Dell Latitude 5400 review – a business device that justifies its high retail price
Today, with us is another laptop that went through Dell’s recent Latitude numeric overhaul. Its called the Latitude 5400 and can be considered as a more budget alternative to the Latitude 7400. Despite being a few hundred bucks cheaper than the latter, the Latitude 5400 is also made out of carbon fiber and embodies the Whiskey Lake CPU line-up of Intel. Moreover, if you need additional security features, you can get it with the vPro versions of the Whiskey Lake processors.
Screenwise, you get basically three options – a 768p TN panel, a 1080p IPS panel, and what would be the most expensive option – the 1080p IPS touchscreen display. Price-wise, the laptop starts at $823, but something more competitive, for example with the Core i5-8265U, a Full HD IPS display and a 256GB SSD is going to set you back around $360 more.
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-latitude-14-5400/
Contents
Specs Sheet
- HDD/SSD
- up to 8000GB SSD + up to 1000GB HDD
- RAM
- up to 64GB
- OS
- Windows 10 Pro, No OS, Windows OS, Windows 10 Home
- Battery
- 42Wh, 3-cell, 68Wh, 4-cell
- Body material
- Carbon
- Dimensions
- 323 x 216 x 19 mm (12.72" x 8.50" x 0.75")
- Weight
- 1.52 kg (3.4 lbs)
- Ports and connectivity
- 1x USB Type-C
- 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), DisplayPort
- 3x USB Type-A
- 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
- HDMI
- 1.4b
- Card reader
- Micro SD
- Ethernet LAN
- 10, 100, 1000
- Wi-Fi
- 802.11ac
- Bluetooth
- 5.0
- Audio jack
- 3.5 mm combo
- Features
- Fingerprint reader
- optional
- Web camera
- Backlit keyboard
- optional
- Microphone
- Speakers
- 2x 2.5W
- Optical drive
- Security Lock slot
- IR face recognition (optional), fingerprint reader (optional), backlit keyboard (optional)
All Dell Latitude 14 5400 configurations
What’s in the box?
Latitude 5400’s packaging includes only the paper manuals and a 65Wh charging unit.
Design and construction
As we’ve cleared that the Dell Latitude 5400 is definitely not a budget laptop, let’s take a look at how did they do it. As we mentioned, they have used a carbon fiber composite for the body, and (as stated by Dell) it consists of 16.96% of post-consumer recycled material. Something we see on the XPS series. In terms of measurements, the laptop weighs 1.48 kg and has a profile of 19.6mm.
Ultimately, you can open the lid with a single hand, however, the hinges are a little stiff and they lift the base of the laptop as you open the lid so you might want to use your other hand to press it against the desk. While Dell has used a somewhat baseless design there are significant top and bottom bezel, that house the logo and the optional IR face recognition, respectively.
Looking at the base you see a more Latitude-y design, in comparison to the Latitude 7400. It features the significant nipple above the “B” key, while the keyboard itself is a little short traveled. On the bright side, the feedback is relatively clicky and quiet – something common for the business-oriented devices. Additionally, we find the keycaps to be a little too small. On the right of the keyboard is to be seen the On/Off button, which would house the fingerprint reader, should you pick the model that features it.
Below the keyboard, you can see the touchpad that not only has dedicated buttons on the buttons but also has ones at the top. They are, of course, dedicated to the nipple. As of the responsiveness of the touchpad, it is pretty good but the area is a little too small, especially after we’ve just reviewed the ASUS VivoBook S15 S532, which has a huge one.
On the bottom plate, there is a huge area, dedicated to ventilation. Additionally, the speaker cut-outs are placed on the closest to the user place of the bottom panel.
Ports
On the left side, you can see the barrel-style charging plug. After that, there is a Thunderbolt 3 port and a USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1), the ventilation grill and after that would sit the SmartCard Reader. On the right, there is a lot more happening – a Noble Wedge lock, an RJ-45 connector, an HDMI 1.4b port, followed by two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports, an audio jack, a MicroSD card slot, and an LTE SIM card slot beneath it.
Disassembly and upgrade options
You don’t need great skills in order to get inside the Dell Latitude 5400. Its bottom plate is held in place by 8 Phillips-head screws that stay attached to the panel when unscrewed. Once we’re inside, there is one thing that got our interest immediately. More on that – later.
First, let’s check out the cooling solution of this laptop. It somewhat looks like the one on HP ProBook 440 G6, however, the present device has a significantly smaller fan.
Then, we are glad to see two RAM DIMMs onboard – they support up to 32 GB of DDR4 memory.
Finally, there is the battery and the M.2 NVMe storage slot beside it. Actually, the battery was what impressed us most in this device – the pack is 68Wh, something huge for a 14-inch business notebook. We are certainly expecting a very long battery life from this one.
Display quality
Dell Latitude 5400 is equipped with a Full HD display, model number AUO B140HAN-F87J3 (AUO463D). 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).
Its viewing angles are excellent. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.
The maximum measured brightness is 223 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 217 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 6%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 7030K (average) – slightly colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 6950K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective.
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 – 1380:1.
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 5400’s color gamut coverage.
Its display covers 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 5400 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 = 26 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.
The light coming from Dell Latitude 5400’s display does not flicker at any brightness level, which makes it comfortable for long periods of use.
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 5400 has a Full HD IPS panel with a good contrast ratio, comfortable viewing angles and non-flickering backlight. Sadly, its color coverage is mediocre.
Buy our profiles
Since our profiles are tailored for each display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Dell Latitude 5400 configurations with 14.0″ AUO B140HAN-F87J3 (AUO0463D) (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].
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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 5400’s sound quality is good but the volume is average. Its low frequencies are not very profound, while the mids and clears are nice and clear.
Drivers
All of the drivers and utilities for the Dell Latitude 5400 can be downloaded from here: https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/latitude-14-5400-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. Depending on the configuration you get, you can receive the Latitude 5400 with a 42Wh pack, a 51Wh one or a behemoth 68Wh unit. We were lucky enough, and our device was equipped with the biggest one.
Because we got 17 hours of Web browsing and 18 hours an a half 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
The Latitude 5400 is available with the dual-core Core i3-8145U and the quad-core Core i5-8265U and Core i7-8565U. You can also buy the laptop with the vPro versions of the aforementioned CPUs.
GPU options
Usually, the notebook comes with only the integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620. However, you can get it with the AMD Radeon RX 540X discrete GPU.
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 i5-8265U (15W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min |
---|---|---|---|
Dell Latitude 5400 | 3.38 GHz (B+111%)@ 92°C | 2.67 GHz (B+67%)@ 93°C | 2.08 GHz (B+30%)@ 78°C |
Dell Latitude 14 7400 | 3.05 GHz (B+91%)@ 97°C | 2.44 GHz (B+53%)@ 93°C | 1.97 GHz (B+23%)@ 79°C |
Lenovo ThinkBook 13s | 2.76 GHz (B+73%)@ 75°C | 2.74 GHz (B+71%)@ 84°C | 2.11 GHz (B+32%)@ 74°C |
Lenovo ThinkPad T490s | 3.43 GHz (B+114%)@ 91°C | 2.69 GHz (B+68%)@ 91°C | 2.19 GHz (B+37%)@ 80°C |
ASUS ZenBook 13 UX333 | 3.12 GHz (B+95%)@ 89°C | 2.50 GHz (B+56%)@ 95°C | 2.27 GHz (B+42%)@ 83°C |
As it can be clearly seen from the results above, the Latitude 5400 is able to manage its internal temperatures a lot better than its more premium cousin – the Latitude 14 7400. At the first checkpoint, it ran at the whopping 3.38 GHz. Well, this resulted in a pretty high temperature of the CPU – 92C. Expectedly, the temperatures dropped as the frequencies plummeted. By the time the torture test ended, the Core i5-8265U settled at 2.08 GHz and 78C.
Comfort during full load
On the outside, the maximum temperature we measured was around 40C, so basically, the laptop doesn’t heat up too dramatically. What we should note is that the hot air comes out of the left side, so if you are using a dedicated mouse and you are left-handed… well, sorry for you.
Verdict
We were exceptionally happy with the Dell Latitude 5400. Usually, the 5000-series of the Latitude line up is one of the most refined and balanced, since they are not crazy expensive, but still, provide the best of everything. For starters, let’s say that the cooling is far better than the one on the Latitude 14 7400. Not only the insides were cooler and it managed higher frequencies but it also stood quiet and by no means hot on the outside. However, we should note (for the external mouse users) that the hot air exhaust is placed on the left side and the majority of the I/O selection is on the right so, it would be a little difficult for them.
Before we start praising the device, we have to note that, similarly to Lenovo with its ThinkPad T490s, Dell has used a budget IPS panel (AUO B140HAN-F87J3 (AUO463D)) for their Latitude 5400. While it is clearly not the best device for Web designers because of the modest color coverage, at least it doesn’t use PWM to adjust its brightness levels and has a decent contrast ratio.
As this laptop comes with one of three different types of batteries we can’t really tell you the battery life of all of them, but we can surely tell you that of the larger one (since our device came with it). Obviously, a 68Wh capacity is pretty big for a 14-inch business device. This is exactly why we were able to get an enormous amount of time only on a battery – 17 hours of Web browsing and 18 hours and a half of video playback.
Additionally, we were left with mixed feelings from the keyboard. While it is pretty comfortable to use, it has relatively small keycaps and has a short travel, the feedback is clicky and the spacing is decent. Moreover, the touchpad is excellent and it has two pairs of buttons – one on the bottom and one on the top side.
We were also happy with the build quality of this laptop – one of the most recent laptops from Dell that comes in a carbon fiber chassis. Add the great performance to the security features from the manufacturers as well as the optional vPro processors. The result of that is a very good business machine that has a great I/O selection and Thunderbolt support and optional LTE card slot, IR face recognition and fingerprint reader. Expensive laptop, but totally worth it.
Pros
- Great performance from a ULV processor
- I/O features everything you need + optional LTE connectivity
- Build from carbon fiber
- Doesn’t use PWM to adjust screen brightness (AUO B140HAN-F87J3 (AUO463D))
- Monstrous battery life (for the 68Wh version)
- (Optional) IR face recognition and fingerprint reader
Cons
- Price gets relatively high with the more adequate configurations
- Keycaps are on the smaller side
- Covers only 53% of sRGB (AUO B140HAN-F87J3 (AUO463D))
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-latitude-14-5400/
Hello. Thanks for great review. You say here that display panel on this model is IPS, but on the shop page https://laptopmedia.com/laptop-specs/dell-latitude-5400-19/ it says TN. On the Dell’s website it just says WVA and reports viewing angles 160/160, which adds to confusion. Do you know if all Full HD models have IPS panels, or some can have TN+film or maybe VA?
Hey, thnks for the review. I wonder if the hot air that comes out of the left side is a problem with all the new Dell latitudes or just with this ones?
The pictures you have put in this article are not of the Dell Latitude 5400 but some other laptop. This one has a pointing stick/nipple mouse/Trackpoint and buttons at the top too which are not there in your pictures.
Also please tell if the wifi/Bluetooth module on this laptop is easily accessible to be replaced/upgraded in the future with a Wifi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 module?
I’m confused by this too. The article says that the laptop has a pointing stick (“nipple”) but the pictures very clearly show no pointing stick. Does it have a pointing stick or not?
Sorry guys, we had some problems with our servers, and we weren’t able to locate the photos we took of this notebook, so we used some found on the Web 🙁 Thankfully, I was able to retrieve the originals, and I updated the article. Also, the Wi-Fi card is located to the left of the left RAM slot.
Very detailed review, other than having completely skipped talking about HD/SSD upgrade options…the only reason I came to read this ‘thoroughly in depth article’
Still, I at least learned a few things about the model, so thank you!