The Dell Latitude 13 7390 2-in-1 Review
by Brett Howse on April 12, 2018 8:00 AM ESTSystem Performance
As we’ve seen in previous reviews, the latest Intel 8th generation Core processors have been a huge step forward for the U series processors, which have previously been limited to two cores and four threads. With the included Core i7-8650U, there’s a full four cores, with eight threads, and a maximum turbo frequency of 4.2 GHz. Now you don’t need to step up to the 45-Watt CPUs to get plenty of multithreaded performance.
Dell offers a wide selection in the Latitude 7390 though, with the lowly Core i3-7130U as the base option, with two cores, four threads, and just a 2.7 GHz frequency. Luckily you can step up to the Core i5-8250U, or i5-8350U, both which offer the Kaby Lake Refresh quad-cores. Dell offers 4-16 GB of LPDDR3 as well, which is the maximum supported by the CPU.
To see how this transforms into performance, the Latitude 7390 was run through our laptop testing suite. Comparisons are against other similar laptops, as well as a couple of larger, more powerful systems, just to see where the Core i7-8650U sits. If you’d like to compare the 7390 against any other system we’ve tested, please check out our online Bench.
PCMark
PCMark 10 is now available and we’ll be transitioning to it soon, once we have a bit more data available to make comparisons, but for now we’ll just compare PCMark 8. The Dell Latitude 7390 performs very well on office tasks, and even with the integrated GPU it still does very well in the Creative score as well. Dell is off to a good start.
Cinebench
As a rendering program, Cinebench focuses on pure CPU performance, and here the Core i7-8650U really stretches its legs, and shows why the latest Kaby Lake Refresh processors are such a welcome leap forward for the 15-Watt class of CPUs.
x264
This test converts a video using the CPU, and loves more cores and higher frequency, so the quad-core i7 is much quicker at this task than the 7th generation Kaby Lake models, and although we didn’t get to test the Core i3 model of this laptop, workloads like this are where it would really struggle compared to the Core i7 8th gen.
Web Tests
Although testing web application performance is heavily influenced by the browser scripting engine, it’s still where we spend a lot of time so it’s worth running through some of the web benchmarks. We use Microsoft Edge for all of our testing.
There’s plenty of performance on-tap for browsing the web with this configuration. The base model may struggle with just 4 GB of RAM though with a lot of tabs open.
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abei.villafane - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 - link
3.1 pounds Thats about normal. But gets tiring if you're trying to hold it in 1 hand and using it midair with the other for more than like 10-15 minutes.skavi - Thursday, April 12, 2018 - link
Are we getting an XPS 15 2in1 review as well?HStewart - Thursday, April 12, 2018 - link
I think they included in part of larger dell announcement - not sure if they have a review on it alone plan.I just receive mind yesterday about 24 hours ago and at first it seem to be noisy, but last night I realize it is not much different than my Y50 coming to noise - but screen is awesome with 4K version and using it sitting on my bed.
2in1 in higher end notebook designed to include gaming is awesome for me. It just seems more portable and easier to used than my Lenovo Y50.
I know some people will not like having the driver for Vega be from Intel - but it makes since on how they have the chipset - it so frustrating to have two drives on the Y50. I understand why they did it and believe they are preparing for Artic Sound changes coming next year or 2020.
piroroadkill - Thursday, April 12, 2018 - link
Where's the AMD version? That's the interesting one...HStewart - Thursday, April 12, 2018 - link
Do you mean XPS 15 2in1 with Vega GPU. Typically AMD CPU at Dell have no real market value - just people want them but never really purchase them.piroroadkill - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
Nah, I meant this one: http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/2-in-1-laptops/new-...The Inspiron 13 7000 with Raven Ridge... but of course the Latitude is in a different build quality class than an Inspiron (although back in the old days, they were basically the same!)
neo_1221 - Thursday, April 12, 2018 - link
There's a typo in your table on the first page - it says "Core i3-8250U or 8350U" when it should be i5. The High/Model Tested column also lists a 128GB SATA SSD despite you getting the 512GB NVMe model...tipoo - Thursday, April 12, 2018 - link
I'm all for these reviews of more mid range systems, kudos.PeachNCream - Thursday, April 12, 2018 - link
Yes, I'd like to echo tipoo's comment. Please keep it up! Reviews of business and consumer notebooks are a lot more useful to me than the latest gaming laptops.boeush - Thursday, April 12, 2018 - link
Yeah, about the lack of a nub pointer - Brett, you must be like the last surviving dinosaur on Earth who hadn't yet managed to evolve toward touchpad use. I haven't seen anyone using the nub (when available) in a very long time; the touchpads these days are by far superior in convenience and precision. But, the nub keeps getting included in business/workstation-class machines (with us all having no choice but to pay for it), and it's got to be all singularly your fault at this point... :P