Dell Latitude 7490

I would suggest a more scientific approach: Note the power drain shown by BatteryInfoview for maximum, middle and minimum display brightness when the computer is idle. This facilitates comparison with other 7490s or 7480s. A display which saves 1W under light usage when the total power drain is 5W is very significant but that 1W won't make much difference under heavier workload drawing, say, 25W.

John

 

Thanks for sharing this info. Would love to hear more observations over time.

I'm tempted to go for a quad core 7490 but I really enjoy the battery life of the 7480 and E7450. I'm hopeful the battery life is comparable.

 

Where's the fun in that? I'll see what I can do.

 

There's plenty of fun in watching how low you can get the power drain to go under different operating conditions. My Latitude 7370 can get down to little over 3W under light usage. You also learn what factors are important in maximising battery time. Having Bluetooth turned on used to create a significant battery drain but maybe these days Bluetooth is more power efficient.

John

 

Testing the new super lower power SLP LCD option.Currently, the SLP only has a 3-4% battery yield over the base 1080p monitor after about an hour.

Although the monitors appeared identical when plugged in, they look quite different now that they are unplugged. The SLP monitor has a blue cast, though I can't tell if it's dimmer.

I'll post the battery report once everything runs. Running it on idle, Maximum Power battery setting, max brightness. Let me know if there's any questions.

edit: The SLP is a 43wh battery, actually, the left laptop is a 60whr. Extremely disappointing, particularly when the weight different is only about .2 or .3 lbs. I should still be able to calculate the average voltage and watt usage rates. There seems to be a constant 5% gap in remaining battery, but a widening number of hours remaining.

 

I just picked up a 7490 off the Outlet. Hard to find with both Thunderbolt and a fingerprint reader...but managed to get one with those, plus an SLP screen and IR camera. I wasn't looking for those features, but hey, why not? Plus, with an NVME 512GB, I just had to sit and hope that the lottery was kind. LiteOn, so I didn't get the Samsung I'd hoped for. Oh well. I'll bump it to a 1TB 970 Evo some day anyway. Bumped it to 32GB RAM, and now I'm debating on whether or not sell off my workstation P50, since I can get by on the 7490 pretty easily for what I do.

Are there any firmwares (beyond the latest ControlVault2 stuff) or anything to tweak the fingerprint reader? It SUCKS compared to the Thinkpads I've owned or used at work. I get about 90% first try attempts on the Yoga 260 or P50 I use at work and at home respectively, but the Dell FPR is closer to 50/50 or less. It may just be that since it's more recessed, I need to adjust myself, but it just seems really bad when compared to my phone or other laptops with the touch FPR (as opposed to swipe, like my work HP uses).

 

Anyone have any updated comments on living with the SLP display?

Any noticeable difference in day-to-day use/color accuracy/battery life?

It's going to be hard to comment on the battery life I guess. Perhaps under linux, one could you powertop or something to get an estimate of the power draw from the display.

 

My calculations showed about a 7% difference in battery drain rate over an hour's time (max brightness). So the drain of the normal matte FHD display was 107% of the drain of the SLP at max brightness.

I can post my data. I'm sending it back and going with the X1 Carbon, after seeing the NotebookCheck display results for the matte FHD -- the contrast and black levels blow away the competition. The black levels are 43% better than the Dell's FHD, and the contrast is 77% higher. Those numbers aren't something to scoff at, especially when the Dell is a full pound heavier.

 

Thanks for the info. Is the X1 Carbon's battery life better than the 7490? The deal breaker for me on the X1 Carbon is the lack of real touchpad buttons (the ones at the base) and the stories of Lenovo's customer support. IMHO Dell Business support is arguably the best of all (not even Apple comes close for convenience etc).

Just curious, aren't the X1 Carbon's also a part of the 'display panel lottery' as the 7490s? The notebookcheck reviews usually only talk about the panel they received, but those vary between different units.

 

My Carbon arrived with the reviewed panel. I'm not sure how much variance the panel has and don't have any professional testing tools. Will have to test it in sunlight tomorrow. Based on the numbers they found I'm SUPER excited, though. I haven't seen levels this good on any other matte panel.

Here's the data I collected on the SLP panel if anyone is interested. Sorry it took so long!

Wanted to do more with it but here's the raw if anyone wants to play with it. The First 15%-20% battery drop is the most valid, after that I ran random YouTube videos and forgot to play them on both at same time, etc, so it is not reliable data.

The % rate difference for the SLP is simply not worth it, from my analysis. Maybe at lower brightness levels it counts more, but at max brightness it saved only 7% over the typical FHD.