Dell Latitude E7240 Review: Worth it today?

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Laptops can get pretty expensive these days, but most people cannot afford to spend 1000+€ on a new, premium device and they end up with some random cheap Lenovo IdeaPad or Acer Aspire, or worse, some cheap, poorly built and slow convertible from a no-name brand. But this strategy is wrong. There are good deals out there and you can get a premium device for the same 2-400€ you would spend on that device. Just not where you'd think. Most people don't even know that an older chip is not that much slower than a new(er) equivalent.
Where to buy the reviewed product: 
I needed a new laptop to carry around to college, but I wanted something small yet well built. Something like a Surface Pro, Surface Book or even something like a Dell XPS 15 or Latitude E7280. But these cost more than 1000€ and as a student, I did not have that money. So I started looking for an alternative. I then remembered about my old Dell E6420. 2 years ago, that laptop from 2012 was more than usable. So why not start there? Battery life wasn't that good (nor not enough to last more than 2 courses anyway) so I started looking for something slightly newer and with longer battery life. I've seen many of my profs still using Dell Latitude 7000 series netbooks and I thought those were the newest 7290/ 7490 - but I was wrong. They have just the plain, Latitude E7240 (with the touchscreen). And for good reason. So here's my review.

Hardware

Let's start with the specs. This is not new hardware and it wasn't the top-notch configuration even when it was new, but you need to know what I am reviewing here.
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-4310U (2.6GHz Turbo)
  • Intel HD Graphics 4400
  • HyperX 1600MHz, 8 GB DDR3L RAM (Dual-Channel)
  • 128 GB SanDisk mSATA SSD
  • 12.5" 1366x768 HD LCD panel (non-touch)
  • 45 WHr battery (due to the age of this battery, it's more appropriate to call it "24WHr")
  • Ports:
    • 3 * USB 3.0 (SS) Type A, one of them with PowerShare
    • 1 * HDMI
    • 1 * Mini Display Port
    • 1 * RJ45 Ethernet port
    • 1 * 3.5mm Headphone & Microphone Combo Jack
    • 1 * SD Card reader
    • Dell E Docking port
  • Extras: 
    • Webcam with Light sensor (to automatically adjust the screen brightness)
    • Dual-Array Microphone
    • Backlit keyboard
    • Soft-touch palm rest with a spill-resistant keyboard
    • MIL-STD-810G compliant hardware
    • 1.34 kg
This is your typical business laptop. Rugged yet elegant.

So there is nothing special about this laptop. It's just a plain, typical business notebook from 2014. But it does hold up surprisingly well even in 2019.

Design

The case looks rather nice, with a combination of differently colored aluminum for the lid cover and the base, with a soft-touch palm rest. As we're used from Dell's business line of notebooks, the build quality is solid: the palm rest does not depress when pressed down, nor does the lid distort the image too badly if twisted and even the hinges seem solid. 
This laptop was made to take a beating, as it does comply with the MIL-STD-810G standard, however, it is not specified how the laptop was tested: The 810G standard is a collection of tests that can be undertaken by any company without certification. These tests include extreme temperature resistance, vibration and shock resistance, and even spill and rain resistance.
The port selection is decent for a business laptop, tho I think it is a bit weird that Dell omitted the VGA port on this device, as VGA projectors are still common in meeting rooms even in 2019.
In terms of ports, you have only the speakers on the front, on the left you get the vent and the Airplane mode switch as well as an optional SmartCard reader; on the back there's the LAN port, USB 3.0, HDMI, USB 3.0 and the power connector; on the right you have a SD card reader (you also get a dummy to fill the slot when it's not in use - these dummies are surprisingly hard to remove compared to a normal SD card), the 3.5mm headphone and microphone combo jack, another USB 3.0 port, mini DisplayPort and a Kensington Lock. Oh, and let's not forget the docking port on the bottom and the SIM slot underneath the battery.


As you can see most of the I/O is on the rear. An approach I really prefer.

To be honest, I actually prefer having most of the I/O at the back of the device: that way, connected devices aren't in the way when using the laptop.
Another nice touch is the addition of the small status LEDs on the back of the lid (on the side that's pointed away from the user) - you can quickly tell if the laptop is sleeping, if the battery is charging or if there's any hard drive activity.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard is great. It's not a common keyboard design for 2019, as it looks quite dated, but it's comfortable and I got up to speed really fast. The keys have a not-that-long-but-still-long travel distance, they don't require that much pressure to press and they are quiet. The backlight is a welcome bonus: the 4 brightness levels greatly improve the readability in dark environments and the fact that the Fn keys are distinguished from the others by their blue color is a nice touch.
The touchpad is rather small compared to what we get nowadays (it is minuscule when compared to that of the latest MacBooks), but the surface feels ok. Clicking is made easy by the hardware buttons underneath the trackpad and normal sliding gestures work well. Things get, however, tricky when it comes to multi-touch gestures: the surface of the trackpad is a bit small for that and I believe that the lack of Precision drivers has a lot to do with that. Also, Dell's touchpad drivers need a lot of work, because the options presented in the interface of their program feel just dated, there isn't a lot of customization for the gestures, which are often not recognized anyway.

Display

The 12.5" matte display has a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, so it's a standard, probably cheap HD display. The resulting pixel density is unimpressive: mere 125 pixels per inch. Compared to today's ultrabooks, like the Lenovo X1 or even Dell's own E7270/ 7280, the display is just sub-par. Most laptops today feature Full HD or even 4k screens that are brighter, have better colors and contrast. Some might find this compromise between resolution and screen real-estate ideal, but that's not the case for me, I would have certainly preferred a higher resolution screen with better color accuracy.
Viewing angles are good, typical for TN panels. Colour reproduction is reduced when you look at the screen off-axis, but that is expected.
The screen is readable outside, but the poor brightness (about 210 nits) and the low contrast ratio (about 340:1) certainly make it very hard to distinguish anything on bright days.
Nevertheless, these screens were common in 2014, so it's not fair to judge this laptop by the screen alone.
There is also a variant o this laptop that comes with a touchscreen and I would rather recommend that one, as the screen is just a lot better: it's brighter, colors are more saturated and there is more contrast.

Performance

So you should expect no miracles here. The processor is a 4 generation old ultra-low-voltage part that's running at 2.0GHz (even if it turbos up about to 3.0 when I'm in a cool room, but it can't keep that up for long).
Regardless, Windows 10 1903 is running smoothly. Programs open quickly and run smoothly and the CPU idles at about 2% usage at 0.8GHz. I've only really had driver-related issues with the Bluetooth on this machine - the old Bluetooth driver for the Intel Dual-Band Wireless AC 7260 card used to crash quite often, especially while streaming audio or during conference calls to/ with wireless headphones, but a new driver seemed to fix the problem.
Web browsing, programming, editing documents, even some light image editing and any combination of the aforementioned can easily be done on this machine and thanks to the fast mSATA SSD and the 8GB of RAM it does not feel slow unless you really push it. Gaming, on the other hand, is a different story here. Sure, a lot of games will work thanks to the Intel HD 4400 graphics chip. But it won't be able to push 60 FPS and even keep up the initial results as it gets hotter, but in my opinion, anything above 20 FPS is playable, especially because this is an ultrabook from 2014. I would avoid using this machine for professional video editing, but I have not tested it. Keep in mind that my unit has the RAM running in dual-channel mode, which boosts the memory bandwidth of the integrated GPU, resulting in better performance than a unit with a single memory DIMM. I managed to run:
  • Team Fortress 2 (max settings, native resolution, about 40-60FPS usually, when it gets hot or in a warm room that does drop to 25-35FPS)
  • No More Room in Hell (same as Team Fortress 2)
  • DIRT 3 (lowest settings, native resolution, about 20-30 FPS, depending on the track, 20 when hot)
  • Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor (same as DIRT 3)
  • League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, Dota 2 and CS: GO (same as DIRT 3)
  • World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, Fortnite should also be playable at the lowest settings (not tested, other games with similar minimum requirements should, of course, be also playable)
The SSD is a 128 GB SanDisk mSATA SSD that is plenty fast but if anything, rather small in size. You definitely can't install many games at once on it unless you use an external drive. Speeds of about 400MB/s  are to be expected. Thanks to this, the system boots up in less than 10 seconds and can be used immediately after logging in (no need to wait until the OS loads all start-up programs.
The network card (at least in my unit) is an Intel 7260 802.11ac part that delivers quick internet stream rates, is compatible with the 5GHz band and has Bluetooth.

Thermals seem to be a problem with this machine. At idle or under low loads it stays (fairly) cool (helped in part by the metal chassis) and quiet (since the fan is off most of the time and the chassis itself can dissipate some heat), but you do not want to use this thing on your lap if you are doing anything demanding on it. While playing Team Fortress, I could not keep my hands on the fan grille, it was way too hot for that and the keyboard also got uncomfortably hot. The air that was coming out was more than 50 degrees Celsius, the keyboard deck was toasty, a little under 45. The fan was certainly audible (sounded like a tiny jet engine) and the components inside were staying at temperatures above 90*C. You do not want this on your lap...

P.S.: Just for the record, I had cleaned the fan, heatsink and repasted the chipset using Arctic Silver Ceramica.

Update 28.12.2018:
Dell has updated the BIOS of this machine with software mitigations for the Spectre and Meltdown exploits (you can read more about Meltdown here and about Spectre here). As expected, performance is affected by about 10-15% (depending on the workload). Such a bummer.

Battery life

The battery life greatly depends on the unit you manage to get your hands on, as Dell offered 2 battery options for this laptop model (31 WHr and 45 WHr) and because 4-year-old batteries tend to lose a lot of their original capacity: My device had a 45 WHr battery that the BIOS insisted I replace (it kept warning me that the battery was in a bad state), but I was somehow managing about 4 hours of work with it (in Windows 10, with power-saver on, display brightness set at "Suggested", 2 Office applications, Eclipse, Chrome with 2-3 tabs open and Edge with a few 300 pages long PDFs running in the background). I thought that these results were actually solid until I gave in and bought a new (original from Dell, same capacity) replacement battery. Battery life nearly doubled, I am now getting around 6-8 hours of screen-on time. 
This is amazing for a system running on 4-year-old hardware: many home-oriented laptops these days can't match that despite all advancements in power-savings made by Intel and co.

Upgradeability, Maintenance

Dell does a great job of keeping their products up to date with new BIOS and driver updates, especially for their business line of notebooks, and they even offer a service-manual on their website that guides you through replacing basically every component.
Accessing the insides of this ultrabook is very easy: remove the battery and unscrew the 2 screws that are revealed and you're good. Removing the access panel reveals the inside: you have easy access to the RAM slots (only DDR3L 1.35v is supported - not the usual DDR3 1.5v), SSD, WLAN and WWAN cards (the WWAN card is optional and enables the use of that SIM slot) and fans. If you wish to replace the thermal compound on the CPU, you have to keep going.
Maintenance is made easy: you have access to RAM, SSD and cooler fan as well as the wireless card
If you buy this and wish to upgrade it, here are a few suggestions:

Conclusion - Should you buy it?

If you need a high-quality, premium I'd say, laptop for college or work that's powerful enough for most tasks, sure. Go ahead. At just over 300EUR you'd save yourself a lot of money and trouble by buying this over a more expensive, but a lower quality notebook or over a similarly priced, lesser equipped netbook, especially if you need it mostly for office work. But should you need a thin-and-light for, let's say, heavy video editing and gaming, spend some more money on something better. Maybe even cross the 1000EUR line.

Update, April 2019

Another year has passed since I bought and used this laptop as my daily driver and only computer (apart from my smartphone) and I have to say, I am indeed very, very impressed. What a machine this is! It has never let me down, on any occasion. It survived being tossed around by a fairly careless student in a backpack for a year without actually taking any damage - I expected a lot more scuffs and dents and scratches, but no, the casing is still looking almost like it did a year ago when I bought it. I have to admit, I did buy a sleeve not that long ago to protect this laptop because the backpack I use does not have any inner pockets, but this doesn't change anything. 
I expected the old Core i5 chip to be a bottleneck in my daily tasks, but it wouldn't be fair to say that. It just chugs through anything I throw at it. And if things get a little difficult, it just turbos all the way to 3GHz and still does what it has to. Yes, you read that right, the latest BIOS updates seem to also have changed the turbo boost behavior, it's a lot more aggressive now if the machine is plugged into a power source and it goes well beyond the advertised 2,6GHz.
Writing long assignments and programming is a pleasure with this praiseworthy keyboard. It survived a few spills and even be washed in a dishwasher when it got to gross for my taste.
Again, and this is a recurring theme with this machine, everything just works. I know it's a business laptop and that business laptops are designed with reliability in mind, but I never thought it would go this far. 

What do you think? Have you ever used one of these? What are your thoughts and comments? Feel free to share them in the comment section below!

Disclaimer note: I bought all of the products reviewed here with my own money. I only get commissions from purchases made using the Amazon Affiliate links spread across this review and from clicks on the advertisements displayed by Google.
Where to buy the reviewed product: 

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