Dell Latitude E7440 Review: Fast Processor, Average Battery Life

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Dell Latitude E7440: At First Glance

Latitude is the brand name for a line of Dell professional laptops that are typically fairly affordable. These laptops aided the company in establishing a strong reputation among high-end business clients.

The Dell Latitude E7440 is a laptop that packs a lot of technology into a durable chassis. The Dell Latitude E7440 is part of the Latitude E7000 series of laptops, which are focused more on business than fun.

Dell’s Latitude E7440, which starts at $289.99, features a fourth-generation processor, an HD display, and fast performance. Is this Dell Latitude, however, the greatest business laptop available?

Let’s find out.

Dell Latitude E7440: Design, Dimension & Weight

The Latitude E7440 may not have a brushed metal finish or a thin bezel, but that doesn’t make it less attractive. The base is made of dark powder-coated aluminum that is both comfy and attractive.

The palm-rest, on the other hand, is made of black soft-touch material, while the lid is silver-colored metal. Only the brushed aluminum hinge adds a touch of elegance.

Business laptops are meant to be sturdy and durable, and the Dell Latitude E7440 doesn’t disappoint in this area. The underlying frame is made of anodized aluminum, magnesium alloy, and steel, which Dell refers to as a “tri-metal chassis.”

This Tri-metal chassis is also MIL-STD-810G certified – this certification confirms its expected durability. As a result, the E7440 should be able to handle extreme vibration and temperatures than an ordinary laptop.

The Dell Latitude E7440 features a full HD display with a 1366 × 768 resolution. This display screen is composed of Corning Gorilla Glass and has a matte finish to reduce irritating glares.

Dell’s Latitude E7440 has a lot of good features, but the keyboard isn’t one of them. The standard backlit keyboard on the Latitude 7440 felt weak.

Unfortunately, the keys also exhibit flex when pressed.

Furthermore, key travel was adequate but not as good as the Dell Latitude 6430U’s island-style keyboard. I personally prefer the ThinkPad T440s’ comfy keyboard to the Latitude E7440s’, because it provides more tactile feedback.

The touchpad of the Latitude E7440 is 88.9 x 45 mm in size and has a smooth surface. When using the touchpad to move the cursor, there was no latency, and the touchpad supports gestures like pinch-to-zoom and two-finger scrolling.

In addition, dedicated right and left click buttons are located beneath the touchpad. The dedicated click buttons are simple to use and provide accurate feedback.

The Latitude E7440’s keyboard features a pointing stick right in the middle. The pointing stick is an excellent alternative for the touchpad.

In addition, the pointing stick has its own set of click buttons, which are located just below the spacebar key.

The Dell Latitude E7440 is designed for productivity, therefore, it includes all the ports you’ll need. A combined headphone and microphone jack, a USB 3.0 port, and a lock slot are located on the right side of the laptop.

The left side features an SD card slot and a SmartCard reader. On the rear of the laptop, you’ll find a power jack, HDMI, two more USB 3.0 ports, an Ethernet port, and a mini DisplayPort.

The Dell Latitude E7440 features a 720p Webcam. This webcam is suitable for video conferencing and casual skyping.

Unfortunately, the images it produces are quite blurry.

Underneath the Latitude E7440, Dell installed stereo speakers. For a laptop of this size, the speakers provide loud audio.

Just like any other laptop in the Latitude series, Dell provides several of its own first-party software. These include Dell Power Manager and Dell Digital Delivery.

Dell Digital Delivery is the company’s software procurement platform. The Dell Power Manager, on the other hand, provides information concerning your laptop’s battery, such as its status and remaining power.

I believe that these applications are excellent additions to this ready excellent laptop!

Moving on to the weight and dimensions, the laptop is 337 x 231.5 x 21 mm in size and weighs 1630 g. With this dimension and weight, the Dell Latitude E7440 can be easily carried around.

In comparison, the Dell Latitude E7440 is slightly smaller and weighs less than the Lenovo ThinkPad T440. Lenovo’s ThinkPad T440 has a dimension of 339 x 232.5 x 21 mm and weighs 2300 grams.

On a slightly negative note, the Dell Latitude E7440 is quite heavy when compared to its preceding model (Latitude E7420), Dell’s Latitude E7420 weighs 1420 g and has a dimension of 335 x 232 x 18 mm.

In conclusion, the Latitude E7440 comes with a durable design but its keyboard is nothing to write home about. As a result, I’ll rate the laptop an eight out of ten in terms of design.

Dell Latitude E7440: Laptop Processor (CPU) Performance

Dell equipped the Latitude E7440 with a 2-core Intel Core i7-4600U processer. This processor has a base frequency of 2.10 GHz and a maximum frequency of 3.30 GHz, with a cache of 4 MB.

Despite its compact form, the Latitude E7440 has enough power to carry out practically any computing tasks thanks to its Haswell processor. In addition, with this processor, the Latitude E7440 is also great at multitasking.

As a result, I was able to open 10 apps including Chrome and Window store while streaming a video on YouTube without noticing any lag.

However, despite the processor’s excellent performance, it failed to outperform most of its competitors in a benchmark test I carried out. On a Geekbench 3 benchmark test, which is used to determine a multicore processor performance, the Latitude E7440 scored 5,259 points.

Unfortunately, this score is well below the category average of 5,939 points. In addition, this score is also lower than the Toshiba Tecra Z40 with an Intel Core i5-4300U processor which scored 5,326 points.

However, on the bright side, the Latitude E7440 performed better than its preceding model, Latitude E7420. On the Geekbench 3 test, the Latitude E7420 which uses an Intel Core i5 processor scored 5,123 points.

In conclusion, the Dell Latitude E7440 offers excellent processor performance, but most of its competitors outperform it. Therefore, I believe the laptop deserves an eight out of ten ratings.

Dell Latitude E7440: Memory (RAM) Performance

The Dell Latitude E7440 comes with a standard 1600 MHz DDR3L SDRAM 2 GB. Additionally, this laptop offers two RAM slots that support a maximum memory capacity of 8 GB each – a maximum of 16 GB altogether.

This review is based on the maximum RAM capacity of 16 GB RAM. When tested, the Dell Latitude E7440 with this RAM proved to be fast and really good at multitasking.

To begin with, opening applications or booting the laptop was really fast. Although the RAM on a laptop is not the only cause of the laptop’s speed, it plays a vital part.

Additionally, this Dell laptop easily streamed a Netflix video while I had about 25 Chrome browser tabs opened. I didn’t detect any stuttering while doing all this and the workflow was smooth.

Furthermore, on a PCMark 7 test, the laptop scored 4,544 points which were higher than the category average of 3,493 points.

PCMark 7 is a full-featured PC benchmarking program for Windows Operating Systems. The PCMark 7 benchmark test consists of seven tests that combine over 25 different workloads in storage, data processing, image and video manipulation, web surfing, and playing games.

According to the PCMark 7 test, the Latitude E7440 performed better than the Toshiba Tecra Z40 which scored 2,542 points. That is not all, the Latitude E7440 also performed way better than its predecessor (Latitude E7420) which scored 2,835 points.

Finally, in this memory review, I rate the Latitude E7440 a nine out of ten for its excellent memory options and performance.

Dell Latitude E7440: Storage Option & Performance

Dell provides the Latitude E7440 with an SSD storage – this storage supports a maximum capacity of 256 GB. Additionally, this laptop also offers an SD card reader for extra storage expansion.

Personally, I believe this laptop lacks in terms of storage because most business laptops offer more storage capacity, beyond 256 GB. To determine the laptop’s SSD storage speed, I conducted a CrystalDiskMark test.

CrystalDiskMark is a tool developed by Crystal Dew World that can be used to test the speed of SSD and HDD storage in a variety of ways. It’s mostly intended to provide you an idea of your laptop’s storage speed, such as copying, reading, and simultaneous reading.

On the CrystalDiskMark test, the Dell Latitude E7440 achieved a sequential read speed of 477MB/s and a sequential write speed of 396MB/s. I also conducted a file transfer test to further determine the laptop’s SSD performance.

On the file transfer test, the E7440 copied 4.97GB of multimedia files in 39 seconds at a rate of 130.5 MBps. This transfer rate is twice as fast as the category average of 60 MBps.

However, the Latitude E7440’s transfer was slower when compared to Lenovo’s ThinkPad T440s which also uses SSD storage. The Lenovo ThinkPad T440 copied 4.97GB of multimedia files in 29 seconds at a rate of 188.5 MBps.

In conclusion, the Latitude E7440 offers a not-so-sufficient storage capacity and a slow SSD when compared to its competitors. As a result, in this section, I think it deserves nothing more than a seven out of ten ratings.

Dell Latitude E7440: Graphics Card Performance

Dell offers two configurations options for this laptop’s graphics card. You can get the laptop with either an Intel HD Graphics 4400 or an AMD Radeon HD 8690M Graphics.

The Intel HD Graphics 4400 has a base GPU frequency of 200 MHz and a boost GPU frequency of 1100 MHz. On the other hand, the AMD Radeon HD 8690M Graphics has a base frequency of 775 MHz and boost frequency of 825 MHz.

Unfortunately, the Intel HD Graphics 4400 doesn’t feature a dedicated VRAM. Lack of dedicated VRAM entails that the Graphics card shares the same system memory with the CPU.

Therefore, you should not expect the graphics card to excel in gaming or running graphical-intensive applications. On the bright side, the AMD Radeon HD 8690M Graphics features a dedicated 1 GB GDDR5 memory.

As a result, when gaming or running graphic-intensive apps, the Latitude E7440, with AMD Radeon HD 8690M Graphics should perform better.

This review is based on the Intel HD Graphics 4400. As mentions earlier, this graphics card doesn’t feature a dedicated VRAM, so don’t expect it to play graphics-demanding games.

However, the graphic card was still capable of streaming video and at light gaming. I performed a gaming test to see how well the graphics card performed.

On the gaming test, while playing Dead Space 3 on low graphics setting, the laptop managed to achieve 52.8 fps. However, while playing Dead Space 3 on a medium graphics setting, the laptop’s performance dropped to 20.1 fps. 

Compared to its preceding model (Latitude E7420), the Latitude E7440 performed way better. While playing Dead Space 3 on low graphics setting, the Latitude E7420 achieved a frame rate of 40.1 fps.

In conclusion, the Latitude E7440 offers multiple graphics options. Therefore, I will rate the laptop an eight.

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Dell Latitude E7440: Battery Life & Performance

Just like its graphics, the Dell Latitude E7440 offers multiple battery options. You can either purchase the laptop with a 3-cell 34 Whr Lithium-ion or 4-cell 47 Whr Lithium-ion battery.

This Latitude E7440 laptop I reviewed shipped with a 4-cell 47 Whr Lithium-ion battery. According to Dell’s website, this laptop’s battery should last approximately 6 hours.

To validate Dell’s claim about the Latitude E7440 battery, I ran a battery test. During the battery test – which includes continuously surfing the internet using a WIFI connection – the laptop lasted 5 hours and 36 minutes.

However, this runtime is lower than the category average of 6 hours and 49 minutes. Unfortunately, this is not the only bad news – the runtime is also lower than Lenovo’s ThinkPad T440’s runtime of 7 hours.

On the bright side, the laptop had a better battery runtime than its predecessor, Latitude E7420. During the battery test, the Latitude E7420 had a runtime of 5 hours and 15 minutes.

Finally, in this battery performance review, I will rate the laptop a seven for its average battery performance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

The Dell Latitude E7440 is a business laptop with a high-performance processor. This laptop also features a full HD screen and powerful audio in a stylish and durable design.

Dell’s Latitude E7440 Tri-Metal chassis will undoubtedly benefit frequent travelers and office personnel. This chassis is designed for withstanding practically any situation and severe temperatures.

However, the laptop’s keyboard didn’t feel solid enough, and the battery life was disappointingly poor. However, if you can live with these flaws, the Latitude E7440 is definitely an excellent bargain.

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