Dell Latitude 15 9510 review – well-built thin and light business machine
Even at first sight, the Latitude 15 9510 is not a standard machine. First of all, its display has a 15-inch diagonal, where most of the 15-inch laptops on the market have 15.6″ displays. But this is just the beginning. Dell has now brought 5G to the laptop world, and it features very complex face recognition, sporting more than just one IR blaster.
In terms of power, the honor goes to the Intel Comet Lake-U processor family, with the top dog here being the Core i7-10810U, which has 6 cores, 12 threads, and vPro support. Also, the manufacturer claims that their AI-infused Dell Optimizer should be able to provide the best performance and best battery life where, and when it’s needed.
Now, let’s crack the box open, and see what we get for a quite premium price tag.
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-latitude-15-9510/
Contents
Specs Sheet
- HDD/SSD
- up to 1000GB SSD
- M.2 Slot
- 1x 2280 PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 See photo
- RAM
- up to 16GB
- OS
- Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Home
- Battery
- 52Wh, 4-cell, 88Wh, 6-cell
- Body material
- Aluminum
- Dimensions
- 340.2 x 215.8 x 8.2 ~ 14 mm (13.39" x 8.50" x 0.32")
- Weight
- 1.40 kg (3.1 lbs)
- Ports and connectivity
- 1x USB Type-A
- 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD)
- 2x USB Type-C
- 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Thunderbolt 3, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
- HDMI
- 2.0
- Card reader
- SD, SDHC, SDXC
- Wi-Fi
- 802.11ax
- Bluetooth
- 5.1
- Audio jack
- 3.5 Combo Jack
- Features
- Fingerprint reader
- optional
- Web camera
- HD IR
- Backlit keyboard
- Microphone
- Quad-array microphone
- Speakers
- 2x 4W, MaxxAudio Pro
- Optical drive
- Security Lock slot
All Dell Latitude 15 9510 configurations
What’s in the box?
Inside the package, besides the laptop, we only found some paper manuals, and a 65W USB Type-C power brick.
Design and construction
Today’s device weighs 1.40 kg, has a profile of 8.23-13.99mm, and is made out of aluminum. This is extremely thin and light, considering the fact that we’re talking about a 15-inch notebook. Additionally, the chassis is very well built, and it provides a very high amount of rigidity. Kudos to Dell for that.
The lid here opens easily with a single hand. In addition to that, when opened at about 120-degrees, the lid lifts up the backside of the base, so that you get better airflow. People that work mostly outside will be happy to hear, that the display has a matte finish. Also, Dell is calling this screen an “Infinity edge” one, and we can see why – the bezels are extremely thin. And the top one houses quite the equipment – an HD camera, which is flanked by a ton of sensors. Not only do they offer Windows Hello functions, but they also detect whenever you are near the laptop, and when you are leaving it. Using the Optimizer app, you can add a specific amount of time, when the laptop should turn itself off after you have left. By the way, keep in mind that this setting is set to 1 minute by default, so don’t panic if you can’t get your laptop to work by itself for more time, without you being around.
Moving to the base, we see a decent setup. The keyboard has a backlight, tactile, yet quiet feedback, and good key travel. All in all, it is one of the better units out there, and we also didn’t experience heavy deck flex when you press it. Additionally, there are two speaker grills – one on each side of the keyboard. Ultimately, it is great to have speakers firing towards yourself, however, we are really not fans of the gray stripe that runs all around the grills.
Here, the Power button doubles as a fingerprint reader. Below the keyboard, though, you will find the touchpad. It has a glass surface, smooth gliding, and decent tracking.
Since there are no speakers firing downwards, the bottom plate is reserved for the cooling vents. Respectively, the hot air escapes the laptop from the back.
Ports
On the left, you have an HDMI 2.0 connector, followed by two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a MicroSD card slot, a SIM card tray, and a Smart Card reader, and on the right – there’s the single USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, an audio jack, and a wedge security hole.
Disassembly, upgrade options, and maintenance
This notebook’s bottom panel is held in place by 9 Phillips-head captive screws. After you undo them, pry the panel away with a plastic tool, and you should be able to effortlessly lift it.
Here, the cooling solution comprises two heat pipes and a decently-sized fan. As you can see, there is a metal bracket above the CPU, which also covers the soldered memory and the VRMs.
Yep, you won’t be able to upgrade your memory. That said, Dell offers this device with either 8 or 16GB of LPDDR3 memory. Storage-wise, there is one M.2 PCIe x4 slot, clearly labeled with a metal bracket.
As for the battery, there is a 52Wh unit powering the Latitude 15 9510 away from the plug.
Display quality
Dell Latitude 15 9510 has an IPS panel, model number AUO B150HAN (AUO1017D, J4VRV). Its diagonal is 15″ (38.1 cm), and the resolution 1920 х 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 147 ppi, and a pitch of 0.17 х 0.17 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 58cm (24″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).
It has comfortable viewing angles. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.
The measured maximum brightness of 443 nits in the middle of the screen and 405 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 13%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 7200K – colder and almost matching the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source.
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. The contrast ratio is very good – 1680:1.
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. Basically, 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 15 9510’s color gamut coverage.
Its display covers 99% 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 15 9510 with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).
The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really 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 = 35 ms – the panel is a bit slow.
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 15 9510’s screen doesn’t flicker at any brightness level. Thankfully, this enables you to play for extended periods of time, without the risk of further damaging your eyes and brain.
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.
Conclusion
Dell Latitude 15 9510’s IPS panel has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, high maximum brightness (443 nits), and very good contrast ratio. Additionally, it doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment and covers the sRGB color gamut almost fully (99%). Provided you get our Gaming and Web design profile, you will receive high color accuracy, matching the sRGB standard. This is of great importance to people who professionally work with colors, both in online retail, and art.
Buy our profiles
Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Dell Latitude 15 9510 configurations with 15″ FHD IPS AUO B150HAN (AUO1017D, J4VRV).
*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.
Health-Guard
Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.
Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount
Sound
Dell Latitude 15 9510’s front-firing speakers sound so deep that the chassis vibrates when you listen to loud music.
Drivers
All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/latitude-15-9510-2-in-1-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. This notebook’s 52Wh battery lasts for 13 hours and 40 minutes of Web browsing and 10 hours of video playback.
Brightness: 180 nits; Display Mode: SDR
Time to Full Discharge: Higher is Better
In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.
CPU options
This laptop comes with the Core i5-10210U, Core i5-10310U, Core i7-10610U, Core i7-10710U, and Core i7-10810U.
Results are from the Cinebench 20 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)
GPU options
And for graphics, you get only the integrated UHD Graphics that Intel provides with its Comet Lake-U processors.
The results are from 3DMark Time Spy (Graphics). Higher is better.
Results are from 3DMark Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
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 frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.
Intel Core i7-10810U (15W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min |
---|---|---|---|
Dell Latitude 15 9510 | 3.10 GHz (B+182%) @ 87°C | 2.85 GHz (B+159%) @ 97°C | 1.25 GHz (B+14%) @ 61°C |
We were really impressed by the short-term load capabilities of this device. However, after no longer than two minutes, the frequency drops to the pathetic 1.25 GHz, which is something the low Base clocks allow. While this results in a very low temperature at the end of the test, high loads such as video rendering will surely suffer.
Comfort during full load
While the laptop is quiet and not too cool under extreme workload, we already know what is the real reason.
Verdict
Make no mistakes – this is a very premium product. With its lightweight aluminum chassis, and rigid, stable design, the Latitude 15 9510 definitely stands up to what it represents. However, while the performance in short and medium-long loads is outstanding, the longer loads, such as 3D rendering, or video encoding might take more than you’d want. Also, we found the Dell Optimizer a bit underwhelming and confusing, but we suggest that the AI needs more time to get used to your habits.
On the bright side, you have two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a MicroSD card slot, 5G, and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, but you lose RAM upgradability. Then again, the battery life is more than good with 13 hours and 40 minutes of Web browsing and 10 hours of video playback.
Dell Latitude 15 9510’s IPS panel AUO B150HAN (AUO1017D, J4VRV) has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, high maximum brightness (443 nits), and very good contrast ratio. Additionally, it doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment and covers the sRGB color gamut almost fully (99%). Provided you get our Gaming and Web design profile, you will receive high color accuracy, matching the sRGB standard. This is of great importance to people who professionally work with colors, both in online retail, and art.
Ultimately, not many laptops look, feel, and work like this one. Also, the amount that provides features like IR face recognition, proximity sensors, and automatic turn on/off when you’re around, or not, is very limited. However, we feel that the software, and specifically the Dell Optimizer, and the Dell Power Management app, which we found too confusing, and didn’t really work properly in our opinion. Of course, future updates might fix this, but this is something that the future will decide.
Pros
- Doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment (AUO1017D)
- Covers 99% of the sRGB gamut (AUO1017D)
- Good battery life
- Great build quality
- High maximum brightness (443 nits) and great color accuracy with our Gaming and Web design profile (AUO1017D)
- A fingerprint reader + face recognition that knows when you are near the laptop and unlocks it automatically
- Dual 4W speakers
Cons
- Memory is nonupgradable
- Weird thermal management
- The cooling struggles with combined load scenarios
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-latitude-15-9510/
Could you set Quiet mode in Dell Power Manager and check performance (run CineBench R20 or R23 CPU run) when battery is above and below <20%?