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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coolhardware - Sunday, April 22, 2018 - link
I still use and love the Lenovo TrackPoint (or "nub" as you refer to it). It is not trendy, but it is still very good IMHO.hybrid2d4x4 - Thursday, April 12, 2018 - link
Not trying to be facetious here: what is the use case for having a microSD reader? Many laptops are migrating to offering this where they used to offer regular SD readers, and I'm curious if this is user-driven or OEMs trying to axe a larger component?Personally, I mostly use a laptop while traveling and I use a DSLR, so I find a regular size SD reader useful. But the only device I own that uses microSD is my phone and it's more of a hassle to remove the card and use a reader than just connect the phone via USB. I wouldn't be surprised if something like GoPros used uSD, but is that demographic that large? What else is uSD broadly used for?
PeachNCream - Thursday, April 12, 2018 - link
In my own day-to-day computing, I haven't used a standard sized SD card in quite a while because the only thing I own that can accept standard sized SD cards is my laptop. It's actually a little bit annoying to go dig an adapter out of a desk drawer so I'd rather see laptops fall in line with the other consumer electronics that already have made the transition to microSD. At this point, standard SD seems a bit outdated to me.piroroadkill - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
This is a redundant comment, because a lot of microSD cards come with a microSD to full size SD adapter. You can just leave the adapter in the slot if it bothers you that much. Other people might actually want the full size slot for their camera SD card.PeachNCream - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
"...if it bothers you that much."It doesn't bother me that much. That's why I said it was "a little bit annoying" rather than "it bothers me a lot" or "very annoying." It just ends up seeming like you're inflating my concern in order to invalidate my comment about my own usage (which I clearly defined right away as applying to no one else but me) in order to support an opposed viewpoint.
It's fine if you want a full size SD slot. Then again, what's stopping someone from arguing that you can leave the adapter in a camera instead of a laptop? MicroSD write speed is pretty high and competitive with standard sized cards. I used an adapter in the last camera I owned a few years ago because microSD was cheaper for the same capacity and speed when I was buying storage for it.
BurntMyBacon - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
In my day to day use, I've only really seen heavy use of microSD in phones/tablets. I have to echo the earlier sentiment that it is usually easier to just connect the phone/tablet than to remove the microSD card. A great many cameras, however, use SD. I'm sure there are plenty of devices that make use of microSD, but outside of phones/tablets, I just don't run across them. Also, it is very easy to adapt microSD to SD, but not the other way around. Furthermore, as piroroadkill pointed out, it wouldn't be at all problematic to leave the microSD to SD card adapter in the SD slot if you wanted a more permanent microSD solution.sofie123 - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
As i have seen the features and the specification of the Dell Latitude 7392 it is quite a great gadget to be owned. The Dell Alienware is also great gadget if you are a game freak.https://www.uaetechnician.com/alienware-support-se...
RErro - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
Finally, a review on a business laptop.