Dell Latitude 7350 Review: Outdated, But Good for Business

Dell Latitude 7350: At First Glance

The Dell Latitude 7350 is a detachable laptop which means you can decide to use it as a laptop or a tablet. For a laptop released in 2015, Dell’s craftsmanship is quite commendable on this 2-in-1 laptop.

In addition to that, the Dell Latitude 7350 also has a lot of business supporting features. These features include assorted port selections along with a fingerprint and smartcard reader which make it a real business laptop.

But then, how much benefit can one gain from these features? Find out from the remaining sections of this review.

Dell Latitude 7350: Design, Dimension, and Weight

The Dell Latitude 7350’s exterior is not particularly intriguing despite its smooth curves here and there. This might be due to its blunt edges and unappealing thickness.

For build materials, everywhere on the laptop’s chassis is plastic except the lid and the bottom of the dock, which are made of aluminum. Thankfully, the build material should make the Dell Latitude 7350 reasonably durable.

In terms of color, the Dell Latitude 7350’s chassis is matte dark gray, with only the display and its bezels having glossy textures. Meanwhile, there is a silver line running around the edges of the base.

At this point, let us focus on the lid of the Dell Latitude 7350. Like most Dell laptops, the Latitude 7350’s lid has a silver Dell logo at the center as its only significant feature.

However, on some models of the Dell Latitude 7350, you will find an optional 8MP rear camera at the top of the lid. In such models, you will also find a fingerprint reader on the right side of the lid.

Therefore, on models that lack the rear camera and fingerprint reader, the lid is usually bland. Hence, such models will make a better impression when you open the lid.

On opening the lid, your attention will be drawn to its 13.3-inch touchscreen display which is framed by somewhat thick bezels. On the top bezel, you will find two openings for built-in microphones at the center.

Meanwhile, in between these mics, you will find a 2MP front camera and a flash for taking pictures in the dark.

Back to the display, it has an FHD (1920 x 1080) resolution which makes display contents sufficiently sharp. Additionally, the display uses an IPS panel which gives it an excellent viewing angle.

Hence, the screen contents will remain clearly viewable even when you view the display from acute angles. Another impressive feature of this display is its maximum brightness of 400 nits.

As a matter of fact, the brightness level of this display is one of its best features as such brightness is usually found on high-end laptops. With this impressive brightness, the laptop’s display will be clearly visible outdoor even under direct sunlight.

It might also impress you to know that the Dell Latitude 7350’s display is made of corning gorilla glass. Hence, it is quite tough and resistant to cracks and scratches.

Meanwhile, the Dell Latitude 7350’s display is also touch-enabled which means you can make screen inputs using your fingers or a stylus pen. However, this laptop does not ship with a stylus pen hence, you will have to buy one separately.

One area where the Dell Latitude 7350’s display failed to impress me is its 60 Hz refresh rate. For better understanding, refresh rate refers to the number of times a display refreshes its content per second.

However, with its refresh rate of 60 Hz, the Dell Latitude 7350 will experience some motion blurs when you play high-speed games. That’s because high-speed games require up to 240 Hz or a higher refresh rate for a smooth flow of graphics.

Before we move away from the display area to the keyboard, I will like to reiterate that the Dell Latitude 7350 is a detachable convertible laptop. Hence, you can detach its lid from the keyboard and use it as a tablet.

The tablet attaches to the keyboard via a mechanical locking mechanism. There is also a latch located at the left-hand side of the hinge which can be slid to release the tablet from the keyboard.

Having said a lot about the upper part of the Dell Latitude 7350, let’s proceed to its base. The laptop’s base houses the keyboard and the hinge that allows the screen to rotate to a maximum angle of 120 degrees.

Speaking of the keyboard, it is made up of chiclet black keys with white texts on them.

The keys have little depressions on the surface and spring back immediately you release your finger on them. This behavior of the keys makes typing feel comfortable.

Even more interesting is the keyboard’s blue backlight with a two-level brightness. Apparently, you should feel comfortable with this laptop’s keyboard while working at night.

It doesn’t end there; the keyboard is also spill-resistant. Thus, if by chance your drink spills on the keyboard, you will have enough time to wipe it off.

As expected, there is a touchpad below the keyboard which measures 10.6 x 6.1 cm. Thankfully, this touchpad has multi-touch support which lets you make gestures such as two-finger scrolling or pinch-to-zoom.

Furthermore, the touchpad has integrated click buttons which have decent feedback.

Let us now proceed to the port selection on this laptop. At the back of the base is where most of this laptop’s ports are located.

There, you’ll find two USB 3.0 ports, one mini DisplayPort, a Kensington lock slot, and an AC charging port.

For the remaining slots, you will find them on the sides of the tablet. On the left side of the tablet, you will find an audio jack only.

Meanwhile, on the right side, you’ll find the Windows button which is missing on the keyboard as well as the volume keys and a Kensington Lock slot.

That is not all, at the top of the tablet, you’ll also find the power button at the extreme right which is followed by a SmartCard reader slot. With the SmartCard reader, you’ll be able to use credit cards and the likes on this tablet.

Finally to the bottom of the tablet, there are two slots for attaching the display to the dock. Also at the bottom, you’ll get a micro SIM card slot which is optional as well as a charging port, and a docking port.

For clarity, the docking port is just a port for connecting the display back to the keyboard.

One more thing about this laptop is that both ends of its bottom also have one stereo speaker each.

The speakers produce good sounds in tablet mode but fixing the lid back on the dock blocks their sound a bit. Commendably, this laptop also comes with “Dell Audio” – a software for tuning the sound equalizer.

That’s all for ports, slots, and speakers.

Now, for wireless connectivity, the Dell Latitude 7350 features Bluetooth 4.0 and an 802.11ac WiFi card. This WiFi card ensures a fast and stable wireless connection for web streaming.

To wrap up this section, let’s talk about the dimension and weight of the Dell Latitude 7350. This laptop measures 320 x 229.7 x 19.9 mm (W x D x H) and weighs 1664.6 g.

In comparison, the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet is more portable, measuring 292.1 x 201.5 x 9.1 mm (W x D x H). For its weight, the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 weighs 810 g.

In the same fashion, the Fujitsu Lifebook T904 measures 320.8 x 235 x 17.1-19.3mm (W x D x H) and weighs 1590 g. Obviously, the Fujitsu is also more portable than the Latitude 7350.

Considering all I have said in this section, I will conclude this section by rating the Dell Latitude 7350 an eight out of ten.

Dell Latitude 7350: Processor (CPU) Performance

The Dell Latitude 7350 runs on a dual-core Intel Core M-5Y71 processor with 4 MB of cache memory. The Core M-5Y71 is a 5th generation processor which is based on the Broadwell architecture.

In addition to that, this CPU has a base frequency of 1.20 GHz and a boost frequency of 2.90 GHz. Although this CPU is certainly not the most powerful, yet, it offers decent performance on tablets like the Dell Latitude 7350.

For better performance analysis, let me highlight this laptop’s Cinebench R15 test result. If you are wondering what Cinebench R15 means, it is a benchmark test for evaluating a CPU’s performance.

Moreover, the Cinebench R15 test comprises two test categories – the single-core test and the multi-core tests. For clarity, the single-core test assesses how well a processor performs when one of its cores is in use.

Conversely, the multi-core test assesses how a processor performs when all the cores are in use. Meanwhile, you should be aware that a higher score in this test indicates a higher processing power.

From the single-core test, the Dell Latitude 7350 scored 79 points while it scored 139 points in the multi-core test. In comparison, the Fujitsu LifeBook T904 recorded 120 points in the single-core and 229 points in the multi-core test.

Also, the Toshiba Portégé Z30t-A-10X scored 112 points in the single-core test. Additionally, it got 223 points in the multi-core test.

With these results, we can see that the Dell Latitude 7350’s CPU is behind the two competitors I matched it with. Hence, my reason for rating it a seven out of ten in this section.

Dell Latitude 7350: Memory (RAM) Performance

The Dell Latitude 7350 has one slot for a 1600 MHz, DDR3L RAM. For the memory capacity, it comes with a 4 GB standard memory which can be further upgraded to a maximum of 8 GB.

Meanwhile, the 4 GB standard RAM in conjunction with this laptop’s processor is enough for performing light multitasking. However, upgrading the RAM to 8 GB will increase this laptop’s multitasking ability.

Speaking of multitasking, a Dell Latitude 7350 with 4 GB RAM is capable of opening three Excel sheets and five Chrome tabs simultaneously. At the same time, it can still run Spotify in the background.

For a clearer picture of the RAM’s performance, let’s look at the laptop’s results in a PCMark 8 test. Briefly, PCMark 8 benchmark evaluates the memory performance of a computer.

Just like the Cinebench test considered before, a high score in PCMark 8 denotes better performance.

Unimpressively, this laptop fell below its competitors by getting just 2947 points on the test. Meanwhile, the Toshiba Portégé Z30t-A-10X recorded 3232 points in the same test.

Also, the Fujitsu LifeBook T904 scored 3751 points on the test.

In line with the results above, I, therefore, rate the Latitude 7350 a seven out of ten in this memory review section.

Dell Latitude 7350: Storage Options and Performance

The Dell Latitude 7350 has an SSD storage drive which takes up to 512 GB of storage capacity. Thankfully, SSD storages are faster than other storage types.

Hence, the storage speed of the Dell Latitude 7350 should be decent. In addition to the maximum 512 GB internal storage, Dell also included one SD 4.0 Media card reader on this laptop.

This is to enable further storage expansion in case your tablet runs out of storage space.

At this point, I’ll share with you the CrystalDiskMark 3.0 test result of this laptop. Briefly, CrystalDiskMark is a benchmark test that measures the sequential write and read speeds of a storage drive.

By sequential read speed, I mean the speed at which a storage drive can open files. Meanwhile, a sequential write speed refers to the speed at which a storage drive can save files.

Similar to other benchmarks in this review, high read and write speeds denote better performance.

In the test, the Dell Latitude 7350 gave a read speed of 484.4 MBps and a write speed of 449.22 MBps. Meanwhile, the Fujitsu LifeBook T904 gave a read speed of 503.56 MBps and a write speed of 473.77 MBps.

Also, the Toshiba Portégé with the same storage configuration recorded 511.22 MBps and 457.86 MBps read and write speeds respectively. From the comparisons above, the two competitors I checked the Dell Latitude 7350 against will open and save files faster.

Thus, I will rate the Dell Latitude 7350 an eight out of ten in this section. This rating is due to the availability of external storage expansion and the type of storage drive it uses.

Dell Latitude 7350: Graphics Card Performance

For graphics, the Dell Latitude 7350 features an integrated Intel HD Graphics 5300 which is fairly powerful. However, as an integrated graphics card, its graphics rendering capability is limited.

As a matter of fact, integrated graphics cards are not good for playing 3D games with high resolution. This is because integrated cards don’t have any VRAM and thus, playing such games on them will result in overheating.

However, since the Dell Latitude 7350 is a tablet, its GPU clock speed is respectable. Speaking of which, the speed of Intel HD Graphics 5300 starts from 300 MHz and you can overclock it to a maximum of 900 MHz.

With this frequency range, the Dell Latitude 7350 will play a few casual games smoothly at medium graphics settings.

To be certain about this GPU’s capability, let’s discuss its result in a 3DMark test.

3DMark is a set of games simulations that can be played on a computer to evaluate how well it can render 3D graphics. These games include the 3DMark Fire Strike graphics test, 3DMark Cloud Gate, and 3DMark Ice Storm.

In these tests, achieving a high score indicates better graphics performance.

That said, when 3DMark Fire Strike was played on the Dell Latitude 7350, it scored 512 points. That’s a much better performance than that of the Microsoft Surface Pro 3’s score of 459 points.

Thus, I will be rating the Dell Latitude 7350 an eight out of ten in this graphics review section.

Dell Latitude 7350: Battery Life and Performance

The Dell Latitude 7350 has a primary 3-cell, 30 Whrs Li-Po battery. Additionally, there’s an optional 20 Whr Li-Po secondary battery which is located in the keyboard dock.

According to Dell, both the primary and optional batteries come with an ExpressCharge feature which means faster charging time.

As an advantage, the battery in the tablet and the one in the dock give a prolonged battery life. However, Dell did not specifically mention how long any of the batteries would last per charge.

Therefore, to have an idea of the Latitude 7350’s battery life, let’s consider a WiFi web surfing test performed by laptopmag.com

From the test, the Latitude 7350 tablet’s battery lasted for 5 hours 14 minutes. Impressively, its battery life went up to 10 hours 11 minutes when the tablet was attached to its dock thanks to the second battery.

In comparison, the Microsoft Surface Pro 3’s 42 Whr, Li-Ion battery lasted for just 7 hours 27 minutes in the same test. Also, the HP Spectre X360 took 9 hours 28 minutes to shut down.

Thus, we can see here that when you utilize both batteries on the Latitude 7350, its performance beats that of the two competitors I matched it against.

Therefore, due to the laptop’s result in the battery rundown test, I will rate it a nine out of ten in this section.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

The 2-in-1 design of the Dell Latitude 7350 gives users the flexibility of using it in laptop or tablet modes. For instance, you can easily make the Dell Latitude 7350 a tablet, leaving the keyboard behind for a stress-free journey.

However, when you use the Dell Latitude 7350 in tablet mode, you will be limited to only one out of the two batteries available on it. This puts a limitation on the overall battery performance of this Dell 2-in-1 laptop.

Therefore, to utilize the two batteries on the Dell Latitude 7350, it should be used in laptop mode. Thankfully, when you use the Dell Latitude 7350 in laptop mode, its battery life is enough to last you through most part of the day.

Whichever way you decide to use the Dell Latitude 7350, its business-friendly features will serve you well. Particularly, its Windows 8.1 OS, SmartCard reader, and fingerprint reader will be quite useful.

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