power button is lit, but screen (both internal and external) are black. Have to pull the dock, or the yubikey out for system to boot.

I am amazed at how small and lightweight the 7390 2 in 1 is, while still being significantly faster than my 7450 was, and having 3x to 4x the battery life.

 

Thank you so much for that detailed review. That really answers a lot of questions.

 

Looks like there are some great configs on the outlet right now - both for 7390 and 7490.

My experience with the E7450 has been better, I could get 6-7 hours with moderate use with an older battery. I do prefer that the fans not kick in at all when not needed.

Between the 7390 2 in 1 and the 7390, I think I would prefer the non-2-in-1 option, but I'd much rather them reduce the bezels on the 7490 successor!

 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-...U-FHD-Touchscreen-Laptop-Review.294460.0.html

 

I got a pretty maxed out system from outlet (i7, 32GB ram, 1TB nvme drive, narrow bezel touch screen, etc) and I am pretty happy with it. It's as fast as my previous Precision 5510 for work and I don't need the gpu and prefer the longer battery life. In case it helps someone, I also ordered the non-touch (my preferred config as I don't use touchscreens) and the one with regular touch screen and decided to return those and keep the touch with narrow bezel version. The review link above shows the one with narrow bezel. The two other configurations have a larger bezel above the display which I didn't like (they are all 14" displays but the narrow bezel version has the LCD mounted higher and hence the top bezel is smaller - the cameras are still on top as opposed to the stupid location below the LCD in precision/xps). Also, I put the 2x16GB GSkill 2666 memory I had in my previous system in the latitude and it was able to run it at full 2666 speed, until I upgraded BIOS to the latest version (I think it's 1.2.8) and the speed is now capped at 2400. Not that I care much but just an FYI.

PS: The 1TB drive in my system is a Toshiba. The 2 other systems that I returned had 256GB Samsung PM981 (to my surprise) and a low-end 512GB nvme drive (don't remember the brand). I guess they just pick and pack whatever is in front of them...