Dell Latitude 14 7420 review – one of the best devices Dell has made this year

The premium business laptop niche is a market full of high-demand users. And rightfully so, because they need a device that is secure, stable, and won’t let them down at any time.

Well, the Latitude 14 7420 comes in time to provide all of the aforementioned and more. Given the fact that pretty much all of the previous Latitude 7000 series notebooks were pretty capable in terms of performance, we expect nothing less from this model. Especially considered the Tiger Lake CPUs that it packs, which are the best effort from Intel in years.

In addition to that, you get an optional WWAN card for LTE connectivity, as well as an IR face recognition and a human detection proximity sensor, which wakes the laptop as soon as you arrive in front of your device.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-latitude-14-7420-2/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Dell Latitude 14 7420 - Specs

  • Innolux CHF07-140HCG (CMN1416)
  • Color accuracy  5.4  1.2
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 4000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 64GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11 Pro, Windows 10 Home, Windows 11 Home
  • Battery
  • 63Wh, 4-cell, 42Wh, 3-cell
  • Body material
  • Aluminum, Carbon
  • Dimensions
  • 321.35 x 208.69 x 16.90 ~ 18.88 mm (12.65" x 8.22" x 0.67")
  • Weight
  • 1.22 kg (2.7 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD)
  • 2x USB Type-C
  • Thunderbolt 4, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • 2.0
  • Card reader
  • microSD (SD/SDHC/SDXC)
  • Ethernet LAN
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.1
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • optional
  • Web camera
  • HD or Full HD
  • Backlit keyboard
  • optional
  • Microphone
  • Dual-Array Microphones
  • Speakers
  • 2x 2W, Stereo Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • optional
  • Security Lock slot
  • Wedge Lock Slot

All Dell Latitude 14 7420 configurations

#CommissionsEarned

What’s in the box?

The packaging of this notebook contains nothing more than the essentials – some paper manuals, and a 65W USB Type-C power brick.


Design and construction

In a typical Dell fashion, this laptop can be found in two different configurations based on the material of use. One of them features an aluminum body, which offers cool touch, a weight of 1.31 kg, and a thickness of 16.9-18mm. Expectedly, the other setup comes dressed in carbon fiber, which provides a smooth soft finish. It is slightly lighter, at 1.22 kg, while the height is a bit higher – 17.3-18.9mm. Since we have the latter one, we would focus on it. Let’s start by saying that there is slight flex in the chassis, and a bit bigger one in the lid. However, there are no annoying sounds coming when you twist the device.

Thankfully, the lid opens easily with a single hand, but at about 80° of opening angle, the base lifts up, which indicates that the hinges stiffen at this point. Once opened, the device reveals its matte display, surrounded by rather thin bezels. And above the screen, you will see one of the most important features of this laptop – the sensor combo. In its middle, there is an HD/FHD camera with a privacy shutter. It is surrounded by the IR sensors and the proximity sensor, which wakes up the device in your presence. Ultimately, this can be a very neat feature in the business world, where privacy is put on a pedestal (although it was pretty annoying when we needed to run longer tests).

Next, we have the keyboard. Unfortunately, we noticed a pretty significant deck flex, but the comfortability of the unit is on point. The key travel is decent, with the mechanism providing a good and quiet click. Also, the Power button packs an optional fingerprint reader.

As for the second input device – the touchpad – it has a pretty spacious area, smooth glass surface, and very accurate tracking.

Lastly, the bottom panel is home to the speaker cutouts and the ventilation grill, which is placed right beneath the cooling fan. In this case, the heat is being exhausted from the left side of the notebook.

Ports

In terms of the I/O, there is one Thunderbolt 4 connector on the left, as well as an audio jack, and an optional Smart Card reader. And on the left, there is a wedge-shaped security slot, an HDMI 2.0 connector, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, followed by another Thunderbolt 4 connector, a MicroSD card slot, and an optional SIM card tray. Here, either of the Thunderbolt connectors can be used to charge the notebook.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

Before you remove the bottom panel of this laptop, you should remove the SIM card tray. Then, undo all 8 Phillips-head screws, and pry the panel, starting from the hinge gaps.

The first thing we see inside is the battery pack. This model comes equipped either with a 42Wh unit or a 63Wh one.

Unfortunately, the memory chips are soldered onto the motherboard. On the bright side, the available configurations include 8, 16, or 32GB of LPDDR4x RAM, all working in dual-channel mode. Storage-wise, there is one M.2 slot, that supports PCIe x4 drives.

As for the cooling, the temperatures inside are managed by two heat pipes, which lead to a side-mounted heat sink.


Display quality

Dell Latitude 14 7420 has a Full HD IPS display, model number Innolux CHF07-140HCG (CMN1416). 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 435 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 414 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 9%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6600K (average) – ever so slightly colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 33% Brightness (White level = 141 cd/m2, Black level = 0.08 cd/m2).
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 – 1800:1.

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 on 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 an 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 14 7420’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers just 90% 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 14 7420 with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really 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 = 37 ms

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.


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.

Dell Latitude 14 7420’s display doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment at any level. This makes it safe for your eyes even after long exposure.

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 14 7420’s IPS panel has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, high contrast ratio, very high maximum brightness, and pretty wide color coverage (90% of the sRGB gamut). Thankfully, its backlight doesn’t flicker at any brightness level. Unfortunately, the color accuracy is quite off, unless you get our Gaming and Web design profile, which improves the Average dE from a value of 5.4 down to 1.2, which is good enough for color-sensitive work like Web design, online retail, and Art.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Dell Latitude 14 7420 configurations with 14.0″ Innolux CHF07-140HCG (CMN1416) (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].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

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.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

Dell Latitude 14 7420’s speakers produce a sound with good quality and a rather high volume. Moreover, the low, mid, and high tones are clear of deviations. However, keep in mind that setting the volume slider to the maximum level results in some cracking.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/latitude-14-7420-2-in-1-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. This unit comes with a larger 63Wh battery pack. It delivers 16 hours and 40 minutes of Web browsing, and 13 hours and 9 minutes of video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

This notebook comes in four different CPU configurations. This includes two non-vPro processors – Core i5-1135G7, and Core i7-1165G7, as well as two vPro-enabled devices – the Core i5-1145G7, and Core i7-1185G7.

Dell Latitude 14 7420 CPU variants

Here you can see an approximate comparison between the CPUs that can be found in the Dell Latitude 14 7420 models on the market. This way you can decide for yourself which Dell Latitude 14 7420 model is the best bang for your buck.

Note: The chart shows the cheapest different CPU configurations so you should check what the other specifications of these laptops are by clicking on the laptop’s name / CPU.


GPU options

For good or for worse, the Latitude 14 7420 is only offered with integrated graphics solutions. You can get it either with the Iris Xe Graphics G7 (80EU) or Iris Xe Graphics G7 (96EU), based on your processor choice.

Dell Latitude 14 7420 GPU variants

Here you can see an approximate comparison between the GPUs that can be found in the Dell Latitude 14 7420 models on the market. This way you can decide for yourself which Dell Latitude 14 7420 model is the best bang for your buck.

Note: The chart shows the cheapest different GPU configurations so you should check what the other specifications of these laptops are by clicking on the laptop’s name / GPU.

Results are from the 3DMark: Time Spy (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)

Results are from the 3DMark: Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)

Results are from the 3DMark: Wild Life (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS157 fps109 fps70 fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS123 fps65 fps53 fps

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 i7-1185G7(15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Dell Latitude 14 74203.66 GHz @ 98°C @ 47W3.04 GHz @ 97°C @ 30W2.17 GHz @ 76°C @ 16W
MSI Prestige 14 (A11Sx)3.80 GHz @ 94°C @ 53W3.48 GHz @ 95°C @ 42W3.22 GHz @ 91°C @ 35W
Lenovo Yoga 9i (14)3.08 GHz @ 92°C @ 42W3.14 GHz @ 96°C @ 34W2.28 GHz @ 76°C @ 19W

From the three 14-inch notebooks that we tested this CPU with, the Latitude 14 7420 finishes with the lowest clock speed after 15 minutes of stress testing.

Comfort during full load

Comfortability here is great with a maximum temperature just a bit higher than 34°C, and manageable noise levels.


Verdict

To sum up, everything we said in the lines above, the Latitude 14 7420 is a pretty formidable device, which packs a ton of features mainly aimed at privacy and security. From the TPM chip, through the privacy shutter, to the IR face recognition sensor and the ingenious proximity sensor. In fact, it works as it should – step away from your notebook, and in a matter of seconds, the display turns off, and the laptop locks itself. Then, sit back in front of it, the screen shines right away, and the IR sensor unlocks your notebook. Nobody will see the contents of your work when you’re away.

Interestingly, the performance here is weirdly biased towards the integrated graphics, at the expense of pure computational power. Especially with the Core i7-1185G7, which is the top-of-the-line unit from the Tiger Lake lineup.

Dell Latitude 14 7420’s IPS panel has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, high contrast ratio, very high maximum brightness, and pretty wide color coverage (90% of the sRGB gamut). Thankfully, its backlight doesn’t flicker at any brightness level. Unfortunately, the color accuracy is quite off, unless you get our Gaming and Web design profile, which improves the Average dE from a value of 5.4 down to 1.2, which is good enough for color-sensitive work like Web design, online retail, and Art.

In addition to the great display, you get decent speakers, comfortable input devices, and pretty wide I/O, which not only offers two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, but also an optional SIM card slot, a MicroSD card slot, and more.

Battery life here is outstanding, with 16 hours and 40 minutes of Web browsing and 13 hours and 9 minutes of video playback. This provides more than an entire workday on a single charge, with the laptop being able to deliver up to two days of light work.

It is also worth mentioning that Dell offers the Latitude 14 7420 in both Carbon and Aluminum outfits, both of which feel premium enough.

Ultimately, the only disadvantages of this laptop are its price, the lack of memory upgradability, and probably its cooling solution which can’t deliver both good CPU and GPU performance. Other than that, the laptop is a big win in the corporate world, and it’s probably one of the best Dell notebooks released recently.

Pros

  • A ton of security software + a human detecting proximity sensor
  • Doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment (LG V0GPY-133WF7)
  • Wi-Fi 6 support, optional LTE connectivity, and an optional Smart Card reader
  • Great battery life
  • Choice of carbon and aluminum for build materials
  • Comfortable keyboard (but suffers from deck flex)
  • Optional fingerprint reader and IR face recognition systems
  • Wide I/O, including two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, and a MicroSD card reader
  • Covers 90% of sRGB colors and offers accurate color representation thanks to our Gaming and Web design profile (LG V0GPY-133WF7)


Cons

  • Premium price tag
  • Memory is soldered to the motherboard

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-latitude-14-7420-2/

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Juan
Juan
2 years ago

What RAM was soldered on?

not
not
2 years ago

All notebook RAM is now soldered..so choose wisley!

Adam
Adam
2 years ago

The carbon model has a strong chemical smell, seemingly coming from the rubberized surface of the plastic chassis. Mine has been on a balcony for couple of days after unpacking and still smelling bad.
See http://www.dell.com/reach for all chemicals of “very high concern” used. You may just guess which one is finding its way into your lungs for the years of using.

asda
asda
2 years ago

gay notebook dont buy that shit, metallic audio

Petr Koc
Petr Koc
1 year ago

Unfortunatelly the review is no longer valid for this product. Latitude 7420 had stability issues and Dell had to fix those by lowering memory frequency from -4267 to -3733. They did this starting from BIOS version 1.13.0 and afterwards changed the oficial specifications accordingly. All the benchmarks in this review now overvalue the real performance of this product.

Lapork
Lapork
5 months ago
Reply to  Petr Koc

is it true bro? How can you know that.