Latitude e7440 vs e6430u

Hi everyone

I am in the market for a thin notebook/ultrabook and looking at either of the two latitudes e6430u or e7440. I'll be buying from Dell Outlet. The specs I am looking for are

Core i5, 4gb or more ram, 900p for e6430u or 1080p for e7440 and thats pretty much it.

After doing a fair bit of price comparisons on the outlet website, there was always a difference of around 250 to 300 USD between comparable specs of both the laptops. (I am not too bothered by 900p vs 1080p, 1366 x 768 does bother me).

My question here is that is the 300 USD premium justified for the e7440 (haswell) or am better off saving cash with the e6430u.

Just for info, my last laptop was HP Compaq 6720 (1.6 C2D) and that lasted me a good 6 years, so I use them for quiet a bit.

Thanks

p.s. I posted it in the which notebooks should I buy but i think posting it here makes more sense.

 

The biggest advantage the E7440 has is the docking connector, you have the rest covered. The 1080p screen on the E7440 is an excellent IPS panel and noticeably superior to the 900p on the E6430u, although font scaling can be an issue with Windows.

You'll get about 50% more graphics performance from the Haswell CPU, and better power consumption too.

You can also put two drives in the E7440 if you don't have the 3G module - it'll take an mSATA SSD and a 2.5" drive/SSD in the main drive bay. I don't think this is the case with the 6430u

If you're planning to keep it for 6 years the price distance works out as US$50 a year. I'd get the newer model myself.

 

I don't think Dell is offering Iris pro (HD 5000) graphics with the Latitudes. Or are the standard Haswell graphics this good as well?

 

The E7440 has Intel Pro HD 4600 graphics, which is a fair whack faster than the HD4000 in the 6430u. You are correct that you don't get the HD 5000 or 5200 Iris Pro options.

 

I just received an E7440 off the outlet. I am very pleased with it, I was very happy with its predecessor an E6420 whose only downside was the relatively poor 1600x900 screen, this 7440 has a lovely 1080p screen; the reduced bulk and mass is great too. An external bluray reader/writer will be fine for the very occasional time I need it.
The docking connector is there (but a long way to the rear), as is display port and miniHDMI, which are imperative.

Overall then I'd recommend the 7440 as a great laptop.

Unfortunately whilst I saved money, about £80 or $150 buying one without the 3G/WWAN card, it meant that the miniPCIe slot was filled with the mSATA card, and the 2.5" bay is devoid of the SATA connector! My intention had been to fit my 1TB electromechanical SATA drive into the bay for bulk storage of my photos and videos. The only good news is that there's still the connector on the board for the drive bay, and also the 3G antennae are fitted, so hopefully I can get the cable/adaptor and retrofit.

 

Great. Mind sharing the complete specs and the price?

Also is it the touch or without FHD screen? If touch, how is it. Finally, how is the keyboard? compared to your 6420? The review on this website listed the keyboard as probably the worst feature of this book.

 

I got the base model with i5-4300, 3 cell battery, 128GB mSATA, 1080p non-touch, hires webcam, no 3G, no backlit keyboard. It was £640 on outlet including VAT (tax) and delivery, about 48% saving on the standard!

The keyboard is not as good as the E6420, but feels quite decent to me; it's kind of halfway between the E64 keyboard and the floating island/chiclet keyboards that others have. The travel is a bit shorter but has reasonable "bounce" and I am already getting up to a decent speed on it. I retrofitted a backlit keyboard to my E6420 for about £20. I am hoping to find a backlit keyboard for this too.

I like that the touchpad has separate mouse buttons, proper left and right. And a middle mouse too. I don't really use the nipple.

The screen is lovely sharp and bright, colours so much better than the E6420's 1600x900. I am an enthusastic amateur, and I used to plug my E6420 into our mid-quality Sony TV to show pictures because the colours were not great. The E64 didn't have the worst screen ever on a laptop, that would have been my old Toshiba Tecra M9 1440x900, fine for business use.

The 7440 is lighter too by a Kg - my E64 had NVS graphics with its i5 sandybridge which added to the weight.

Battery life seems great. Battery charge has hit 38% with an uptime of 5 hours this evening with a bit of web browsing, word processing, installing a few packages etc.


It literally arrived this afternoon, and all I've done so far is to shrink Recovery to 6GB, Windows down to 60GB, then shifted the partitions down with gparted-live, then installed linux (opensuse/KDE) into the other "half" of the disk. Installing Chrome browser, putty and a few things in Windows, and Chrome and a few things in linux.

 

@ speculatrix

Thanks for the detailed reply. That's surprisingly good for a 3 cell. I'd really appreciate If can post the battery performance after a couple of days of different usage

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Another thing I noticed this evening is that the speakers in the 7440 are much louder than the E6420; although the E64 was OK quality for audio it was often not loud enough, the 7440 can be really loud!

 

I found that 1080p panel is AUO113D.