Living With the Dell Latitude 7440 Ultralight

pcmag.com:

For the past few weeks, I’ve been using Dell’s Latitude 7440 Ultralight. This is Dell’s most recent lightweight executive portable and offers a number of enhancements over the company’s earlier designs, such as the Latitude 7420 I looked at early last year. This year’s model seems to run quieter and cooler, with a better display.

In size and shape, the 7440 Ultralight is comparable to other 14-inch business laptops I’ve used lately, such as the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and the HP Dragonfly G4. It measures 12.32 by 8.7 by 0.71 inches and the version I tested weighs 2.69 pounds. With the included portable 60-watt charger, which is notably smaller and thus more portable than the chargers of other machines of this class I’ve tested lately, it weighs 3.2 pounds.

The Ultralight version I tested has a magnesium alloy cover in a dark grey finish that Dell calls River, and it felt very solid. The 7440 is also available in a slightly heavier version that is all aluminum, and available as a two-in-one with a fully rotating screen.

Compared with the earlier Latitude 7420 and last year’s 7430, the design has been updated. The most notable change is to the display. While the 7420 had the older 16:9 display ratio (commonly 1920 by 1080), the 7440 has the more current 16:10 ratio with options for both a non-touch 1920 by 1200 resolution display and a QHD+ 2560 by 1600 touch screen. The model I tested came with the higher resolution display with 400 nits, which looked great, and I always appreciate touch screens.

The rest of the design has changed as well. The 7440 has an HDMI port, and two USB-C/Thunderbolt ports on the left side, while the right side has two USB-A ports, a locking slot, a headphone/microphone jack, and an optional SIM