Home » Review: Dell Latitude 13 7000 Series – the ultimate in business ultrabooks

Review: Dell Latitude 13 7000 Series – the ultimate in business ultrabooks

When Intel introduced the ‘Core-M’ processors around 2 years ago, there was promise of thin laptops that needed no cooling and took hardly any space. As time has gone on, most of the machines to feature those laptops have come with fairly ordinary specs. Glorified tablets with keyboards attached, or just cheaper machines. Back then, ultrabooks were the holy grail in the PC world, the device that will finally pitch itself against Apple’s Macbook Air and the Macbook series. It never really happened.

PCs got thinner, but the good machines relied on the i3s and the i5s. Ultrabooks started to pack those in with good amounts of RAM and an SSD, and got a great performance. Dell had other ideas though. They went and built a machine built around the Intel Core- M processor, and they did it well. Behold the Latitude 7000 Series!

Quick Specs

  • 13″ Infinity Edge display – 1920 x 1080 full HD
  • Typical Latitude security to ensure your business data is safe
  • Intel CoreM Processors, up to m7.
  • Windows 10 Pro/Home and others available
  • Up to 16GB of RAM
  • Up to 512 GB SSD
  • Optional fingerprint reader
  • WiFi + Bluetooth
  • 2 x USB C (also used for charging), 1 x USB 3, Micro SD Card Reader
  • 304.8mm x 210.5mm x 14.32mm, starting at 1.12kg

Look and feel

If you thought the XPS 15 was a good looking machine, Dell have stepped it up a notch with the Latitude 7000 series. The designs are fairly similar though, including the interesting webcam at the centre. However, the main highlight is the Infinity Edge display. Thanks to this technology, you get a 13″ screen in a very compact footprint. Most other laptops only manage around 11 or 12 inches of display in the same area.

While the design may feel a little delicate, it holds itself well and offers good strength as and when you need it.

Since it charges via one of the USB C ports, you also don’t need a thick charging port.

It is thin, it is small and it is sexy, without taking back anything on usability.

It offers the following ports:

A standard sized keyboard and a touch pad sits in the usual places.

The keyboard was pretty decent, and good to type on.

The touchpad was pretty responsive and good too. However, for some weird reason, the two-finger click to right click feature was a bit hit and miss.

Performance

So, how well does a properly specced up computer with an Intel CoreM processor do? You know what, I wasn’t really able to tell much of a difference. True, I didn’t put this under heavy load, I didn’t process video or such like on it, but I gave it a good use. I carried it around, went through various browser tabs at times, had an email client to respond to emails, and watched videos or listened to music in the background. There was a bit of document processing too.

For all those purposes, this is a perfect machine. Yeah, it is expensive, but unlike the cheaper ones which struggle just when you want them to perform, this keeps on going, without a hitch.

Of course, if you were to ask more of this, like a bit of photo editing or video processing, it will be able to handle all that for you too. Yeah, it won’t be fast enough, but in this price range and size, you won’t find many competitors.

Being CoreM also means that the device is designed to run cooler. Hours of use meant that you only got a slight bit of warmth at the bottom of the device. In fact, one of the joys of the machine is that it needs no fans, so you never have to worry about your computer suddenly turning into a noisy bugger in the middle of a meeting when the fans come on.

Portability

Thing is, this is designed for the business man on the move, not somebody who is hop-scotching between cafes or needs a light portable laptop. On that front, it delivers with the look and the performance.

At just over a kg, it is pretty light, and the average of 10 hour of battery life means you can keep this going for a whole day without having to worry about finding a charger. Since it charges on a USB C port, you can even plug in a compatible portable charger to give it some extra oomph! While not many of those exist quite yet, thanks to the latest Macbook Pros, this is rapidly changing!

More information

More information on the Latitude 13 7000 series ultrabooks can be found on the Dell website. Excluding VAT, the prices start at £1389. With VAT you are looking at nearly £1500. On some online retailers, such as Amazon, you can even grab these around a 32%, i.e. near £1088!

Verdict

One may argue that this is quite a high price to pay for an ultrabook that comes with a CoreM Processor. However, as far as I can see, this is probably the best implementation of a CoreM processor that exists in the market. Dell have done Intel proud.

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