Dell Latitude 7390 (i5-8350U, SSD 256 GB) Laptop Review

The case, which is almost completely matte black and wedge-shaped tapering towards the front, appears almost generic in its elegant simplicity. Apart from the Dell logo, a color contrasted stripe at the bottom edge of the back, the On/Off button, and perhaps the hinge, there are hardly any visual accents. We especially liked the non-slip, almost rubberized surfaces of the base and the back of the lid. While fingerprints were visible, they did not stand out too much. On its page on the 7390, Dell speaks about "high-quality materials such as a magnesium alloy."

Even with the use of slightly more force, the base can only be twisted to a very limited extent while it merely produces some quiet creaking. The lid is unusually robust and also turns out to be pressure resistant. Single-handed opening becomes a problem, but on the other hand, the lid wobbles only minimally and briefly. The Dell Latitude 13 7930 can be opened to slightly more than 180°, and from about 135° the back is raised by the lid, which does not help the skid resistance.

In terms of its flawless workmanship, the 7930 does full justice to its high price. The device appears high-quality, solid, and despite (or because of) its simplicity, even representative. Let us put it this way: It will not take long for somebody who knows a little about notebooks to see the price level of the Dell.

Compared to the predecessor, the Latitude 13 7380, the weight and footprint have hardly changed, and a few millimeters were shaved off the thickness. At about 1 kg (2.2 lb), Toshiba is presenting the lightest laptop in this test, and all the other candidates weigh about 1.3 kg (~2.9 lb). At the same time, the Portégé X30-D together with the 14-inch device from Asus which has exactly the same thickness (both 15.9 mm, ~0.63 in) take up the most space on the desk. In terms of its footprint, the HP Convertible is between them and mainly scores with its very low height of only 14.9 mm (~0.58 in).

While the Dell Latitude 7390 is distinguished by its solid connection equipment, you look in vain for highlights such as Thunderbolt 3. In addition to two USB 3.1 Gen1 connections, there are also a USB Type-C connection with DisplayPort, Ethernet, a slot for microSD cards, and a micro-SIM tray for the optional WLAN module, which was unoccupied in our test unit. You do not see a slot for a smart card often nowadays. Dell has succeeded in distributing the connections ergonomically in the rear areas of the sides, and only the smart card slot is in the front on the left side.

Unlike the card reader of the predecessor, that of the new Dell 7390 is connected via PCIe and therefore shows very good transfer rates which in our test were barely 30% behind the fastest card reader in our database. With their USB-3.0 connection, the predecessor and the Toshiba do not even manage half that speed, and the Asus ZenBook with its lame USB-2.0 speeds is simply annoying to everyone and not just photographers. Unfortunately you are limited to microSD, and therefore can only use microSD cards (with an SD adapter if necessary) in your camera as well. We performed our measurements with our Toshiba Exceria Pro M501 reference microSD card.

Dell is using the tried and tested but no longer new Intel Wireless AC-8265 WLAN module. The module integrates Bluetooth 4.2, and achieves a maximum gross data rate of 867 MBit/s, thanks to MIMO 2x2 in the 5-GHz band. If you assume an unavoidable overhead of perhaps 200 MBit/s, the Dell 7930 achieves a good result in the competition during receiving which is mostly more important. However, during sending it is weaker, as with most of the competitors. For 87.10 Euros (~$108) extra (at the time of testing), you can add the Dell Wireless Qualcomm Snapdragon X7 LTE-A (DW5811E) WWAN module. NFC is also implemented.

Finally, you get the complete security package here: From TPM 2.0 up to the fingerprint sensor, smart card, and Bitlocker hard-drive encryption via Windows 10 Pro, everything that the mobile business user could wish for is included. Unfortunately, the fingerprint reader is recessed too deep in the case, so that it gave us some problems during the setup. It also does not always unlock the Dell notebook reliably, and may need several attempts.

Apart from the mandatory power supply, you can only find the safety instructions and a Quick Start Guide in the simple box. Dell does not offer any accessories that are specifically designed for the Latitude 7390.

Dell delivers the Latitude 7390 with a three-year standard manufacturer's warranty. Dell Support will first try to resolve the problem via remote maintenance and hotline on the next business day. If that does not help, you need to send the laptop to a repair center certified by Dell. You can find out about the fee-based warranty extension options here.

Please see our Guarantees, Return Policies and Warranties FAQ for country-specific information.

The ULV Core i5-8350U quad-core with a 15-watt TDP comes from Intel's current Kaby Lake Refresh generation and brings a basic clock speed of 1.7 GHz, which can be increased up to 3.6 GHz via Turbo. This is the nominally fastest i5 CPU of this series. Its predecessor is the i5-7300U (2.6 - 3.5 GHz), which has only two physical cores, but still masters Hyper-Threading similar to the newer chip. In addition to the Intel UHD Graphics 620 GPU, the processor also integrates a DDR4 storage controller and handles the encoding and decoding of H.265 video material in the hardware. According to Intel, there should be a performance increase of about 40% compared to the bygone Kaby Lake chips of the first generation. Unlike the smaller i5-8250U model, the i5-8350U masters Intel's vPro technology. 

The usual office tasks are demanding too little of the CPU, one of the older and potentially more economical dual cores would have been sufficient for that. However, anyone needing to use more demanding software that is designed to run well in parallel cores, such as the Adobe Premiere Pro video processing software, would definitely benefit from the additional cores.

When all four cores are fully utilized, the processor quickly hits its TDP limit, which is typical for the new ULV quad-cores. While during the first run through our Cinebench loop it achieved 625 points due to a good Turbo utilization, a very good for this CPU, in the second round the performance dropped to 572 points and then continued to drop further down to 546 points, until finally leveling out to 580 points after seven runs. Accordingly, we observed a significantly varying Turbo utilization here. In battery operation, the multicore performance was not reduced.

Subjectively, everything is running smoothly and we did not expect anything else. Programs start up quickly, a cold start takes only a few seconds, and even escalating multitasking does not cause any stutters in the 7390.

Despite their differing configurations, the PCMark-8 scores of the test subnotebooks show no differences worth mentioning, so it should be similar with their subjective performance. Neither being the only device with a PCIe SSD nor with a quad-core in the test lead to the corresponding devices being able to stand out. Apparently the old PCMark 8 does not scale well at this high level anymore. The fact that our Latitude 7390 has a relatively weak showing here might be due to the single channel RAM and the comparatively slow SSD.

For the details on the processor graphics, which was merely renamed from Intel HD Graphics 620 to UHD Graphics 620 and does not have its own storage, we refer to our corresponding article on the GPU with numerous benchmarks. In the Latitude 7390, the maximum clock speed is 1100 MHz. Intel's HD graphics clearly benefits from faster dual-channel RAM. Even though the built-in storage is fast, it only runs in single-channel mode.

In our test field, the performance of all the respective 620 graphics cores remains at a similar level, with the UHD 620 in our test unit comfortably remaining in the middle of the field. Compared to all the UHD-620 GPUs in our database, the performance turns out slightly below average. In battery operation, the Cloud-Gate score of 3DMark 2013 is still 7551 points (in mains operation: 8104 points).

The GPU is not suitable for the current and/or graphically more demanding 3D games. For example, even in the lowest settings at 1024x768 pixels, the mighty "Rise of the Tomb Raider" from 2016 does not run smoothly, not to mention the current segment of the "Final Fantasy" series. Things are different in the quite current, but graphically less demanding "Farming Simulator 2017," where the limits are only reached in high settings in Full HD. What is generally possible are (older) isometric games such as "Diablo III" or "StarCraft II," which can also be played in high presets.

During idle operation, the fan remains turned off, and the occasional load spikes such as those occurring while surfing do not change this. So we can immediately proceed to the stress test: After Prime95 and FurMark were started, it took almost 15 seconds before the fan started running quietly.

Continuing, the increase of the fan speed occurred with delays and in distinct steps. After about two minutes, the maximum noise level was reached, presenting itself as a bright whirring that was not too annoying. In a quiet room, it was still audible from a distance of about 5 meters (~16 ft). After reducing the load, the fan continued to run at high speeds for a quite a long time.

A frequent problem in current Dell systems is the electronic noises or coil whine. While this problem is not very pronounced in the Latitude 7390, slight electronic noises at 29.7 dB(A) do occur particularly under load.

We are going through our music test as usual, with the presets as in the delivery state and a maximum volume which is decent here. While the sound system handles airy pop fairly well, it presents a very mid-centric, tinny, hollow, and in parts sharp sound image without any trace of bass and with very little dynamics and spaciousness. It is simply just obnoxious. If there are several high-pitched instruments, the ability to differentiate between them suffers significantly. At least there are no major distortions or volume variations. The voices in movies also sound slightly unnatural, but are still easily understandable.

Frequency comparison (checkboxes selectable!)

It should be obvious that the Core i5-8350U with its four physical cores uses more power overall than the Kaby Lake dual-cores of the competitors. In general and here as well, this becomes particularly noticeable under load. However, we are surprised that despite its GeForce 940MX, the Asus uses significantly less power during maximum load than the Latitude 7390. While the Portégé stands out again with a much too high consumption in the three idle scenarios, it is the most efficient during load. Overall, we can attest our test unit with a power consumption that is inconspicuous.

In the beginning of the stress test (max load), we measured a power consumption of up to 67.4 watts for 4 seconds, which nominally exceeds the capacity of the 65-Watt power supply, but makes no difference in practice.

Due to technical difficulties, we were unable to run the practically relevant WLAN test this time and therefore needed to rely on other tests of the battery life (How we test). In the idle test, the Latitude 7390 achieves an outstanding result lasting almost 28 hours, which is almost exactly the same as the predecessor with a battery of similar capacity. The HP EliteBook x360 has 5% less battery capacity, but remains behind the test unit by 16% in the idle test, and 12% in the H.264 test.

That the battery life under load turns out considerably shorter than in most dual-core competitors with their weaker batteries can be traced back to the additional consumption of the four cores of the i5-8350U in this load state as discussed above. From the overall results and our experience, we can say with high probability that the WLAN runtime should be above 10 hours as in the predecessor. With that, most users should be able to get through the day safely.