Dell Latitude 14 3400 review – a budget business solution

Once a very major business notebook brand, Latitude now falls short of reaching Lenovo’s ThinkPad success. Not that the Latitudes are not good devices, they have just, somehow lost reputation in the majority of people. This may be because the ThinkPad series stays true to the original design both in the budget and in the premium spectrum.

So what does Dell do wrong in this case? It is certainly not the hardware, as it features the Whiskey Lake processors of Intel. Additionally, it can be bought with up to NVIDIA GeForce MX250 graphics card, but that will significantly raise the price tag. Last, but not least, there is the Full HD IPS panel that is supplied to this budget 14-inch business notebook.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-latitude-14-3400/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Dell Latitude 14 3400 - Specs

  • AUO B140HAN-N4HYV (AUO453D)
  • Color accuracy  4.8  3.8
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 2566GB SSD + up to 1000GB HDD
  • RAM
  • up to 32GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Home, No OS, Windows OS
  • Battery
  • 56Wh, 4-cell, 42Wh, 3-cell, 56Wh, 4-ce;;, 56Wh 4-cell
  • Body material
  • Plastic / Polycarbonate
  • Dimensions
  • 330 x 238 x 18.65 mm (12.99" x 9.37" x 0.73")
  • Weight
  • 1.67 kg (3.7 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 2.0
  • HDMI
  • 1.4
  • VGA
  • 1
  • Card reader
  • SDHC
  • Ethernet LAN
  • 10/100/1000 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5 mm combo
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • optional
  • Web camera
  • Backlit keyboard
  • optional
  • Microphone
  • Speakers
  • 2 Stereo Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot
  • Fingerprint reader (optional)

What’s in the box?

In the box, you’ll find all the basics – a 45Wh charging brick, as well as some paper documentation and the laptop itself.


Design and construction

Latitude 14 3400’s design is nothing fancy. You have a typical for 2019 sized 14-inch plastic chassis, that feels incredibly sturdy (for a plastic device). In terms of size, it falls in the ballpark of the HP ProBook 440 G6 and the Lenovo ThinkPad E490, weighing 1.67 kg and measuring just under 19mm in profile.

No single-handed lid opening here, sadly. When you open the device up, you are going to feel a little bit older vibe. It seems that the Latitude 14 3400 is not that modern-looking as we thought. If you remember, one of the biggest steps to a sleeker design, we saw from this year’s budget business laptops was made by HP with their ProBook 440 G6.

Next, comes a place where the Latitude 14 3400 would want to make some ground to the competition – the input devices. To our surprise, though, this is one of the worst keyboards for typing. While it has a backlight and the area around it doesn’t bend when you press it, the keys have just too short of a travel and feel mushy. This is in total contrast to the ones on the ThinkPad E490, which are both larger, and more tactile.

This device feels a lot more like an Inspiron than it does like a Latitude – probably one of the reasons, that Latitudes are losing their popularity. At least the touchpad feels fast and accurate, despite the cheap material it is made of.

On the bottom side, you are going to see a pretty standard view – the ventilation grill and the speaker cutouts are on their common locations, while the hot air comes out from the backside.

Ports

Brace yourselves – the VGA port is back! Quite weird to see on a modern device, but your eyes ‘ain’t lying to you – this is a full-blown VGA port. It is located on the right side and next to it you can see a USB Type-A 2.0 port and an SD card reader – it feels like a 20th-century class reunion. On the left, however, things look more 2019-ish – the charging plug and right next to it you’ll find a USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen. 1), an HDMI connector, RJ-45 connector, two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports, and an audio jack. Sadly – no Type-C charging as seen on the similarly priced ThinkPad E490 and the more premium Latitudes.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

Check our dedicated article on the disassembly of Latitude 14 3400.

Display quality

Dell Latitude 14 3400 has a Full HD IPS screen, model number AUO B140HAN-N4HYV (AUO453D). Its diagonal is 14″ (35.56 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 157 ppi, their pitch – 0.161 x 0.161 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 56 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Viewing angles are comfortable. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.

The maximum measured brightness is 233 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 222 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 8%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 7000K (average) – colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 6870K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 70% Brightness (White level = 140 cd/m2, Black level = 0.10 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is very good – 1400:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Dell Latitude 14 3400’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers just 53% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Dell Latitude 14 3400 with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display can reproduce dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 25 ms


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Dell Latitude 14 3400 is free of PWM across all brightness levels. This makes it comfortable for use during long work periods, without harming your eyesight in this aspect.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Conclusions

Dell Latitude 14 3400 has a Full HD IPS panel with comfortable viewing angles, great contrast ratio, and adequate default settings. On the bright side, the backlight doesn’t flicker, while on the downside – it has a modest color coverage.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Dell Latitude 14 3400 configurations with 14.0″ AUO B140HAN-N4HYV (AUO453D) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS panel.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

Dell Latitude 14 3400 produces a not very loud sound, however, the sound quality is okay.


Drivers

Dell has all of the drivers and utilities for the Latitude 14 3400 on their official software page: https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/latitude-14-3400-laptop/drivers

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. It has two options for a battery – a 42Wh 3-cell unit and a 56Wh 4-cell one. Our device was equipped with the larger one and we were able to extract a decent autonomous time with it.

It was able to reach almost 11 hours of Web browsing and 10 hours and 45 minutes of video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

Dell Latitude 14 3400 is offered with the dual-core Core i3-8145U, and the quad-core Core i5-8265U and Core i7-8565U.

Dell Latitude 14 3400 CPU variants

Here you can see an approximate comparison between the CPUs that can be found in the Dell Latitude 14 3400 models on the market. This way you can decide for yourself which Dell Latitude 14 3400 model is the best bang for your buck.

Note: The chart shows the cheapest different CPU configurations so you should check what the other specifications of these laptops are by clicking on the laptop’s name / CPU.

Results are from the Cinebench 20 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)

Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)


GPU options

GPU-wise we would recommend sticking to the onboard Intel UHD Graphics 620, but if you need some extra graphics power, there is the GeForce MX250 to pick.


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS29 fps– fps– fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS47 fps26 fps– fps

GTA-V-benchmarks

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5)HD 768p, Normal (Check settings)HD 768p, High (Check settings)HD 768p, Very High (Check settings)
Average FPS25 fps– fps– fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

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.

Average core temperature (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i3-8145U (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Dell Latitude 14 34003.42 GHz (B+63%)@ 83°C3.36 GHz (B+60%)@ 96°C2.82 GHz (B+34%)@ 81°C
ASUS VivoBook S14 S4303.34 GHz (B+59%)@ 68°C3.24 GHz (B+54%)@ 83°C1.97 GHz @ 56°C
ASUS VivoBook S13 S3303.58 GHz (B+70%)@ 68°C3.51 GHz (B+67%)@ 79°C2.77 GHz (B+32%)@ 72°C

Intel Core i3-8145U is one of the most efficient Core iX processors for a laptop. It provides decent performance, taking a very little cooling toll. As you can see, the Latitude 14 3400 hadn’t had any problems with managing its clock speeds. However, the laptop was running on the hot side, with temperatures reaching 96C at the second checkpoint. With that said, the Latitude 14 3400 was producing hardly any noise from its fan and we think that Dell could have been more generous on this side.

Verdict

As a low-end business laptop, the Latitude 14 3400 has to be a good allrounder of a device to satisfy the market. We are not saying that it has to rock all categories, it just needs not to suck at them. From our limited time we had with this device, we concluded that Dell has put a lot of effort into this one. However, we feel that it is still not enough.

Let’s start with the keyboard, shall we? As we already mentioned, the ThinkPads are very, very strong even in the low-end market, so there is no room for compromises in building a business laptop. Sadly for Dell, the keyboard of this laptop is far from the competition. While it has a backlight and decent spacing, the keys are smaller than the ones on the ThinkPad E490, they have shallow travel and what is most disappointing – they are mushy.

Additionally, the overall design of the laptop looks cheap. Interestingly, though, it feels robust and sturdy and we don’t think it will let you down if you accidentally drop it. Moreover, it lacks a SATA drive slot, which in the aforementioned case would mean that your data would be safe because there are no moving parts in your storage. On the bright side, you can still upgrade your storage via the NVMe-enabled M.2 slot.

In conjunction with that, there is a Full HD IPS panel (AUO B140HAN-N4HYV (AUO453D)), that given the price will not disappoint, as well. It has an average maximum brightness and its color coverage is modest, however, its viewing angles are excellent, as is the contrast ratio and most importantly it doesn’t use PWM to adjust the brightness level.

And while we were happy to see the VGA port on this device, we were not impressed with the barrel-style charging plug – something that Lenovo has already solved with USB Type-C charging, that will let you use the laptop charger for your phone or tablet. With that said, we would recommend the ThinkPad E490 over the Latitude 14 3400, which also runs a little on the warm side.

Pros

  • Very quiet under load
  • Great battery life
  • Doesn’t use PWM to adjust screen brightness (AUO B140HAN-N4HYV (AUO453D))
  • Has a backlight on the keyboard
  • An IPS panel with good contrast and comfortable viewing angles (AUO B140HAN-N4HYV (AUO453D))


Cons

  • A shallow key travel and mushy feedback from the keyboard
  • Covers only 53% of sRGB (AUO B140HAN-N4HYV (AUO453D))
  • Runs a little too hot in full load
  • Uses the old barrel-style plug for charging

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-latitude-14-3400/

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