Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise review: The best high-end business Chromebook?
An impressive corporate Chromebook, but only larger enterprises are likely to be able to afford it
Pros
- Excellent design
- Great screen
- Strong performance
Cons
- Prohibitively expensive
It’s clear where Dell is going with its Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise. From the design to the price tag, this is a Chromebook with its sights on the corporate market, which is increasingly drawn to Chromebooks thanks to their easy management and comparatively low overall costs. It comes in straight clamshell and 2-in-1 variants with a range of specifications, running from a Core i3 model at just under £900 to a Core i7 version at over £1,500, with three or four years of Dell ProSupport Plus on-site services bundled in.
Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise review: What you need to know
While the low-end models are just about affordable, the Latitude 7410 is very much a big business Chromebook, and if you’re buying for personal use or a smaller business, there are cheaper – and better – options out there. Nevertheless, Dell’s enterprise Chromebook has a great design, strong specs and an excellent screen, although it’s the management tools and bundled support that really make it worth your while.
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Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise review: Price and competition
Dell isn’t alone in the corporate Chromebook market. HP has the C360 Enterprise Chromebook and a range of cheaper X360 Chromebook options, while Lenovo has dabbled in ThinkPad Chromebooks and still sells the brilliant Yoga Chromebook C360. The HP C360 is a little overpriced and suffers in comparison to the Latitude 7410 in some areas, while the Yoga’s specifications are now a little dated. Another possible alternative is Google’s superb Pixelbook Go, though it too is beginning to age.
Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise review: Design
The Latitude 7410’s design is both attractive, practical and business-like, with a 14in display crammed into what’s effectively a 13.3in aluminium chassis that’s just 18.5mm thick and 1.35kg in weight. It feels absolutely rock solid – it’s been built to withstand 17 MIL-STD 810G tests – and there’s barely a hint of give in the lid or anywhere in the body. And while the hinge on our clamshell model won’t allow any fancy convertible tricks, it does raise the keyboard slightly when the screen is tilted back and will even push back flat against the desktop.
One thing that distinguishes this Chromebook is its connectivity. On the left you’ll find two USB 3.2 Type-C slots with Power Delivery, a microSD card slot and an HDMI 1.4 output, while on the right are two USB 3.2 Type-A slots – one of which supports Power Share for charging up your phone in transit – and the 3.5mm audio jack. Needless to say, Dell offers a docking solution and monitors and mouse keyboard combos for office use, but the Latitude 7410 has all the connectivity you need to work anywhere within the unit itself.
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Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise review: Keyboard and touchpad
At first, we had some doubts about the keyboard and touchpad, which was not helped by the fact that the former on our test sample was an international keyboard with some symbols in some really odd places. The touchpad, meanwhile, was erratic, refusing to play ball one minute, sending the pointer jumping around the screen the next.
However, a Chrome update solved the touchpad issue, after which it was as good as gold, while the keyboard impressed us more as time went on with its effective backlighting, firm typing action and nice, tactile feedback. UK models with a UK keyboard should be fine.
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Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise review: Display and sound
The screen, meanwhile, is a marked improvement on the display of the Latitude’s main rival, the HP Pro C640. It’s brighter, at 335cd/m², and has better colour reproduction, covering 99.9% of the sRGB gamut with an average Delta E of 2.01. It’s unlikely that you’d do any design work on a corporate Chromebook, but your video meetings, productivity apps and after-hours Netflix binges are going to look great.
And on the subject of video meetings, the Latitude has two other strengths. The audio isn’t brilliant for entertainment purposes – it lacks bass and turns shrill at higher volumes – but it is very clear, and the built-in array microphone does a cracking job of capturing sound without the need for a separate microphone. The built-in HD webcam is also very good in most lighting conditions, though it struggles with focus and exposure if there’s not enough light to work with.
Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise review: Performance and battery life
As for performance, the combination of the faster Core i5 10310U and 16GB of DDR4 RAM on our test sample made this one of the two fastest Chromebooks we’ve tested this year, sometimes overpowering the hugely speedy HP Pro C640 with its Core i7 CPU. The HP is faster in both single- and multicore performance in the Android Geekbench 5 benchmark, and the Lenovo Flex 5 Chromebook and Asus C436F are both a little ahead on multi-threaded speed.
That said, the HP’s Core i7 doesn’t actually give you any more cores or threads to play with, just a maximum clock speed bump from 4.4 to 4.9GHz, and only Linux applications are really going to push it that far. As a result, we’d rather have the Dell’s larger and faster 256GB PCI-E NVMe SSD, which makes the HP’s eMMC drive look puny.
The HP wins on battery life, with over 14 hours where the Dell can’t quite hit 12, but you’ve got a good working day covered either way.
Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise review: Verdict
The big issue with the Latitude is the same as with the HP; it’s a great Chromebook, but it comes with a fearsome price tag. That’s something that larger enterprises more concerned with support and TCO will swallow, and, of all the Chromebooks on test, it’s the Dell that will best fit their needs.
For smaller businesses or individuals, though, there’s no tangible reason to spend this much. The Asus Chromebook Flip C436F and Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 Chromebook will have you covered for a whole lot less, while the Pixelbook Go is cheaper and just as desirable.