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Storage performance as measured by PCMark 8 proved roughly equal across the Latitude 7420 and its competitors, since they all use speedy SSDs as their boot drives. We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark: Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics), and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
Despite this very credible set of features, the display limits an otherwise excellent system. Screen brightness came in at around 277 nits at 100% brightness, the lowest of our comparison units. Plus, our Datacolor Spyder tests showed the Inspiron 14's panel covering only 64% of the sRGB gamut and 48% of the Adobe RGB gamut, also lowest in our comparison group. (More on this later.) There is no longer a 4K option for the screen, nor is there a touch for the clamshell 7420. On the other hand, our 400-nits IPS is just as bright, has wide viewing angles (Comfy View Plus), covers sRGB, and has a strong contrast of 1,800:1. The 4K panel of our former 7410 version was not missed; the high resolution is rarely needed for Office applications. As a direct successor to the 14-inch Latitude 7410 from 2020, the Latitude 7420 in 2022 brings a multitude of changes both inside and out. Only the case design remains the same except for the color scheme and texture. It is an upper mid-range business subnotebook that sits between the smaller Latitude 5000 series and the flagship Latitude 9000 series.
Plenty of Ports, Basic Audio
On the photography front, I've owned a host of 35mm cameras, both film and digital, as well as a Mamiya 645 medium format, a Toyo 4x5, and a Graflex 6x7cm. The last I modified to provide full swings and tilts (allowing you to avoid converging parallel lines, as when you photograph a tall building from ground level). I'm proud of this project, which I wrote about in View Camera magazine. The built-in speakers are adequate, despite some distortion at higher volumes, but since the audio is more satisfactory when using a decent set of headphones, my inclination would be to use the speakers only in a pinch. Dell does offer an optional Dell Mobile Adapter Speakerphone that might be just the thing for frequent conference-callers. Dell Latitude 14 7420’s display doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment at any level. This makes it safe for your eyes even after long exposure.
In my benchmarks, the 1145 tended to run 10 to 20 percent slower than the 1185-based systems, which wasn’t a surprise. On tougher tests, transcoding a 4K video to FHD took 3 hours and 15 minutes on the 7420 compared with two hours and 32 minutes on the 9420. A big Excel data table took 46 minutes to run, compared with about 41 on the other systems; and a MatLab portfolio simulation took 52 minutes, compared with 47-49 minutes on the others. One important thing to note: even this slower Tiger Lake chip performed notably better than the high-end 14nm Comet Lake chips that were in this class of machine a year ago. When I tested last year’s Latitude 7410 with a four core/eight thread Core i7-10610, the Excel data table took 63 minutes and the MatLab simulation took 73 minutes; so the difference is significant. Typical users should be quite pleased with the performance. In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering. The Bluetooth 5.2 version in the Inspiron 14 is the latest. As of version 5.0, Bluetooth supports wireless headphones, game controllers, and smart home devices within 800 feet. Bluetooth 5.2 adds such tweaks as LE Power Control (LEPC), or the ability to allow the transmitter to adjust its transmission power by itself or as requested by a peer device. Moving over to upgradability, Dell claims that the Dell Latitude 5420 supports up to 64GB 3200 MHz DDR4 memory that you can upgrade with two memory module slots on the motherboard. It also comes with a single removable M.2 SSD slot that users can replace and upgrade in the future. The Latitude 7420 finished in about the same amount of time as the Elite Dragonfly Max, significantly ahead of the 10th Gen Core i5 Carbon. Graphics and Battery Testing: Running Time to SpareIDC Whitepaper “Optimizing Performance with Frequent Server Replacements for Enterprises” commissioned by Dell Technologies and Intel, March 2021. Results are based on interviews with 18 IT practitioners and decision makers at midsize and large enterprises and a web survey of 707 IT practitioners and decision makers at midsize and larger enterprises using Dell Technologies server solutions across 7 industries. See full whitepaper: https://www.delltechnologies.com/resources/en-us/asset/white-papers/products/servers/server-infrastructure-resiliency-enterprise-whitepaper.pdf Before I joined the tech-journalism ranks, I wrote on topics as diverse as Borneo's rain forests, Middle Eastern airlines, and Big Data's role in presidential elections. A graduate of Middlebury College, I also have a master's degree in journalism and French Studies from New York University.
Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.
Testing the Latitude 7420: Getting Work Done Is a Cinch
Modern games should be playable with these graphics cards at low settings and resolutions. Casual gamers may be happy with these cards. Buyers can choose between a 42 Wh or 63 Wh battery. Our model was equipped with the ExpressCharge battery with four cells and 63 Wh. Fast charging is detrimental to battery life, which is why it has to be selectively activated in the Dell Power Manager. After that, the battery charges to 80% in one hour. The Latitude lasted 14 hours at 100% in the Wi-Fi test with reduced brightness to 150 cd/m², which is a very good value. Only the Ryzen ThinkPad T14s can top this figure.
Our temperature development and power consumption results below show that the maximum power consumption of the CPU in the Dell is 50 watts ("Ultra Performance" mode). The CPU also heats up to almost 90 °C, which suggests that the 64-watt PL2 is not achievable under low temperatures. Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Graphics Cards and the corresponding Benchmark List. The unit I tried had a 2.1-megapixel 1080p webcam with a proximity sensor. I was a bit disappointed in the camera—even though it’s higher resolution than the 720p cameras I see on a lot of machines, the video was a bit softer in focus and had more of a tendency to whiteout than I’d like. It's adequate, but the cameras in the machines I've most recently tested from both Lenovo and HP are better than what I've seen from Dell. The results of our Handbrake video editing trial are clustered close together, and although the Latitude 7420 tied for last place the differences were negligible. Handbrake is another tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video to a 1080p MP4 file. It’s a timed test, and lower results are better.The multi-core rate falls short of our expectations, especially when you look at the smaller i5-1135G7 ( ThinkPad X1 Carbon). The Core i7 Tiger Lake in the test field performed more or less better, depending on the cooling system. The ThinkPad T14s with the Ryzen 5850U are right in front. In the single-core tests, we see the i5-1145G7 11% behind the Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U and 8% behind the ThinkPad T14's Core i7-1165G7.
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