New Latitude 5470

It would be nice to have a 4k @ 60hz option. I know 4k is a niche resolution still but having a 4k 40" monitor is awesome for productivity!

 

I saw this earlier, seems like it could be the replacement for the 6000 series. I will say I really like how they look so far, but I don't think battery life will be good at all with the 62Whr battery.

 

Basically the same as the old 6-cells, and for non-dGPU configurations, that should be pretty good. Probably pretty bad if you get one with a dGPU.

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Speaking more generally, I find it really encouraging that they're:
A) back to offering a 14" quad core
B) offering a quad-core CPU (and an i7, no less!) with no dGPU
C) Brought the dual-pointer to the 5000-series (or maybe they did in an earlier generation, and I missed it?)
D) Starting these with a 3-year base warranty

Very curious if there will be an Iris Pro sku of this machine when those chips come out.

Very curious to see some reviews of the FHD screen once these get into people's hands.

Very curious about the 7000-series refresh. I'm guessing the 6000-series is dead now?

Had been leaning towards one of the Precisions, but if the screen in these are decent it might be a really good option. I basically just need a big CPU, and while they don't sell these with 32gb of RAM this wouldn't be the first time I bought a Dell with the minimum RAM and put my own in.

Interestingly, on Premier, I can find a dGPU+i7 option, and a HDD+dGPU option, so those don't seem to be actual tradeoffs.

 

Having a dGPU will only affect the battery run time if using it when running on battery. I've got a dGPU version of the Latitude E7450 and love it because it's got a better cooling system (including a properly designed fan) than the iGPU E7450 with the result that the system runs more quietly. Battery run time under light usage with a moderately dim display is 6 to 8 hours. That's with a nominal 54Whr battery so the 15% higher battery capacity in this E5470 could easily do better under light usage provided the hardware power management is working properly (but AMD switchable graphics rarely works as efficiently as Nvidia's Optimus). A 17 hour battery life claim is mentioned here.

John

 

Nice to see M.2 PCIe SSD options. Can't wait to see what the E7470 has in store.

Intel 180GB Solid State Drive M.2 2280
1TB 7mm 5.4krpm HD
250GB 7mm 7.2krpm HD
500GB 7mm 7.2krpm HD
128GB Solid State Drive M2 2280 SATA3
512GB Solid State Drive M2 2280 SATA3
256GB Solid State Drive M2 2280 PCIe
512GB Solid State Drive M2 2280 PCIe

 

I did order an E5470 the other day. Prior to ordering, Dell indicated in its store that the laptop would ship "within 2-4 business days." In the order confirmation, they now give me an expected delivery date of January 13. Oh well...

 

A couple of questions:

For the SSD's why would Dell be offering both SATA3 and PCIe drives? On the Canadian configurator they are the same price for each size.

If I get the iGPU option, could I get the smallest SSD and add a large third party one in what would be the dGPU bay? If so, what type of drive should I get PCIe or SATA3?

 

Well, they're offering both M.2 SSDs as well as SSD/HDDs for the 2.5" slot (7 mm z-height, SATA3). Here in Europe, they're pushing models with M.2 SSD only--the 2.5" is empty. I guess those models give you the lowest weight.

But they probably cannot afford (yet) to leave out the 2.5" bay completely. For one, only 2.5" drives can provide 1+ TB storage space. For another, you can't call 2.5" drives legacy (yet). So they want to have it for compatibility reasons as well. There must surely be some customers out there who want to fit existing 2.5" drives into their new laptop.

AFAIK, none of this has anything to do with iGPU/dGPU. You can fit an M.2 plus an 2.5" drive, period.

 

Also, the corporate bean counters like the 2.5" bay with the option of mechanical hard drives. Those people don't know, or couldn't care, that not having an SSD gives a big performance hit. They are more interested in the $$$s saved when buying a hundred or thousand of these notebooks. If Dell didn't provide the 2.5" option they would run the risk of losing some big customers.

John

 

Also some customers want to certify their own SSDs (I've never been fond of Dell's "luck of the draw" approach) and some may need bigger SSDs (up to 2TB on available with 4TB announced). I'm also curious whether you can use a SATA m.2 drive in the m.2 slot -- I really don't like the inability to reuse PCI-E SSDs in an external enclosure, and I suspect we'll see 1TB m.2 drives on the open market in SATA before we see 1TB.

I don't like the tradeoff of 2.5" drive vs. bigger battery, but so it goes; I'm still on the fence about what to get (and waiting to see if Lenovo comes out with something to succeed the T440p) but given my dissatisfaction with the battery life on my M3800, would probably pick the bigger battery and live with using a lot of external storage until 1TB+ M.2 drives come out.

(Right now I've got a 1TB + a 960gb, but I don't actually need that much.)