Dell Latitude E6400 - User review

It's been over a full week that I use my Latitude E6400 in great depth and here is my review on it. Now, before I start, I would like to apologies for my English, mistakes found are not done by any means of disrespect among you, the reader. Another note, I believe reading several reviews which all says the same thing is kind of useless, so I tried my best to present thing that was not mentioned before. This explains the reason why I don’t show the usual benchmarks, temperature on the machine, etc…

If this is the first review you read, I suggest you to read other reviews on notebookreview.com before reading this one. You can see me as a critical person.

Latitude E6400 Review

I use my laptop to run Office 2007 suit programs to type notes in classes, Steinberg WaveLab 5 to record them. I also use the laptop to do my assignments (Java/C++) at school and anywhere I want to go, as well as my own programming projects (large Flash application). Obviously, I use my machine to check my e-mail with Thunderbird, listen to music, and surf the web, etc... Ah yes, and I do plan to perform some light casual gaming on it on rare occasion.

System selected:

• Intel Core 2 Duo P8500 (2.26 GHz)
• Vista SP1 Business edition 64-bit
• Dual Channel (2 stick) 4GB of RAM 800Mhz DDR2 (6-6-6-12) Samsung
• 1440x900 LED backlit display (LG, I believe)
• Backlit keyboard
• Intel Wireless N 5100 card
• Panasonic DVD-Burner
• Dell 9 cell battery (made by: Panasonic)
• Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M
• Hitachi 160GB HDD 5200RPM

Super detailed system configuration [56K modem warning!]:
http://www.helpweaver.com/reviews/LatE6400/report.html

When I received my laptop two weeks ago, it was damaged, there was a dent, passing through the process of asking a new one and compensation was easy. I was never put on hold, service was great and in proper English speaking staff (possible location of service: U.S/Canada). I had fun trying all to call all the provided services offered, and the service was very good, one could say almost excellent. I negotiated the price of my machine when I originally ordered it (this was the only time I talked to someone potentially in India), and the service was fast, again no hold time, and negotiation on the price was easy. The sale representative didn't know his stuff on the laptop and claimed to me that it had Latitude ON. Obviously I don't have it, as it cannot be added to the machine, and I asked compensation for that as well. This was done without issue, and I got an apology from the sale representative and its supervisor and Dell customer service supervisor (note that I also got another apology from Dell customer service when I informed them of the damaged machine).

Returning the machine for a replacement was easy and fast. Dell sent me a UPS label via e-mail, which I had to print and put on the Dell box, and call UPS to come and pick it up.

Packaging
Packaging of the laptop was excellent. The box properly protected the machine, and the size is not excessively big where it wastes uselessly space, and not too small like some laptops that you buy in store, which fells like it was made from paper masher. Moreover, putting everything back in the box was very easy. The packaging could potentially lose a full mark as the accessory box is pretty much empty and could make the box smaller. However, considering that more accessories could be added onto the box, and that the box layout is designed for all or almost all Dell laptops, I can't deduct marks for that.
I gave it a 10/10

Accessories
Not much to say, I did get 4 disks with my laptop:
- Drivers and Utility disk
- Power DVD DX 8.0 disk
- Roxio version 9.0 DE disk
- Microsoft Vista 64-bit disk.
and 90W slim Latitude power adapter which I'll get to that later.

Vista 64-bit disk
I did re-install my laptop, not because of the junk in it (I'll get back to it), but to see what's on the Vista 64-bit disk (other than Vista of course).
This disk (a special Dell version of Vista disk) has the setup that is slightly different over my RETAIL disk of Vista 64-bit that I have on my PC. Small differences are: you are asked for which language you want before Vista setup actually starts, and despite having the product key of Vista, the setup did not ask me to enter it. (The product key on the disk is different from the one I have under my laptop). Finally, it adds the "Dell" pictures and a Dell support link in the System Properties panel. Other than this, nothing was touch. There was not even any driver for the machine. Full marks for this. 10/10.

Location of the Vista product key
Unlike unlike some HP, Acer, and Toshiba machines sold in Canada, the product key on this machine is found hidden inside the battery slot. Great location, as it cannot be damage by the environment and surface contact. In addition, it keeps the bottom design of the machine clean. 10/10.

Laptop - Build quality
The build quality is excellent. The laptop feels very sturdy and seams that it will last a very long time with every day usage. There is virtually no flex on the keyboard (very little when you apply high pressure) at any point and edge of the keyboard. The speaker’s grids don’t moves or vibrate. The bottom of the machine and the top, as well as the screen hinge is all in some sort of metal alloy. The screen cover is not brush aluminum as it might seem in the pictures, but rather a paint job design, which I prefer. Every port (I was unable to test the Firewire, Display Port ports due to a lack of supported device) including the combo eSATA/USB works perfectly and holds the plugs very well. One thing that needed to be done for the eSATA port to make it work perfectly is that you need to go in the BIOS and set the SATA controller to AHCI. The eSATA port is ideal to transfer/access large files, backup your computer, and restore from Image, (or in my case using a Windows Image created with Complete PC Backup) 9.5/10

Laptop - Actual build quality
After a full week of usage, I find myself a bit disappointing, because the plastic used on the palm rest and the screen frame is not that great. I am surprised this was not mentioned on a review before. The screen frame is strangely weak. It won't scratch with your nail or anything, but the smooth, soft rubber pad on the keyboard level of the machine makes permanent marks on the plastic. As well, as noted by a user in this community, the laptop labels can also mark the screen frame. In an attempt in removing the labels to prevent the screen frame from being damaged by the labels the glue of the sticker damaged the plastic palm rest. That is the only area that is affected. The keyboard, touchpad, mouse buttons side of the laptop and any other areas has no issues what's so ever. The upside about this, is that after looking at the self service manual on Dell website, these two parts (actually the whole laptop) is easily changeable. The bottom panel has a one screw setup, which is very easy to open (unscrew and slide the panel down and you have full access of the machine). A note on this panel, is that more screws or more slide locks would have been nice as the 2 front edges is a bit loose. However, it must be notes that this does not cause any issues, it doesn't produce any vibration or anything annoying. So this is only very minor details. Overall laptop actual built quality: 8.5/10.

Laptop - software
The laptop was virtually clean, and Vista 64-bit was FULLY updated (same for the provided OS disk). The only things that was found in the uninstall panel of Windows was, Roxio, Power DVD, latest version of Java and Flash, as well as, the Intel and Dell drivers and utilities. Something to be noted is that in Program Files folder has 4 directories: AT&T, Telus, Verizon and Sprint. These folders contained many files but no executable files (perhaps they are drivers). This might be for the optional add-on card that can be purchased from Dell for internet ""anywhere"" services. Please note that these directories was not there after Vista was installed with the Dell disk. These drivers can be installed using the Dell Drivers & Utilities disk. The BIOS, drivers, and device software was all installed with the latest versions.

Laptop - features
Every feature of the laptop: Microphone, ambient light sensor, keyboard backlit, screen brightness, touchpad, etc... works perfectly well. I had no issues. But, it must be noted that I am unable to try smart card reader and contact-less smart card reader that come with the machine due to a lack of these cards. The CPU seems to be changeable. Considering that these two card readers work perfectly I give it a: 9.5/10. Why 0.5 less? It might have been nice to have a generic Dell SmartCard to test the device and to be able to use it.

Laptop - features software/drivers
Here is the sad part... The video card drivers cannot be found on Nvidia website, you must use a modded .ini file which you need to replaced on the downloaded driver’s from Nvidia website. You do this to force the driver setup to accept the video card as its own. The modded “.ini” file works with the Quadro and Geforce drivers (modded .ini file can be downloaded safely from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/). Dell Control Point software suit sometimes but rarely crashes. This is not a everyday event. I would like to underline the fact of having these crashes on rare occasions, and that the software works pretty well in general. The Dell software tries to follow Vista look, which is nice.

Dell Control Point battery saver option is very attractive feature, can easily give you an extra 30min of battery life while having the wireless OFF, and simply typing text in Word and having the keyboard backlit turned off, and screen brightness to minimum, on your laptop. However, sometimes it losses tracks of the current settings especially after a wake up from sleep. When you come to disable it, it's shows as it is already disabled. So you need to restart you computer to re-unable every disabled device, and re-increase the color bit from 16 to 32-bit and Change the screen refresh rate from 40 to 60 Hz.

The touchpad/pointing stick driver is terrible, not abysmal but terrible. When you login into your account the mouse stop moving for several seconds until the drivers wakes up and it blocks Vista cursor animations all the time. Scrolling feature works perfectly which seams to work on more program than Logitech side scrolling feature on their mouses with Logitech's SetPoint driver. The tracking control of both touchpad and pointing stick works perfectly and easy to get used to, (Thanks to the ability to customize both devices separately). The driver is not packed with options, but has some. The drivers never crashed on me. Without the drivers the touchpad works great without issues, however the max mouse speed settings in Vista is not enough to properly move the mouse from one side of the screen to another in one stroke (in addition, makes the pointing stick mouse way too fast to use), and the scrolling feature is disabled of course. By scrolling up/down or left/right you can slide your finger on the touchpad and then perform a circular motion to continuously scroll in the direction you want. A great replacement to Logitech fast scroll wheel feature. Moreover, pressing both right and left click button on the lower mouse buttons on the touchpad performs a middle click and this action is configurable with the driver. 4/10

Our friend at notebookreview.com, dragonjo8, have found a solution to the non animating cursor while using the touchpad drivers.
Here is the fix: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=324048
Thanks dragonjo8!

Sound card drivers... oh boy! Let’s say do not upgrade it. Leave them as is. If you touch them you are asking for issues. Not that it will break Windows or anything like that, but the sound card won't function properly. Moreover, the initial as well as the latest drivers have options in the Vista sound panel that does not function at all (bass booster, virtual surround, etc...) [This might affect Vista 64-bit or Vista in general, either case, this should not occur. 64-bit OS is the future, not fully supporting such OS now is abysimal from the part of the company. They should be at least one step in front, not 100 miles behind] 4/10

Laptop - devices
The keyboard works perfectly. I have no real comments on it. It doesn't flex even on the edges, and is fairly quiet. Not super ultra quiet but quiet. [update] Comparing on what I tried and heard in class room/library, this keyboard is significantly quieter than the Dell Studio laptop. [/update] The backlight keyboard intensity can be adjusted and is bright and works great. You can set it so that that after X number of second/minutes of inactivity on the keyboard (or keyboard and mouse) to turn off by itself. When turning it off it performs a smooth dim out (fade out) transition which is very nice. Keyboard noise is matching Lenovo keyboards more or less. The keyboard layout is similar to a Logitech keyboards. 9/10 (Room for improvement on the quietness of the mouse buttons, shows finger grease (not finger print) on a very lit room if you have greasy fingers)

Mouse buttons are fairly quiet, again about the same as the Lenovo machines. Perfect in class rooms. 9.5/10 (Room for improvement on the quietness of the mouse buttons)

The screen is descent. It doesn't reflect, it's VERY bright, which is excellent when working outside with a big daylight sun. On normal usage I set my screen at minimum or about 30% brightness, as its bright enough. The lowest setting on the screen brightness is about the medium (~50%) setting on a standard Dell Inspiron screen. The view angle of the laptop is descent. It's perfect for an individual, but if you plan in having 12 people around you looking at the screen, then look somewhere else. Colors are alright... they are bland and it feels like the screen is not calibrated (which is miss calibrated if you use screen calibration tools). Thankfully with the Nvidia drivers you can adjust the colors to have it quiet near as a good CRT monitor, visually speaking of course (remember the great limitations of an TN paneled LCD). However, currently there is a bug in the Nvidia drivers where after reboot the color calibration doesn't get applied, you need to open the panel and move one of the color calibration sliders a bit to make it re-apply your settings that you previously set. (Since Nvidia adopted this new panel this bug exists, I don't think they will fix it any time soon). I give the screen a 8/10.

Screen latch system works great and the screen latch button is very quiet. 10/10.

Optical drive is thinner than a normal tray load optical drive and is solid. I can't comment on the sound it produce due to my lack of experience with other laptops, but the device can be removed. The inside of the optical drive slot is well painted in black.

Laptop - speakers
This is a business class laptop, so you get business class laptop speakers. They sound more like tweeters, but I guess this should be expected from a laptop. The sound of these speakers is REALLY powerful I can hear them a room away in my apartment (which has super thick walls everywhere and with the door closed) and even then if I had a second room to go trough I would guess that I still can hear them in a quiet environment. I don't dare to put them at max volume in the fear that they will get damaged. Very nice! Attaching large headphones on the proper plugs, makes the sound output significantly better, of course. 8/10 (Considering laptop speakers)

Laptop - indicators
Every label of ports and light indicators are clearly visible and discrete at the same time. The onscreen volume, ambient light, keyboard backlight indicators are nicely designed, very simple and to the point and movable on the screen with a click a drag. Power button is lights up in blue (like the other light indicators) and when in sleep it fades in and out in a slow beat. Also, notice that at the bottom of the screen cover they are 2 indicators: battery and power (no HDD). This is great to know the status of the machine while the screen lid is closed. 10/10

Laptop volume control
The volume control buttons are normal buttons; they don't have lights and are not touch sensitive.

Laptop VGA port
Works perfectly with my high end CRT monitor; I get a sharp image with proper colors. I don't have access to a good LCD screen to try it with it.

Laptop Fn feature
All options features works well, you can sleep the machine, close the screen with a fade out, enable/disable battery recharging, open Dell Control Point software, switch displays, access to the num pad on the keyboard and access to the SysRq, Print Scrn, Pause keys.

Laptop noise
Very quiet machine, and slightly noisy under usage, and little bit more even under heavy load, however I would still consider it in the quiet range. Unable to hear fan in class rooms. The machine is light warm under long usage, and gets a little more warm under heavy load. Dell idea to flip the motherboard (basically) was a great idea! 9.5/10

Laptop power adapter
Thin light for a 3pin 90W power adapter, gets light warm, bi-voltage. I am very impressed. Also there is a blue light indicator at the laptop plug that informs you that you have power. Very nice!

Laptop discovered features
If you plug a 65W Dell Power adapter (like one from a Dell Inspiron), the laptop informs you that you are using a 65W version by a BIOS message if you turn on the machine or a dialog box in Vista. Using the 65W power supply, the system still runs but can't recharge the battery (about 1% per 30/40min) . However, if you turn off your laptop, then the laptop can recharge it. 10/10

On my optical drive I have an brown circle sticker. Could this be the humidity detection for Dell to know if you spilled liquid on your machine? Strangely this is the only one I found. I even remove my keyboard to see if there were other ones.


Laptop performance
Fast machine, everything opens quickly. I tried the game FarCry2, and it runs smoothly at 1440x900 at minimum settings. By reducing the screen resolution you can increase the game graphics a bit, but not much. This is a very demanding game, so I am pretty impressed by the graphic card and CPU (I am using the Geforce drivers). In fact, that this machine is faster than my desktop PC (see specs bellow). I am very happy, I was not expecting such speed. System stability is impressive, and so far no driver crashed.

This laptop doesn't have a blu-ray option. However I ripped at max quality, and for testing purposes only, my blu-ray movie James Bond Casino Royal movie disk to see if the machine can handle HD movies. Impressively, the system played the movie PERFECTLY smoothly by setting the OS power option to "balance" power. Please note that I played this movie with Windows Media Player 64-bit (not set as default when you install Vista 64-bit), with "shark007 Vista 64-bit codec pack v: 1.5.5".

Using the latest Geforce (not Quadro) I get the following windows experience index score:
- Processor: 5.2
- Memory: 5.9
- Graphics: 3.3
- Gaming graphics: 4.7
- Primary disk 5.2

Benchmark power comparing with desktop computers:
Lavalys Everest Professional
http://www.helpweaver.com/reviews/LatE6400/benchmark.html

For reference, my desktop system is:
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Socket 939 with 1MB of L2 cache per core (equivalent to: AMD Athlon 5600/6000+ (depends on what you do) on Socket AM2 or Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 - 2 GHz)
- 3GB of DDR RAM at 400MHz (3-3-3-8) (4 dimm)
- Single Nvidia Geforce GTX 260
- Nvidia Nforce 4 X32 SLI
- 250GB Western Digital HDD 7200RPM
- Vista 64-bit Ultimate edition


My desktop PC Windows Experience Index
- Processor: 5.0
- Memory: 5.7
- Graphics: 5.9
- Gaming graphics: 5.9
- Primary disk 5.4

Battery Life
Setting Vista power mode to "Power Saver", having the backlit keyboard turn off, the wireless turned ON, the screen brightness at minimum all the time, and just typing text in Word, you can get a nice 7 hours of battery life, and you can stretch it to ~9 hours if you close your screen when you don't use it (which can be done the keyboard Fn key shortcut), and turn on Dell advance battery saving.

Laptop weight
The weight of this machine has been said several times on many reviews. How about real life feel...
Carrying my laptop with a cover sleeve and in the laptop pocket of my back bag, with 2x 1inch ~40% paper filled binders and a University hard cover book and a filled pencil case with a calculator. I have no problem carrying my bag during the whole day with the nice 30min travel time to university.


Overall, I am pleased with the Dell Latitude E6400. The only part that shameful is the poor plastic quality used on the palm rest and the screen frame. It is a great shame that Dell decided to do it's best to maximize their profit at this point, better plastic could have been used. It must be noted that it's not the type of material that is easy to scratch, I have a metal watch and there is nothing visible where it hits on the palm rest until now. It just hates glue, and too much friction and rubber. A fix to this solution is to use a thin laptop protection sheet of the size of the laptop to put between the keyboard and screen when the lid is closed. Other than that, the rest has potential of being fixed with software update, which is nice. The system is definitely perfectly usable, and enjoyable. Personally I am pleased with my purchase. If the plastic problem was non-existence then I would highly recommend the machine to anyone.

 

Very nice review goodbytes.....critical,just how I like them.

Props to you!

 

Thank you very much!

 

Thanks for this useful set of observations.

I would never give the speakers 8/10 : The quality of the sound is too tinny.

What is the speed of your CPU if you are powered by the 65W PSU? The CPU on my E6400 is automatically throttled and runs relatively slowly. I use RMClock to override this, but hibernation / resume times are still much longer than with the 90W PSU. I can understand the need to apply power limitation for 65W PSU + dedicated graphics, but it is not necessary for my IGP.

The proper fix for the display bezel damaging the palm rest is a series of rubber pads on the display bezel. Recently I noticed some marking of the screen on my E6400 as if it was touching the keys. Some pads would help keep a little clearance.

John

 

I'll inform you later on about my system hibernate and resume with the 90 and 65W PSU and with battery power when Windows is set as "Power Saver". Now it must be understood that more RAM that you have (the more will be used), the more time hibernation will take. Also it would vary on the user system configuration.

The 65W Power adapter test was a "just to see what would happen". I'll see what I can find. However form my test, I was able to use the system basics (general web surfing with watching some Flash videos full screen at some moments, using Microsoft Office 2007, and also run Ubuntu on Virtual PC 2007 SP1) without any VISIBLE decrease in performance. Next time I get access to the same 65W power adapter, I will check and see what I get (Monday or Wednesday).

Ah yes, I was asked about this in person, and I did the test, apply high pressure onto the screen, the maximum I got was in tiny part (1/3) of the pointing stick mouse printed onto the screen, nothing else. Having the machine in my bag with the setup mentioned did not show any marks what's so ever on the screen.

As for the pads:
Yes, I was looking at this. Putting one at the center under the microphone seams to do teh trick, but when pressure is applied on the closed lid machine, is bends both sides of the screen, which made me believe that it would brake the screen. So perhaps 3 of these things might do it. It does affect the aesthetics of the machine, which is sad. I'll play arround and see. Thanks.

 

congratulations for this nice review - GoodBytes!

I find it very useful, i will get my E6400 on 1st of December and i will at my personal opinion here too.

Thank you very much.

 

Thanks!

Little review edit:
- Latitude E6400 keyboard is significantly even I would say, drastically quieter than the Dell Studio Laptop.

I will post further updates on the review here as I use my laptop for a second week.

 

Excellent review, thanks for taking the time.

 

You should count yourself lucky if you can live with it - this was exactly the reason for returning my otherwise perfect E6400, although the intensity might be different. It was clearly audible from 3 feet with my 20-year-old sensitive ears. I'd guess mine was rather the southbridge than the CPU, it emitted some morse code when the HDD was not active, and the popular Bluetooth trick (keeps the CPU busy) also didn't work. The technical support refused to swap my logic board on warranty, so I sent it back as I was still under return policy.

However, I didn't notice any noise of similar intensity coming from the notebooks of my fellow students, and as I study Computer Science, many of them own notebooks and bring them to university. I could live with the slight CPU noise of my dad's Core Duo notebook, subtracting the static noise from the sound chip, but there is a lot of difference. Let's hope I have more luck with the Lenovo T400 I'm looking forward to buy. They are launching a really attractive student offer with LED display (available on the minority of T400 configurations) right now here in Germany, the E6400 would be EUR 300 more with a similar configuration.

 

I can only hear my laptop noise when my ear is close to the center top of the keyboard (or on the back where the CPU is located). I am 20 as well. And only affects me when I am using the power cable in and set "high performance" power option. If I play music (and my speakers to mute) that also stops the music. (It's NOT the sound card emitting static via the speakers.)