Design
The Dell Latitude for Education has a utilitarian design that is meant more for protection than to show off. The entire chassis is made of gray plastic with rubberized black edges for shock absorption, and the lid is unadorned, with the exception of Dell's logo and an LED light.
The light glows to let teachers know when the notebook is connected to the internet, but there is no app to change the light's color like there is on the Dell Chromebook 11. Raising the lid reveals the 11.6-inch, crisp display surrounded by a thick, nice bezel and an island-style keyboard.
However,
Dell claims
that the Latitude is MIL-STD-tested against drops, shocks and extreme temperatures, so it should be able to handle life in a backpack just fine.
Ports
The sides of the Latitude are lined with the bare-essential ports. On the left side of the notebook are an Ethernet jack, an HDMI output and a USB 3.0 port. On the right are a headphone jack, an SD card slot, a USB 2.0 port and a lock slot.
Display
The 11-inch, Crisp clear display on the Latitude is dim. I had to pump up the brightness to view the screen comfortably when I watched the trailer for Doctor Strange. In the video, a sorcerer's yellow cloak didn't pop against gray buildings, like it does on better screens, and it was harder to make out the cracks and deformities around the evil Kaecilius' eyes.
The Latitude's display covers 66 percent of the RGB color gamut, outperforming other 11-inch notebooks, including the Idea Pad 100s (62 percent), Aspire Cloud book 11 (59 percent) and Chromebook C202 (58 percent). With a Delta-E color accuracy score of 3.8 (0 is best), the colors on the Latitude 11's screen are precise. The Idea pad (3.3) and Chromebook C202 (2.8) had lower scores than the Latitude .
Keyboard and Touch pad
I wouldn't mind writing some research papers for class on the Latitude . The keyboard has a comfortable 1.6 millimeters of travel and requires 51 grams of force to press down, providing crisp feedback. I typed at my average 107 words per minute on the 10fastfingers.com typing test, with my standard 2 percent error
Audio
The front-facing speakers on the Latitude get surprisingly loud for a laptop of this size. When I listened to
Rema
Namakula and The Ben's mega hit' "
This is Love
," the computer filled our midsize conference room with loud, clear sound. I could easily distinguish the bass, the synths, the snappy drums and Remas' vocals.
I opened up the Dell Audio app to play with the Maxx Sense Pro presets, but found that the default music setting was perfectly fine.
Performance
Here's the rub: Everything good about the Latitude can be approved, because this laptop is absolutely good for getting anything done.
Our review unit -- with its Intel Pentium/Celeron Processor, 8GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD -- it is incredibly good. Even opening and closing individual programs did not produce any bit of lag.
On the Geek bench 3 overall performance benchmark, the Latitude notched a score of 1,811,
The Latitude paired 20,000 names and addresses in our Open Office spread sheet macro in 15 minutes and 15 seconds. That's behind the Aspire Cloud book (14:54), but faster than the Idea Pad 100s, which took 22:05 to complete the test..
