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日本[Video Review] Dell Latitude 14 9430 – Form is temporary, class is permanent
Dell Latitude 14 9430 in-depth review
Today, we're going to take a look at a Latitude that sits on the top of the business notebook pyramid. In fact, the entire Latitude series can be considered a pyramid. There are many budget devices (the foundation), which provide the company with resources, which can be allocated to the top, where experiments and premium materials make devices more scarce.In Dell's own words, the Latitude 14 9430 will provide you with "a CEO-level experience". This means that you should get a no-compromise device. However, it feels hard to believe that there are no compromises.Before we take a look at[...]
Pros
- A ton of security software + a human-detecting proximity sensor
- 96% sRGB coverage and accurate colors with our Gaming and Web design profile (AUO 2WGY7-B140UAN (AUO6D9C))
- No PWM (AUO 2WGY7-B140UAN (AUO6D9C))
- Wi-Fi 6 support, optional 5G connectivity
- Great build quality
- Comfortable keyboard
- Fantastic battery life
- Fingerprint reader, IR face recognition systems
- Wide I/O, including two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, and a MicroSD card slot
Cons
- Premium price tag
- Memory is soldered to the motherboard
Dell Latitude 14 9430 - Specs
- HDD/SSD
- up to 1000GB SSD
- M.2 Slot
- 1x 2230 PCIe NVMe 4.0 x4 See photo
- RAM
- up to 32GB
- OS
- Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11 Pro, Windows 11 Home
- Battery
- 59.6Wh, 3-cell, 39.7Wh, 2-cell
- Body material
- Aluminum
- Dimensions
- 310.59 x 215.18 x 8.46 - 13.91 mm (12.23" x 8.47" x 0.33")
- Weight
- 1.27 kg (2.8 lbs)
- Ports and connectivity
- 1x USB Type-A
- 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Sleep and Charge
- 2x USB Type-C
- 4.0, Thunderbolt 4, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
- HDMI
- 2.0
- Card reader
- microSD (SD/SDHC/SDXC)
- Ethernet LAN
- Wi-Fi
- 802.11ax
- Bluetooth
- 5.2
- Audio jack
- 3.5mm Combo Jack
- Features
- Fingerprint reader
- optional
- Web camera
- FHD
- Backlit keyboard
- Microphone
- Quad Array Microphone
- Speakers
- 4x 10W Stereo Speakers
- Optical drive
- Security Lock slot
- Wedge Lock
All Dell Latitude 14 9430 configurations
[Intro]
What Dell says about the Latitude 14 9430 is that it offers a non-compromise, CEO-level laptop experience. But you know that we’re not that naive and we won’t believe anything unless it’s proven in our laboratory. So, let’s go!
[Design]
This laptop is on the top of the food chain in Dell’s pyramid, so we expect no-nonsense when it comes to everything. On the outside, we find a sleek aluminum shell with a glossy finish on the sides and a matte finish on the lid. It weighs just 1.29 kg and has a thickness of up to 13.94 mm. Up top, you can see the Full HD webcam and the accompanying sensors, which include an IR sensor and proximity sensors, for quicker logins. There’s also an electronic privacy shutter, activated with the F9 key.
[Input devices]
And pressing the F9 key feels pretty good. In fact, the entire keyboard is a treat to type on, thanks to the decent key travel and the tactile feedback. It also features a backlight but doesn’t say anything about spill resistance, which is a minus, when compared to Lenovo’s notebooks. It still sports a fingerprint reader inside the power button. As for the touchpad, you can’t ask for more, as the glass surface is super smooth, while the responsiveness and accuracy are great.
[Ports]
Going to the ports, most of them are on the left, with an HDMI 2.0 port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a MicroSD card reader, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. On the right, there’s a lonely USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, as well as a big vent for cooling.
[Display]
With a premium business laptop, you get some of the best available displays. Here this means a 16:10 Full HD IPS panel with excellent viewing angles and a peak brightness of 533 nits. The contrast ratio is very high as well [1690:1], which means deep blacks and great colors. The 96% sRGB coverage contributes to that as well, so you can certainly use the device for any type of color-grading, be it images or videos.
It’s almost mandatory to get our Design and Gaming profile, which improves the accuracy of the colors significantly, from a deltaE value of 2.9 to 1.1. To put things into perspective, anything below 2 is considered accurate, with the human eye being unable to distinguish values below 1.
We’ll link our display profiles in the description below.
[Sound]
We almost forgot to mention the front-firing speakers, which flank the keyboard on the left and right. They deliver pretty good audio with no significant deviations across the entire frequency range, as well as a high maximum volume, which is the weakness of most laptops.
[Performance]
In terms of performance, you can choose between the Core i5-1245U and the Core i7-1265U, two 10-core chips with 12 threads and 12MB of cache. We tested the Core i7, but all in all both chips are very similar. The laptop does perform well, even reaching the levels of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon G10, which has a more powerful P-series CPU inside.
[Cooling]
It’s able to do this thanks to a beefy cooling setup, which has two heat pipes and one fan. It might not sound like much, but it helps the Core i7-1265U maintain 43W in the first 30 seconds of our test, as well as 28W for more than 15 minutes, which is everything that you might want from a laptop like this one.
Also, during the stress test, the laptop didn’t get uncomfortably loud or warm, with a hotspot of only 38°C.
[Battery]
What we feel is even more important for a business machine is efficiency, so you can effortlessly get through a whole day of meetings and e-mails. The 59.6Wh unit inside the Latitude 14 lasts for 15 hours and 29 minutes of Web browsing, or 12 hours and 34 minutes of video playback.
[Teardown and upgradeability]
Lastly, getting inside the laptop is relatively easy, however, there’s not much to do, as the RAM is soldered, with up to 32GB of LPDDR5 memory clocked at 5200MHz. Storage-wise, there’s one 30mm M.2 slot for Gen 4 SSDs.
We’ll have our teardown video down below, which gives you a detailed explanation of how to upgrade the laptop.
[Verdict]
The Dell Latitude 14 9430 is a premium laptop with a premium price tag, however, it does offer a lot to make it all worth it in the end. The build is excellent, the keyboard and display have no faults and the laptop runs cool and quiet even during the heaviest of stress tests, all the while being very efficient.
We’re probably forgetting something since the laptop has so many good qualities, so why don’t you swing by our website and check out the full in-depth review, with more benchmarks and tests? It’s linked down below.
