Dell Latitude E7440 User Review

The Dell Latitude range of business notebooks has a good reputation for tolerating hard usage while also being easy to maintain. I’ve owned various Latitudes in the past and when seeking a successor to my 2 year old Samsung NP900X4C (the natural successor is the Samsung NP930X5J which has, so far, failed to materialise in the UK) I came across a Dell E7440 which has a weight in the range I was looking for and reasonable pricing. Read on to find out .

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Nice review. I want to add that the fan control on this unit is not very smart. At a specific threshold of about 50 degree Celcius (don't remember the exact number) the fan kicks in clearly audible. Below that it is completely silent. The problem is that you reach that threshold temperature just by doing some light work and there is no lower fan speed setting in between. I also want to note that the E7440 series seems to be prone to coil whine. My E7440 (same config as yours) had noticeable coil whine coming from the general direction of the CPU (most noticeable when plugged into the wall). Dell replaced the motherboard which resulted in less coil whine that was only audible in a quiet environment. The Dell E6440 that I have at work also has the same coil whine issue.

If it wasn't for the coil whine and the fan I would have kept the E7440 but since I can't stand high-pitched noise I sold it.

 

John,

Thanks for a great review. I am upgrading my 4 year old E4300 and after flirting with all the sleek ultrabooks I settled on another Latitude, the E7440. I want a laptop that's easy to open and fiddle with and has a dock connector. The E7440 isn't the lightest and doesn't have the longest battery life. But most of the ultrabooks compromise on ports (no RJ-45, only 2 USB, etc.) and upgradability (maintainability).

My first E7440 had a problem with one of the USB ports and its replacement is in the mail. I really liked it for the three weeks I had it.

 

Get the E7450 54w battery that's compatible with the E7440. I'm getting a solid 7.5 hours from it.

 

And I suspect if you try to be really frugal you could get even longer.

One advantage of the E7440 is, unlike many thinner notebooks, the battery is easily changed and, because the battery is quite thin, it's easy to slip a spare into the bag.

John

 

You're more than likely right. I'm not frugal since I don't need a ton of battery life. That's with the screen at half with WiFi on, just doing normal stuff. Not just the batteries too, but the hard drives and memory can be swapped as well. You don't see that on ultrabooks often, if ever, which is a nice bonus. My only real complaint with the Dell is I wish the stick were better. It's no terrible, but could use improvement.

 

Is there anyway to increase the resolution of the screen brightness control via the Fn+Up/Down arrows? It only supports 11 levels (9% per change). When adjusting via the Control Panel with a mouse you have very fine control.

Or alternately, know of any third party brightness controls that support finer resolution?

Thanks