Dell Latitude E5410 Review

Our Dell Latitude E5410 Specifications:

• 14.1 LED-backlit WXGA+ 1440x900 Display
• Windows 7 Professional 32-bit
• Intel Core i5 520M processor (2.40GHz, 3MB cache)
• Intel GMA HD Integrated Graphics
• 3GB DDR3 RAM
• 250GB 7200RPM hard drive (Western Digital Scorpio Black)
• Intel Wireless Wi-Fi 6200AGN
• Built-in Bluetooth v2.1+EDR
• 8X DVD burner
• One-year limited warranty
• 9-cell Li-ion battery (85Wh)
• Weight: 5.21lbs starting
• Dimensions: 13.3 x 9.6 x 1.31-inches
• MSRP: $927 as configured ($519 starting price)

 

Build and Design
The Dell Latitude E5410 looks a lot like its bigger brother the E6410, but with a plastic shell instead of metal alloy. This notebook is for Dell what the lower-priced R-series ThinkPad is for Lenovo. It gives businesses another option, with a greater business focus, over the standard consumer-oriented models. From a design standpoint the E5410 looks a lot like the E6410, but with a plastic body. The design is very business, with black and grey panels, squared off edges, and a pointing stick located on the keyboard. Dell kept the look and feel almost exactly like its E6410, instead of giving it the routine of most small-business notebooks which look or feel much cheaper.

Build quality is very good considering the entire body is made of plastic. The chassis has some increased flex compared to the E6410, but it isn't noticeable unless you are really gripping the notebook hard. The plastic screen cover gives some protection to the display, but we found that under some circumstances, tapping or pressing on the cover created LCD distortions. The screen hinges felt solid pivoting the screen forward or back, and one in position kept the screen in place without wobble. The keyboard and palmrest section of the notebook felt sturdy under pressure, with only mild flex noted directly above the optical drive. Overall we were pretty impressed by the build quality of the Latitude E5410.

Users looking to upgrade the Latitude E5410 very easy to upgrade through a single panel on the bottom of the notebook. The panel comes off after removing a handful of screws and carefully unlatching a number of plastic catches. Once off you gain access to the processor, memory, wireless card and hard drive.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard on the Latitude E5410 is the standard style and very comfortable to type on. Dell stuck with a normal or non-Chiclet style keyboard, basically copying what they use on the higher levels of Latitude notebooks. The keys are soft-press and give off very little noise while typing. The layout includes all function keys, with an additional row for the insert, home, and pageup keys so they don't have to be wrapped along the right side of the keyboard. The keyboard also features an integral pointing-stick with a three button control directly beneath the keyboard. Generally speaking outside of the ThinkPad-series you don't really find both touchpads and pointing sticks on lower-end business notebooks.

The touchpad is an ALPS model which is surprisingly good compared to past models we have used on Dell notebooks. Response time times were great with very little lag noticed in our tests. Sensitivity was perfect out of the box, although occasionally tap and drag events caused some selected items not to release. Acceleration speeds on both the X and Y axis were equal, meaning circles drawn on the touchpad were circles on the screen, not ovals. The touchpad included a standard left and right mouse button, while the pointing stick above included three, with the middle one used for scrolling. All of the buttons were long-throw buttons with soft feedback and a quiet press.