Latitude 7450 Owners' Thread

I just got my E7450 yesterday and I wanted to give definitive answers to some of the questions here.

In regards to the NVIDIA discrete graphics option, there is no option for an 830m or 840m, even though it is listed in the manual. I spoke with my Dell rep, and he confirmed that there is no NVIDIA GPU option as of now. And from opening up my E7450, I don't know where the GPU would fit without a complete case redesign.

The storage is an mSATA SSD with a 2.5" interposer, and the WWAN is a 42mm M.2 PCI-e. I've got a 42mm Transcend SSD coming in tomorrow that I'll install to see if it is recognized and I'll report back tomorrow.

The display will open to 180 degrees, and it overall feels very sturdy. I applied light pressure to the display when it was completely open and it did have a bit of flex to prevent snapping the hinges.


There are a few flaws that I want to cover, just so everyone considering purchasing one will be aware.

First is that the display has some very noticeable back-light bleeding around the edges. The top two corners of my unit are very bad with a solid black display. Like most displays with back-light bleed, it is not noticeable at all during regular use. But if you're watching a video with dark scenes or trying to do some photo/video editing with dark backgrounds, you may not be too happy with it. I know the E7440s had similar bleed issues, and I may use my pro support to have the display replaced to see if a replacement looks any better.

Second is the Intel Wireless-AC 7265 WLAN has been experiencing some connection issues. It worked just fine for a while, then it would show that I had no Internet connection. A simple disable/enable or diagnose resolves the issue, but it's still an annoyance. I updated the driver from Intel's site (Dell's recommended driver is outdated), and it seems to have fixed the problem thus far.

Finally, if you're planning on ordering an E7450 with Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 Pro, it will ship with Windows 7 preinstalled and you must use the included disc to upgrade to Windows 8.1. Not so much a flaw, but an annoyance. Also, the Windows 8.1 disc includes only the operating system. It is not a normal restore disc with the default drivers included. So if you're planning on replacing the stock mSATA with a larger SSD (like I did), you'll need to download the LAN/WLAN drivers to a flash drive first, because the included copy of Windows 8.1 does not support the Intel 7265 WLAN card.

Overall, I'm thoroughly enjoying the E7450, and if I'm able to get the WLAN and back-light bleed issues resolved, it'll be perfect for my use. For Linux users, it is certified compatible with Ubuntu, and I currently have Ubuntu 14.04 installed along with Windows 8.1 Pro.

 

Thank you for the info. One more question. on the msata/2.5" interpose, if you take that out, does it still have the metal bracket to install a normal 2.5" HD? (I assume it needs the 5mm hd like the E7440 series?)

Thanks

 

BOoooooo I guess I can still hope 840m version will come later. otherwise I am keeping the 7440 as the processor upgrade isn't really worth the money to me.

 

No, the interposer takes the place of the 2.5" mounting bracket. I'm sure it could be ordered through Dell, but I don't know their part # for the bracket.

 

Hi!
Can you give some information on the battery life?
I haven't found a review on the net and I wanna know how many hours you can use the computer on a full charge.
Also, did you go with the 3-cell or 4-cell battery?

Andrew

 

I installed the 42mm M.2 SSD that I ordered and the notebook did not recognize the SSD. Looking at the BIOS (Legacy), it has the primary hard drive listed, and the only place for that PCI-E slot would be "WiGig Device" or "Cellular Device". So I assume that Dell's BIOS is not allowing that slot to be used with anything other than WWAN.

I haven't gotten enough use out of it to give a good estimate of battery life, but it seems to be pretty good thus far. I'll pay a bit more attention to the battery life and post back with some numbers. I ordered mine with the 3-cell battery, because I prefer it to be lighter for traveling than to get a little extra battery life since I'm usually near an outlet.

 

I ran a few tests and here's what I came up with for battery life. This is with the 3-cell 40Wh battery and these tests are done over a short period of time, so battery life may be better if gauged over a longer period of time.

Idle with display at 100% brightness: 1-2% battery drain in 5 minutes, ~5-6 hours total battery life
Peacekeeper Benchmark (web browsing, videos, etc.) with display at 100% brightness: 2-3% battery drain in 5 minutes, ~3 hours total battery life
3DMARK Cloud Gate Benchmark with display at 100% brightness: 5-6% battery drain in 5 minutes, ~1.5 hours total battery life

3DMARK Cloud Gate Benchmarl with display at lowest brightness: 4-5% battery drain in 5 minutes, ~1.5-2 hours total battery life

And in case anyone is interested, the Cloud Gate score is 5932 (7339 graphics, 3550 physics).

 

That's a big step backwards which reduces the user options while saving little on the manufacturing cost.

What about 25% or 50% brightness? People who are looking for extended battery time won't be using 100% brightness.

Also, if you use BatteryInfoView you can see the power drain in mW (1/1000W). Capacity / power drain = run time (except assume that the system will shut down with a few % remaining).

John

 

Regarding this I think documentation says that ssd is possible (500g disk +32G ssd configured with Intel utility). -edit I found only 500G with 8G cache - can be anything. But PDF spec sheet says: E-Dock: 2 M.2 expansion slots: 1 WWAN/SSD and 1 WLAN/BT/WiGig

What ssd did you use? Did you try also uefi mode? Did you try to switch from raid to AHCI?
I plan to buy 256g adata - controller SF-2281 SATA 3 only....

I hope they added SATA controller
Thank you!

 

Thank you very much for testing! Like someone else said, would you mind testing it with less brightness?