Latitude 7370

Just picked up a refurbished Latitude 7370. Pretty much fully loaded 512GB SSD, 16GB DDR and QHD touch screen. $1800 - $500 coupon code + $100 overnight shipping to Alaska (only option) = $1400.

I've got to say that some refurbished laptops I've purchased appeared brand new. This one looks great on the outside, but the bottom cover was bulging out a little bit so I unscrewed it and removed it to find that it looks like absolute crap inside. It appears that a memory stick was replaced and they just layed the security stickers back over it, also a bunch of greasy finger prints on the heatsink, one of the plastic snap tabs on the bottom cover was also broken off. Anyway, I moved the wire bundle that was causing the bottom cover to bulge, back into it's track and replaced everything and the cover snapped back in nice and flat. Not really happy about the condition of the internals, but every test I've run comes back as a pass so everything seems to work ok. Plus it comes with an 4yr onsite repair warranty so I might just keep it.

Other than the internal disarray, the laptop is absolutely gorgeous. I purchased it to replace my very nice HP Spectre x360. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my Spectre, other than I've been travelling a lot lately and wanted something just a little smaller and lighter. The Latitude 7370, especially at the price I got it with the large SSD and 16GB of ram is going to work great for that.

I usually always check here before pulling the trigger on a purchase, but I stumbled upon this laptop and there was only one in stock so I pulled the trigger before checking here. Not that there's any information about the 7370 on here anyway.

Here's the bulge I was talking about, it was a cable run wrong, once fixed everything snapped in nice and tight.


Here's a couple quick comparison shots of the 7370 and the HP Spectre x360

 

I've just ordered a 7370 from Dell UK Outlet. Scratch and dent with the Intel m5-6Y54 CPU, 8GB RAM, 512GB SATA SSD, FHD display and 34WHr battery and a cost of around 40% of a new one. My plan is that it will become my lightweight travel notebook which is currently the Samsung NP900X3B (bought in April 2012). It says a lot for Samsung's engineering that the 7370 isn't significantly lighter (or it may even be heavier).

John

 

My 7370 arrived a couple of days ago. It has the carbon fibre display back and I've noticed a small chip on the front edge which might explain the "Scratch and Dent" classification. With the 43Whr battery it is fractionally lighter than the old Samsung NP900X3B and the feel reminds me of the old Sony G11 which was also made of carbon fibre (a nice notebook for 10 years ago but hampered by a slow single core CPU and an XGA display but it included a 62Whr battery in a weight very close to my 7370).

One of the first things I noticed is the generous travel on the keyboard which makes it feel much better than that on the old Samsung. Perhaps Dell consciously made the decision of the fanless design in order to provide the good keyboard travel - a higher rated CPU would need a fan which would either reduce key travel or increase overall thickness. The CPU doesn't appear to be a bottleneck to the likely usage. The SSD is Liteon although the packing list says PM871. The Liteon's write speed is not among the best of the SATA drives but is fine for my expected usage (I don't see what benefit the NVMe SSD would bring on this system although it is an option).

While I was waiting for the 7370 to arrive I had grabbed a "new" 43Whr battery off ebay. This battery is of an interesting design as the end thirds are thicker than the middle third in order to have clearance for the touchpad. This also means that the thicker battery can't co-exist with security features (smartcard reader, fingerprint reader, NFC) which are installed under the palmrest (I wonder if the seller had bought the battery and then discovered that it wouldn't fit in their 7370). In broad terms the higher capacity should provide about 25% longer away from a power socket.


Inside of 7370 without battery

The 34Whr (front) and 43Whr (back) batteries

I had also bought a Dell DW5810e WWAN card in anticipation of putting it in the 7370. However, I was surprised to find no WWAN antennae cables in the 7370 given that reviews had suggested that they were included as standard. Fortunately, it shouldn't be too difficult to install one under the palm rest.

The 7370 has the same feature (bug?) as my Precision 5510: Plugging anything (except the PSU) into the USB-C ports wakes up the Thunderbolt controller which results in an extra 2.5W to 3W power drain. This is about the same as the system battery drain when under light usage with about 40% brightness display and means that using a USB-C device on battery could halve the battery run time so pull anything out of these ports unless really needed.

By the way, a 7380 appears to be in the pipeline - it's in the list of notebooks compatible with the TB16 dock.

John

 

I was wondering if I could find a PSU which was more appropriate to the weight of the notebook. The challenge is to find something which includes a 20V option and found this which included 20V 1.5A on the label. I also bought a 2m USB C to USB C cable. The good news is that the 7370 accepts this PSU. The less good news is that in the worst case power demand (battery charging + full CPU load) the 7370 can draw about 45W from the PSU indicating that the 7370 doesn't receive any power rating info through the USB C connection. Fortunately, the PSU didn't blow up and I didn't leave it to overload for more than a minute but I wonder if it has some form of protection in which sustained overload will cause it to trip. Under normal usage this PSU should be fine as any maximum CPU power spikes will be temporary.

This wall wart PSU + 2m cable weighed in a 125 grams (4.4 oz) - less than half the weight of the Dell PSU with its cables. If nothing else, it provides a lightweight backup. I don't like travelling without a spare PSU as something suitable might be hard to find and a computer without a PSU rapidly turns into a paperweight.

John

 

Looking at picking one of these up.

How do you guys find battery life using the standard 34W battery? How many hours are you averaging with basic activities; internet browsing/word/excel etc.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

I did an mp4 video playback test and it managed 6 hours at half brightness. Editing a Word document (no internet) at 40% brightness averaged 3.6W over a couple of hours. However, internet browsing is likely to significantly increase the CPU workload to give a system power drain to 5W (or more) depending on display brightness which would empty the battery in 5 to 6 hours (the effective capacity is around 30Whr due to the minimum capacity at Windows shutdown + it's not good to regularly drain the battery).

My conclusion is that, in usage, the 7370 isn't significantly more power frugal than other 13" notebooks with a U series CPU. The key selling points for the 7370 in my opinion are zero fan noise, the first class keyboard (better than on my Precision 5510) and an excellent screen. Dell has used the absence of a cooling system to provide a longer travel keyboard than is available in most notebooks of this thickness. The touchpad is also more usable than I expected as having proper buttons gives more positive action than a clickable surface. It is also extremely power frugal when sleeping. However, plug anything into the USB-C ports and the Thunderbolt controller wakes up and guzzles 2.5 to 3W even if doing nothing.

I found a 43Whr battery on ebay and it gives about 25% more battery time. However, I would emphase that this battery is only compatible with the versions of the 7370 which don't have fingerprint reader, NFC or the smartcard reader as the larger battery uses the space occupied by these (I suspect that a new battery was being resold because someone discovered this gotcha). The other work-around for longer time away from a power socket is va USB-C power bank. At the moment Dell's Power Companion seems to be the only one which is compatible. The 7370 wants a USB-C power source rated at 20V and up to 2.25A. The computer doesn't appear to be able to find out the power source rating and adjust its demand.

Any more questions?

John

 

Thanks for the reply, very useful information you have provided.

Keyboard sounds great. How do you find the trackpad on this particular machine? I've read/heard that the ones used in the XPS13 and 15 models are quite good as they're glass but can't see any information about the one used in this Latitude.

I currently have an Inspiron 13" 7000 and both the keyboard and trackpad is a bit of a let down for me. Having used a 2008 & 2013 13" MBP extensively, I haven't really come across a Windows machine that uses anything as good as the Apple unit's keyboard/trackpad. Although I did have a play around with the late 2016 Surface Book & Razer Blade and they were pretty good.

Interesting that you also mention a power bank, I was hoping to use something like https://www.anker.com/products/A1371012 but it seems this might be wishful thinking given that the output of this Anker unit is only limited to 5v/2.4A. The Dell unit looks pretty great, quite a hard pill to swallow at that price though.

 

Sorry, another question is: given that the model is fanless - how hot does the unit end up getting?

 

The trackpad is much better than I expected given its small size and fine for casual use although, out of habit, I use a mouse if working at a desk. As I noted above, the physical buttons enhance the pad usability.

You would need to wait until the Dell Power Companion appears on somewhere like ebay. One problem is that the USB-C version is relatively rare compared to the Power Companion with the normal Dell plug. I would also expect the third party manufacturers to broaden their range. This one offers the 20V but only 1.5A and I have measured that the 7370 will draw most of that when charging the battery so doing a recharge + using the computer will overload the power source (it might run for a few minutes before cutting out).

The bottom gets up to about 40C under sustained load but that is cooler than my old Samsung NP900X3B which has two small fans. The keyboard is a bit cooler. As the base is carbon fibre it does not transfer heat as fast as metal. I would also note that the bottom has two long ridges instead of a pad on each corner. This means that if you are using it on your lap then, however, you place the notebook, the main part of the bottom is not in contact with the skin.

John

 

Does the FHD screen option on this laptop have Dynamic Brightness Control? If so, is there anyway to disable it?

Thanks,