I love 2-in-1 convertible laptops. They are versatile and adapt to different working styles. PC users have quite a few good choices. Here’s one more, Dell’s latest Latitude 7430 2-in-1, which is targeted at business users.
The Dell Latitude 7430 2-in-1 is basically the business version of an XPS 2-in-1 convertibles. While XPS devices are well-known for the premium and elegant build, Latitude ones tend to be slightly more focused on function and more robust build.
My review unit of the 7430 2-in-1 comes in a carbon fibre build. There is another option with an aluminum build. I think that other option is perhaps a little more boring because it is so common. The carbon fibre one is quite unique.
The whole top lid has a soft matt finish that almost feels as if it had a skin applied on it. The bottom cover feels a bit different. The keyboard deck feels like the top lid, though it doesn’t have the carbon fibre pattern.
The 14-inch glossy display is quite a standard Full HD 1920×1080 resolution affair. I’m a little disappointed that Dell hasn’t gone with a 16:10 display aspect ratio that is getting quite common. The extra display height that comes from 16:10 aspect ratio is particularly helpful for productivity use.
Dell rates the Latitude 7430 2-in-1’s screen at 300 nits. In my Spdyer5Pro colourimeter tests, the display scored 96%, 66%, 71%, and 73% colour gamut coverage for sRGB, NTSC, AdobeRGB, and P3 respectively. This is good for general business use.
Being a 2-in-1 convertible, the display has, of course, touch and pen support. This work as you’d expect.
At the top of the display, there is a 720p webcam with IR and Windows Hello login support. There is a physical privacy shutter, and the webcam quality is quite good. There are also two noise-cancelling microphones.
The keyboard is quite standard and ordinary. The chiclet keys are a little soft for my liking. There is no backlighting. The layout is spacious, and the keys arrangement is standard. It would have been nice to have a proper inverted-T arrow key arrangement.
The 5.2-inch diagonal trackpad has a surprisingly slippery glass. It’s quite a joy to use as fingers can glide effortlessly across the surface.
There is a decent offering of ports on the Latitude 7430 2-in-1. They are mostly on the right side of the chassis.
The first one toward the front is for an optional SIM card slot, followed by USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 with Power Delivery and DisplayPort, USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, HDMI 2.0, and a custom lock slot. Sadly, Dell chose not to go with a more common Kensington-lock slot.
On the right side of the chassis, there’s another USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 with Power Delivery and DisplayPort, and a combo audio jack.
For wireless connectivity, the Dell Latitude 7430 2-in-1 supports Wi-Fi 6E (AX211) 2×2 802.11ax and Bluetooth 5.2.
Sound from the 2x 2W stereo speakers can get quite loud. This makes this convertible quite suited for small presentations.
Under the hood, the Latitude 7430 2-in-1 is powered by Intel 12th Generation Core i5-1245U vPro Enterprise. This is a 10-core (2 performance cores and 8 efficient cores) processor with 12 threads. My review unit came with 16 GB of integrated DDR4 3200 MHz RAM and 256 GB of PCIe NVMe storage. The RAM is soldered-on, but good thing is that the NVMe storage is replaceable (PCIe 4.0 x4).
The Dell Latitude 7430 2-in-1 comes with Windows 10 Pro.
Here are some benchmark figures from PCMark 10 Extended:
- Overall: 5069
- Essentials: 9969
- Productivity: 7113
- Digital Content Creation: 4813
- Gaming: 2149
Geekbench 5 scores are:
- Single/Multi-core: 1603 / 5808
- Compute: 12565
Cinebench R23 multi-core score is 5231.
In the PC Mark 10 Modern Office battery benchmark, this Latitude 7430 2-in-1 ran for 6 hrs and 36 mins with a score of 6363. This isnt’ great at all, and I’d have expected the 58 Wh battery to last longer. I’ve come across other review that report better battery life, so perhaps your mileage may vary on this.
The Dell Latitude 7430 2-in-1 as configured in this review (i5-1245U, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB storage) retails at $2,699.18.
Conclusion
The Dell Latitude 7430 2-in-1 brings the versatility of convertibles to business users. It is slightly pricey, but the enterprise features may appeal to larger businesses.
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