Dell Latitude E5470 : Review

The 14-inch Dell Latitude E5470 is a productivity powerhouse that delivers performance, usability, and durability. Its optional 1080p monitor, which offers rich, realistic colours, sets the laptop apart for $1,480 ($779 to start), but its battery life is poor. Does this portable merit being your daily driver?

Dell Latitude E5470  Specs

Pros

• Solid construction
• Impressive show
• Several business-specific features
• Several ports

Cons

• High-cost, slow hard drive
• Poor performance

Design

The Dell Latitude E5470 looks like a professional productivity laptop with its matte black style and robust build. The notebook’s carbon-fibre reinforcements, spill-resistant keyboard, and optional scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass touch display ($210) make it durable. The E5470’s 180-degree hinge lets you lay the screen flat and parallel to the keyboard for better cooperation. Dell claims the notebook meets MIL-STD-810G military durability standards. It can work at 140 degrees Fahrenheit, -20.2 degrees, and 15,000 feet.

The E5470 may be used for 12 hours with sand and dust. The left side of the E5470 has a USB 3.0 port; the right side has VGA and HDMI Ethernet connectors, a second USB 3.0 port, and a SIM card tray. The right edge has a third USB 3.0 port, an SD memory reader, and a Kensington lock slot. Dell placed its own EDock port on the E5470’s bottom. The Latitude E5470 is thicker and heavier than the HP EliteBook 745 G3 (0.74 inches, 3.4 pounds), Lenovo ThinkPad T450s (0.83 inches, 3.8 pounds), and Toshiba Tecra Z40t-B (0.8 inches, 3.7 pounds).

Keyboard, Touchpad

Dell’s Latitude E5470 keyboard is great. The 10FastFingers.com typing test gave me 79 words per minute with 100% accuracy. The E5470’s lively, responsive keys, with 1.93 millimetres of travel, helped me score higher than my desktop average (69 wpm, 99 per cent). My tests showed precise navigation and smooth gesture support on the Latitude E5470’s touchpad. The standard configuration does not include a pointing stick, but you can buy one for $7.

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Display

The Latitude E5470’s 1920 x 1080 display is more colourful than rival business laptops. A cherry-red convertible and Hansel’s delightfully minuscule quarter-mask grooves were visible in Zoolander 2’s trailer. However, the display sometimes appeared yellowish. Our review unit’s 1080p display is optional and costs $70 to upgrade from 1376 x 768. Our colourimeter showed 113.1 per cent of the sRGB colour spectrum on the E5470’s display. That outperforms the EliteBook, ThinkPad, and Tecra and exceeds the average thin-and-light notebook (83.2 per cent). The Delta-E colour accuracy test at 1.07 for the E5470 also performed well.

The Tecra (0.9) was marginally better, but the Latitude’s colours are more accurate than those of the EliteBook, ThinkPad, and average ultraportable notebook. Our light meter shows the E5470’s display emits up to 278 nits, which outshines the ThinkPad (236), Tecra (265), and average thin-and-light notebook (243). The EliteBook (317 nits) brightens. Wide viewing angles enhance the E5470. I shifted 75 degrees left or right, and the display retained superb colour and clear details.

Audio

The Latitude E5470 can fill a big conference room with its powerful sound for a corporate notebook. Beyoncé’s “Love on Top” vocals were forceful and lovely, Jamie xx’s “I Know There’s Gonna Be” bass was robust, and Radiohead’s “Karma Police” guitar strings and piano keys were sharp. The E5470 ships with Dell Audio, which lets you modify the equalizer and microphone sensitivity. The Maxx Sense option, already active on our evaluation unit, produces a wider and more appealing sound.

Webcam

The E5470’s 0.9-megapixel webcam took bright images of me in our well-lit New York workplace. The crimson Purch Media wall was appropriately drawn, but the noisy photo lost detail.

Performance

With a 2.3-GHz Intel Core i5-6440HQ processor, discrete AMD Radeon R7 graphics, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD, the Latitude E5470 was powerful enough for multitasking and productivity. Even after opening two dozen Chrome tabs, including one that streamed a 1080p YouTube video while Windows Defender ran a full system file scan, I observed no slowness. The Latitude E5470 scored well on Geekbench 3, a simulated performance benchmark.

That mark easily outperforms the AMD A12-powered EliteBook 745 G3 (5,494), the Core i5-5300U-powered ThinkPad T450s (5,993), the Core i7-5600U-powered Tecra Z40t-B (6,427), and the average thin-and-light notebook (6,229). The E5470’s 256GB SSD disk copied 4.97GB of multimedia files in 34 seconds at 150.79 MBps. This is faster than the EliteBook, ThinkPad, and typical thin-and-light notebooks with 256GB SSDs (118.58 MBps). Latitude E5470 surpassed its competition in our OpenOffice Test, matching 20,000 names to their addresses in 3 minutes and 38 seconds, giving productivity-minded customers confidence. It’s faster than all its competitors.

A Tale of Two Trackpads

Business laptops are more than their ports, style, and software. Another important business laptop feature is a TrackPoint nub in the center of the keyboard. The Dell Latitude should have one. When data entry takes hours, a TrackPoint-style pointer can save the day. Adjust the nub without taking your hands off the keyboard, and keep going. It’s not a headline feature, but it works. It’s accurate enough for modest cursor adjustments but not responsive enough to replace the trackpad. Below the space bar are left, right, and central buttons for the TrackPoint-style pointer.

The trackpad is small by today’s standards, but it works. Changing the sensitivity doesn’t affect its speed or accuracy. If you buy this laptop, learn about the TrackPoint. The Latitude’s keyboard has surprisingly deep key travel for a computer, and the keys are sturdy and springy without becoming mushy after lengthy typing sessions. A basic white LED backlight illuminates the keycaps and keys underneath. It’s not Razer Chroma lights, but it works. Typing in the dark makes it easy to find function keys.

FAQs

Is the Dell Latitude E5470 suitable for business use?

Yes, the Latitude E5470 is designed with business users in mind. It offers a durable chassis, security features, and a range of business-specific options, making it a good choice for professionals and corporate environments.

Can I upgrade the components on the Dell Latitude E5470?

Yes, you can upgrade certain components, including RAM and storage. The laptop has accessible RAM and storage slots, making it relatively easy to perform these upgrades. However, some components, like the CPU, are not user-upgradable.

What ports and connectivity options does the Dell Latitude E5470 have?

The Latitude E5470 includes a variety of ports, such as USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, and an SD card reader. It also supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.

Is it possible to replace the battery in the Dell Latitude E5470?

Yes, the battery in the Dell Latitude E5470 is replaceable. You can purchase a new battery and swap it out if the original battery is no longer holding a charge.

How much does the Dell Latitude E5470 weigh?

The weight of the Dell Latitude E5470 can vary depending on the configuration and battery size, but it typically ranges from 3.88 to 4.5 pounds (approximately 1.76 to 2.04 kilograms).

Is the Dell Latitude E5470 still available for purchase?

My knowledge cutoff date is in January 2022, so I cannot provide information on the current availability of the Dell Latitude E5470. I recommend checking with Dell or authorized retailers for the most up-to-date information on available laptop models.