Dell just lately renamed its PC offerings, with Dell Professional changing the venerable Latitude title for enterprise methods. I just lately traveled with a Dell Professional 14 Premium and located it to be greater than only a rebranding. With an Intel Second Technology Core Extremely (Lunar Lake) processor, a brand new design, and a lighter bundle, the Dell Professional 14 Premium supplied nice efficiency and by far the most effective battery life I’ve ever seen.
A Sturdy, Customary Design
From a design perspective, this PC appears very similar to different high-end 14-inch enterprise laptops. It has a sturdy magnesium chassis in a darkish grey magnetite shade. It measures 12.25 by 8.53 by 0.64 to 0.71 inches, which places it consistent with different 14-inch machines. My unit weighed 2.64 kilos (3.25 kilos with the included 65-watt charger), just like the older Latitude 7440 Ultralight however not fairly as gentle because the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13.
On My Want Record: A Contact-Display Choice
It has a 14-inch 1,920-by-1,200 IPS show within the now-standard 16:10 ratio with as much as 400 nits of brightness, which appeared good. Dell plans to supply a “tandem OLED” with a 2,880-by-1,800 show, which can lead to decrease battery life, and I hope it provides touch-screen choices, however neither function is accessible proper now. As common on such machines, the bezels are fairly minimal, however the high is large enough to carry an 8-megapixel HDR digicam.
Ample Ports and Safety Options
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
The Dell Professional 14 Premium has a pleasant structure of ports. The left aspect has an HDMI port, Thunderbolt 4/USB-C, and audio jack, whereas the suitable aspect has a USB-A 3.2, one other Thunderbolt/USB-C, and a locking slot. I like the truth that it continues to have each USB-A and HDMI whereas providing USB-C on either side, which makes plugging within the charger extra handy. Dell says the USB-C port is now modular so it allows simpler repairs. As well as, a 5G modem is an choice, however my unit didn’t have one.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
The Dell Professional 14 Premium has a “zero-lattice keyboard” with what Dell describes as a battery-saving mini-LED backlit expertise, which reduces energy utilization. The keyboard has much less house between the keys than these from HP and Lenovo and appears extra like a shopper keyboard, nevertheless it’s snug to sort on. Nonetheless, I undoubtedly missed having indicator lights on the mute audio system and mute microphone keys.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
For video and audio conferencing, the 8-megapixel IR digicam had a large area of view and appears sharp and really vibrant. It additionally helps Home windows security measures, reminiscent of locking when you step away and waking on strategy should you’ve arrange Home windows Hi there; each work fairly properly. A bodily swap on the highest of the show covers the webcam, which is at all times appreciated.
One uncommon function is a pleasant set of collaboration instruments on the haptic touchpad, which may do issues like flip the audio and video on and off, open a chat window, or share the display screen.
The laptop computer has two top-firing and two bottom-firing audio system, together with two noise-cancelling microphones. The sound is nice although not fairly as wealthy as I’ve heard on another machines.
Efficiency
After all, efficiency is an enormous deal, and that is the primary machine I’ve examined primarily based on Intel’s Core Ultra 7 268V (Lunar Lake), a slight improve from the 258V I examined within the X1 Carbon Gen 13. The principle processing elements of the chip are made on TSMC’s N3B (3nm) course of, a departure from earlier generations of chip made by Intel itself.
It has eight threads: 4 efficiency cores and 4 effectivity cores, however no multi-threading. That is notably lower than the earlier technology, Meteor Lake. Nonetheless, it runs at a base frequency of two.2GHz, with turbo speeds as much as 5.0GHz, requires 17 to 35 watts of energy, has Intel Arc Graphics 140V with 8 Xe cores, and an NPU that Intel charges at 48 Int8 TOPS. (For comparability the 258V has a most CPU turbo of 4.8GHz and 47 Int8 TOPS).
The machine helps vPro, Intel’s enterprise administration expertise, which is required by many enterprise consumers.
Efficiency assessments produced wonderful outcomes. On primary benchmarks, the Dell Professional 14 Premium is usually comparable with the opposite Lunar Lake methods I’ve examined; somewhat higher than the X1 Carbon on some issues, somewhat worse on others. Normally, methods primarily based on Intel’s Lunar Lake ship scores pretty just like the Meteor Lake model and a bit behind the HP OmniBook Extremely 14 with AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX375 generally known as Strix Point. That is somewhat quicker on CPU-centric benchmarks, although in some graphics check, the Lunar Lake methods are quicker.
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On my hardest assessments—people who run for a very long time—the Dell Professional 14 did properly, if not fairly in addition to the X1 Carbon.
Operating a big mannequin in MatLab took over 25 minutes on the Lunar Lake system, about half a minute longer than on the x1 Carbon, however an enormous enchancment in contrast with about 36 minutes on Strix Level methods and over half-hour on Meteor Lake ones. An enormous Excel mannequin ran in 38 minutes, in contrast with 34 on the X1 Carbon, 44 on the Strix Level machine, 46 on the Meteor Lake methods, and 35 minutes on the previous Raptor-Lake ones.
One anomaly was transcoding a video in Handbrake, which took 92 minutes in contrast with 40 minutes on the X1 Carbon. I am not fairly certain why; on some methods, Handbrake simply appears to be lots slower, which can have one thing to do with drivers or different software program put in.
On AI functions, the 48 TOPS NPU appeared to work fairly properly for native functions. I attempted working native variations of Steady Diffusion (although Automated) and Llama 3.2 (by LM Studio), and the Lunar Lake methods did notably higher than the Meteor Lake methods however not fairly as robust on the AMD Strix Level ones.
I noticed comparable outcomes with UL’s Procyon AI Inference check, the place the Dell barely lagged the X1 Carbon, however was much better than Meteor Lake methods and nowhere close to the numbers reported on AMD Strix Level or Qualcomm Snapdragon-based systems such as the Dell Latitude 7455. I am nonetheless unsure most individuals need to run these functions domestically but, nevertheless it’s one thing to bear in mind.
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Phenomenal Battery Life
It is battery life the place the Dell Professional 14 Premium actually stands out. It has a 60 watt-hour battery, which appears about common for this dimension machine. However on PCMark 10’s Fashionable Workplace check, I used to be in a position to run the brand new system for 31 hours at 40 nits and nearly as lengthy at 100 nits. That is much better than the 16 hours and 54 minutes at 40 nits, and 15 hours and 58 minutes at 100 nits I noticed on the x1 Carbon, and 10 hours higher than I’ve seen on some other laptop computer of this dimension.
These outcomes are so good, I questioned if I used to be doing one thing fallacious, however I’ve carried it lots and in follow it simply appears to go and go. After a complete working day of utilizing it on battery energy (and with a brighter display screen, normally related to Wi-Fi), it nonetheless reported over half the battery remaining. That is phenomenal.
This Is a Copilot+ PC
On the software program aspect, the Dell Professional 14 Premium is marketed as a Copilot+ PC, with a devoted Copilot key and all of Microsoft’s typical set of Copilot+ functions, together with Home windows Studio Results, Reside Captions, and Cocreator. Presumably, it ought to help different Copilot+ options Microsoft has promised, together with the Recall feature, Click to Do, and improved search.
The PC features a Dell Optimizer app that offers you management over the collaboration touchpad. You may as well regulate the machine’s efficiency to the most effective efficiency, optimized, cool, or quiet (though even at high efficiency, it did not appear too loud or scorching). A separate Dell Command Replace app checks for the newest BIOS enhancements, drivers, and firmware updates. I would desire it if one utility did all of it, nevertheless it appeared to work properly.
The machine has a variety of security measures, together with on-host BIOS verification and built-in telemetry. For enterprise manageability, Dell presents its Trusted Office and Administration Portal accessible from inside Microsoft Intune that may handle a fleet of Dell methods.
A Strong, Transportable Bundle
General, the Dell Professional 14 Premium is an interesting laptop computer with nice efficiency and wonderful battery life. I’ve a number of nits—no indicator lights on the keyboard, not the most effective sound, and never my favourite keyboard—nevertheless it has a stable really feel, nice digicam, and terrific number of ports in a light-weight, transportable bundle.
Costs start around $2,000 for a mannequin with an Extremely 5 236V processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD. A model near what I examined with the Extremely 7 268V and 32GB of RAM and 1TB SSD was promoting for about $2,564 on Dell’s web site as I wrote this. Whereas it is a expensive laptop computer, it is lower than the beginning value of the previous-generation Latitude 9450, and Dell factors out that the majority prospects would purchase this as half of a bigger buy, with numerous reductions.
About Michael J. Miller
Former Editor in Chief
