Dell Latitude E6420 Pro Reviews

The Dell Latitude E6420 is a great choice for business professionals. The notebook's build features a durable "business rugged" design with MIL-STD 810G-tested "Tri-Metal" casing. This basically means it'll withstand the everyday scratches and bumps, as well as the occasional drop (as long as it's a drop and not a fall). The notebook performs well, and we found that even with the Intel HD graphics, it can play 1080p HD video and multitask very well. It also has excellent audio performance that is without distortion, even at its maximum level - external speakers will not be required. The E6420 is available with an array of options. It can be configured with a discrete-class graphics, a backlit keyboard for use in darkly lit areas, a multitouch display, a quad-core i7 CPU, and a 256GB SSD. All of these options, however, bump the price up a lot. All in all, we found that there wasn't much wrong with the Latitude E6420. If Dell had included a higher-res display and brought the price down by a few hundred, it would have gotten five stars from us.

There's no doubting that the Dell Latitude E6420 ATG is a tough customer. However, if you want to up the specifications, you're going to need to up the financial outlay. As ever when this is the case, you could move away from that base pricepoint rather quickly.

Overall, the Dell Latitude E6420 is a comfortable unit to use and we like it. It feels sturdy and it also has understated good looks. We'd spec it up a little, though, and add a fingerprint reader as well as backlit keyboard; we're disappointed that there's no option for USB 3.0. Another quibble is that Dell makes you select from either the 32bit or 64bit versions of Windows 7 Professional - it doesn't supply both. Ours came with the 32bit version as standard and when we restored the unit, it didn't give us the option of choosing the 64bit version. Incidentally, it's a very quick recovery process - it took less than 10 minutes to reinstate the factory image.

The Dell Latitude E6420 is configurable in so many ways because it has so many options to choose from, though it's quite heavy for a 14-inch laptop.

The Dell Latitude E6420 has a lot going for it: stylish looks, a great keyboard, epic battery life, and solid performance. Our $1,361 review configuration is a bit expensive for what it offers. Nevertheless, this notebook is a really strong choice that should be considered along with lighter options like the ThinkPad T410 and T410s.

It all comes down to your individual needs and preferences whether the Latitude E6420 is right for you. The competition, in the form of the Lenovo Thinkpad T420 and HP's Elitebook 8460p, can give the Latitude a run for its money and their reviews will be up shortly.