[Video Review] Dell Precision 14 5470 – How is it this tiny?



Dell Precision 14 5470 in-depth review

Dell's Precision lineup is probably the most popular workstation family of notebooks on the market. Its notorious reliability and pro app integration are second to none. Today, we have the Precision 14 5470, which is an incredibly portable mobile workstation.Not only does Dell offer it with two display options, but they are both comparable in specs, only differing in resolutions. Its IPS panels should be perfect for content creation, and any color-related work. Well, at least on paper. In the following paragraphs, we are going to put it through its paces and show you its true self.Bef[...]

Pros

  • Strong body build of carbon fiber and aluminum
  • Virtually bezel-less screen
  • 400+ nits maximum brightness, 100% sRGB coverage (AUO J83VF-B140UAN (AUOF99A))
  • Accurate color representation with our Gaming and Web design profile (AUO J83VF-B140UAN (AUOF99A))
  • Thin and light
  • Great keyboard
  • Fingerprint reader embedded in the power button and an optional IR face recognition system
  • Four Thunderbolt 4 connectors, USB Type-C charging, and a MicroSD card reader (+ tiny dongle inside the box)
  • Decent battery life

Cons

  • Can't extract 100% of the hardware it comes with
  • Expensive
  • Soldered memory

Dell Precision 14 5470 - Specs

  • AUO J83VF-B140UAN (AUOF99A)
  • Color accuracy  2.8  1.4
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 8000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 64GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro
  • Battery
  • 72Wh, 4-cell
  • Body material
  • Aluminum, Carbon
  • Dimensions
  • 310.60 x 210.35 x 7.49 - 11.09 mm (12.23" x 8.28" x 0.29")
  • Weight
  • 1.48 kg (3.3 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 4x USB Type-C
  • Thunderbolt 4, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • 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
  • HD + IR
  • Backlit keyboard
  • optional
  • Microphone
  • Dual Digital Array Microphones
  • Speakers
  • 2x 2.5W Tweeters + 2x 2.5W Woofers
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot
  • Wedge Lock

[Intro]

When you think of workstation laptops, you think of either the HP ZBooks or the Dell Precision devices. Today we’ve got the smallest workstation out on the market, the 14-inch Precision 5470. With seriously powerful processors inside and a dedicated graphics card, how will Dell handle all of that inside a chassis as small as this one?

[Design]

On the outside, we’ve got a pretty sleek metal lid and bottom panel with a grey anodized finish, and a glossy logo on the back. The base uses carbon fiber, which is grippier and doesn’t collect as many fingerprints. More importantly, the durability of the laptop is great, despite the smaller size, as the combination of materials results in no major flex from both the lid or the base. In terms of dimensions, the laptop weighs only 1.48 kg and has a profile of 11.09 mm, which is insane.

[Input devices]

The keyboard lacks a NumPad, but it’s still one of the better units that you can get, sporting a backlight, long key travel, and clicky feedback. There are two speaker grills on the left and right side, while the power button doubles as a fingerprint reader. The touchpad is covered in glass and has an NFC coil inside, so you can pair other devices to it.

[Ports]

The sides keep the ports, with two Thunderbolt 4 ports and an audio jack on the left. On the right, there are two more Thunderbolt 4 ports and a MicroSD card reader. We also have the optional SmartCard reader, which sits on the left.

[Display]

Getting to the display, we first have to talk about the thin bezels and all the sensors that they keep. There’s a Full HD webcam and an IR sensor for facial recognition. This allows for faster and automatic log-out and awake, so you can get working right from the get-go.

The 16:10 Full HD display by itself is fantastic, having excellent viewing angles and a peak brightness of 452 nits. The contrast ratio is very high as well, sitting at 1800:1, so you’re getting very deep blacks and punchy colors. And you’re getting a lot of colors, as the laptop covers 99% of the sRGB gamut. Pairing it with our Design and Gaming profile is a no-brainer move, as it increases the accuracy, lowering the dE value down to 1.4. We’ll have our profiles linked down below.

[Sound]

The front-firing speakers can be a bit louder, however, the quality of the sound itself is good, with no significant deviations across the entire frequency range.

[Performance]

Moving into the heavy benchmarks, let’s see how the Alder Lake H-series does inside the 14-inch machine. Here we have the 14-core Core i7-12800H, which delivers good scores inside Cinebench R23, being a bit less powerful than the Core i9-12900H inside the ZenBook Pro 14 Duo from ASUS. On the other hand, it runs circles around the MacBook Pro 14 with an M2 Pro CPU.

For graphics, you’ve got the professional RTX A1000. It’s an entry-level card, so don’t expect miracles. It uses the same GPU die as the RTX 3050 and 3050 Ti, however, due to the smaller size of the Precision 14, it doesn’t score very high.

[Cooling]

Let’s check out what exactly Dell has going on inside, as the components definitely need competent cooling. Inside the Precision, there are two heat pipes and two fans. They do an impressive job, however, keeping the Core i7-12800H well above its base power targets, maintaining 50W for more than 15 minutes. On the other hand, the GPU runs at only 35W, which explains the lower benchmark scores when compared to an RTX 3050 or a 3050 Ti.

During full load, the laptop gets noisy, however, it still can’t compare to a proper gaming rig going at full blast. The base’s external temperature reaches 41.6°C in the middle, which isn’t too hot, however, you’ll feel some warmth under your fingers.

[Battery]

The battery life is pretty good all things considered, with the 72Wh unit lasting for 10 hours and 25 minutes of either Web browsing or video playback.

[Teardown and upgradeability]

When it comes to upgradeability, many smaller laptops suffer, including the Precision 14, which has soldered LPDDR5 memory, with up to 64GB of it. Storage-wise, you have only one M.2 slot for Gen 4 drives.

Our teardown video shows how to access the single SSD slot, which is quite easy. Still, we’ll leave it down below for you to check out if you want.

[Verdict]

The Dell Precision 14 is a pretty fantastic laptop that puts the word mobile in mobile workstations. While its hardware can perform better, as we’ve seen it do so, the amount of performance that the notebook offer in this state is amazing and shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s also pretty secure, with many sensors and features to make it as hard as possible for others to access the precious contents inside.

For more information and tests of the Dell Precision 14 5470, we’ll leave our written review linked down below.

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