The Dell Latitude 7490 pumps out sweet sound, enough to fill a medium-size office. As I listened to a solid reproduction of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Run Away with Me" on the notebook, I noted that her vocals sounded clear, the bass hit well and the synths sounded accurate. This means that the measured response time is worse than the average of all tested devices (21.8 ms). The Dell Latitude 7490 gets warm, but only on the bottom . After we streamed 15 minutes of HD video on the notebook, our heat gun captured a temperature of 99 degrees Fahrenheit on the center of its underside, and up to 107 degrees closer to its hinge. Both temperatures exceed our 95-degree comfort threshold, while the readings from the touchpad (84 degrees) and keyboard (93 degrees) did not.

Dell Latitude 7490 review | TechRadar Dell Latitude 7490 review | TechRadar

What substantially helps this model is the 60WHr battery with a whopping 7500mAh, at least 20% more capacity than most competitive products offer. With this capacity, running all day including additional time on a commute is both realistic and practical. Temperatures haven’t changed much since the Core i7 model, with load averages on top/bottom 35.2 °C and 37.5 °C, respectively (within a degree C of the previous measurements—though room temperatures were also a degree higher during today’s measurements, so it’s really closer to 1.5 °C or so of a drop). Idle values are actually higher, which might be an idiosyncrasy of firmware or something similar (because no other logical explanation suffices). Here, we recorded values of 28.7 °C and 32.5 °C, well above room temperatures. The Dell Latitude 7490 offers decent battery life, but we've seen better. When running the Laptop Mag Battery Test (web browsing at 150 nits), Dell's laptop burned through its charge in 8 hours and 55 minutes, which is pretty close to the 8:50 average for premium notebooks. The Huawei MateBook X Pro (9:55) lasted an hour longer, while the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 lasted less time in the default configuration (8:07) but provided many more hours of activity with its extended battery (17:19).Multimedia, Budget Multimedia, Gaming, Budget Gaming, Lightweight Gaming, Business, Budget Office, Workstation, Subnotebooks, Ultrabooks, Chromebooks

Latitude 7490 14 inch Business Class Laptop | Dell UK Latitude 7490 14 inch Business Class Laptop | Dell UK

The Latitude 7490 could stand to be brighter; it produced up to 277 nits, which falls below the 300-nit category average. The 269-nit ThinkPad T480 and the 278-nit EliteBook 1040 G4 are similarly bright, while the 458-nit MateBook X Pro is far brighter. While the Latitude 7490's matte screen helps reduce glare, the panel isn't bright enough for its colors to not invert when viewed at 30 degrees to the left and right. Built with stunning resolution: The 14" FHD (1920x1080) display features an anti-glare embedded touch screen for reduced weight and remarkable viewing all day. There isn’t room for a conventional 2.5-inch SATA device, though the M.2 slot will take a bigger module, and it is also compatible with NVMe PCIe M.2 drives.The ease of the disassembly process has not changed since our last review; some eight captive Phillips Head screws secure the bottom cover, and nearly every replaceable component is available immediately beneath the panel. One gripe which still applies here is that the keyboard is among the hardest of all FRUs to replace since it’s beneath the motherboard—though this is unfortunately a pretty common trend these days thanks to the thinness of the devices populating even the business segment (which are more and more akin to their consumer-grade counterparts as the years pass). There’s also an adhesive lining the LCD panel to help keep a consistent seal between the bezel and display that’s perilous during disassembly. In the event of a broken screen, technicians will need to take care to separate the bezel and panel surround without damaging anything. The CPU-related tasks all hit great numbers, and not far from what the Core i7-8550U-based machines are capable of. As they share an identical Intel UHD Graphics 620 GPU, the results for anything graphical are almost the same.

Dell Latitude 7490 (i5-8350U, FHD) Laptop Review Dell Latitude 7490 (i5-8350U, FHD) Laptop Review

The included Waves MaxxAudio Pro sound utility allows you to disable its sound-boosting presets, but I recommend you leave it as is. You'll see options for adjusting width, detail and bass, but the default settings are just right.

AUO503D (D04YD_B140HAN) tested with X-Rite i1Pro Basic 2Maximum: 308.6cd/m² (Nits) Average: 294cd/m² Minimum: 13.22cd/m² If you need every minute of battery life you can get, the extended-battery version of the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 lasts 8 hours longer than the Latitude 7490, but its display is much less colorful. The EliteBook 1040 G4 has a brighter display, but its keyboard is mediocre. But the Latitude 7490 begs consideration, as it's a business laptop that offers practically everything you need to be productive.

Latitude 7490 Business Laptop | Dell USA Latitude 7490 Business Laptop | Dell USA

I should note that I had to take the photo in front of the window, where I had natural light, because images taken at my desk were far darker. The Latitude 7490 never was a loud machine, and it’s even quieter with today’s less power-hungry configuration. By slim margins, it’s in fact the quietest machine in our field, topping out at just 40.2 dB(A) and averaging under load a mere 29.9 dB(A)—barely above the ambient noise measurement of 28.2 dB(A). Like all of its competitors, while idling, the fan rarely even engages; and even when it does, noise levels barely increase to a paltry 29.9 dB(A). The Latitude 7490 scored a high 14,458 on the Geekbench 4 general performance benchmark, which leaps over the 10,033 category average. We saw lower scores of 12,913 from the Huawei MateBook X Pro (Intel Core i7-8550U with 16GB of RAM), 12,047 from the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (Intel Core i5-8350U with 8GB of RAM) and 13,463 from the HP EliteBook 1040 G4 (Intel Core i7-7820HQ with 16GB of RAM). The Dell Professional Sleeve 15 protects your 15" laptop wherever your busy day takes you. The professionally-stylish heather gray exterior is also water resistant to protect your laptop from the weather. Using the PCMark08 Work test, we ran the machine at maximum speed for 7 hours 51 minutes, and configured for longevity, the laptop managed an impressive 10 hours 51 minutes.That’s the other weakness of this design, but it shares this limitation with every Intel 8th-gen machine of whatever specification. The palmrests and touchpad are cooler than skin temperature with a maximum of 30.4 °C / 86.7 F and are therefore cool to the touch. While the 8 th-generation Intel CPUs all tend to experience an initial short burst of performance before subsiding somewhat, the Intel Core i7 in our previous 7490 review unit still distances itself from the Core i5-8350U in our CPU tests—ahead by some 9% and 15% in the Cinebench R15 multi- and single-core tests, respectively. After the first few runs, average multi-core scores are closer to the 530 mark in our tests—again, below the less-consistent but still quite a bit higher (roughly) 570 we received over the long-term from the Core i7 model. In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.1 (minimum) to 240 (maximum) ms. » 83% of all devices are better.