Dell Latitude 9410 2-in-1 review

 
It's not easy to stand out in the crowded business laptop category. Competitors like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and HP's Elite Dragonfly have raised the bar, making it difficult for others to make their case. But Dell is proving that it's up to the task with the Latitude 9410 2-in-1, a sleek and sturdy business notebook with unmatched battery life. 

It might not attract as much attention as those aforementioned models, but the Latitude 9410's all-aluminum chassis is thin and durable. Housed within are powerful components, including a 10th Gen Intel Core CPU capable of running demanding workloads. And when you're off the clock, the Latitude 14-inch, 1080p display captures rich colors, although it could get brighter. 

But what makes the Latitude 9410 2-in-1 a true contender to the other best business laptops is its nearly 17 hours of battery life, which distracts from some minor pitfalls, like a high price and comparatively hefty weight. 

Dell Latitude 9410 price and configuration options

Like most business laptops, the Latitude 9410 is highly customizable. At its lowest price, the $1,569 base version comes with a 1080p display, an Intel Core i5-10210U CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. 

Upgrading to a model with a Core i7-10610U CPU (with vPro), 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD increases the price to $2,339. Our review unit, which has a Core i7-10610U CPU (with vPro), 16GB of RAM and a 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Class 35 SSD costs $2,494. 

If you want the biggest, baddest specs, you can spend $3,799 on a top-tier model with a Core i7-10810U CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD.

Dell Latitude 9410 design 

I feel like Dorothy when she landed in Oz, because clearly we’re not in Kansas anymore. This isn't the thick, boxy and boring Latitude I’ve become accustomed to – it's a sleek and stylish stunner. 

The Latitude 9410 owes some gratitude to the Latitude 7400 2-in-1, the debut entry in what feels like a new era for Dell business. Following its lead, the Latitude 9410 abandons rectangular plastic for sleek metal surfaces and shiny chrome edges. It's certainly an upgrade over previous models, although the design is more restrained than other flashy models.

You'll appreciate the modernized Latitude 9410 2-in-1 as long as you keep it far away from the HP Elite Dragonfly, a contending business 2-in-1 with an entrancing royal blue chassis and an aggressively slim chassis that sits like a sports car. But not everyone wants to be seen riding in a top-down Lamborghini -- a simple, unassuming aesthetic will do just fine in your office or a long-haul flight to a business conference. That’s where the Latitude comes in. 

On the brushed silver lid of this business notebook is a circular chrome Dell logo that matches a pair of chrome hinges. Open the laptop and you'll spot the same glistening accents around the touchpad and surrounding the ports on each edge. My favorite design element is the thin bezels surrounding the display. It's a feature so many stuck-in-the-past enterprise laptops lack.

At 12.6 x 7.9 x 0.6 inches and 3 pounds, the Latitude 9410 is just as thin as the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (0.6 inches, 2.4 pounds) and the Elite Dragonfly (0.6 inches, 2.5 pounds), but the Dell is considerably heftier.

Dell Latitude 9410 durability and security 

The first features I look for on a business laptop are an IR camera and a fingerprint sensor for biometric verification. The Latitude 9410 gives you both options, however, our specific review unit has only the camera. It's one of my favorite features on the Latitude 9410 because of Dell's Express Log-in, which uses a proximity sensor to log you in when you're near and automatically log you out when you're not. 

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Enabling the IR sensor via Windows Hello protected my laptop against intruders and shaved valuable seconds off my login time. The IR camera recognized and signed me in instantaneously, even under terrible lighting conditions. I just wish Dell had included a webcam cover, a useful feature found on most competitors, including the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. 

The Latitude 9410 2-in-1 can also be outfitted with a Smart Card reader and there is a dTPM 2.0 chip inside to protect unencrypted data. Intel's 10th Gen vPro chips come with their own built-in security along with manageability tools for IT admins.

On the software side, Dell offers a comprehensive suite of security programs, including Dell Encryption Enterprise, VMware Workspace ONE, Dell Client Command Suite and Absolute Endpoint visibility and control. 

Protecting the exterior of the Latitude 9410 is a durable frame made of sturdy materials. While I can't do my own drop test, the MIL-STD-810G rating bestowed upon the Latitude is evidence of its ruggedness. That strange acronym means the laptop can withstand harsh environments, having completed 17 rigorous tests, from exposure to extreme altitudes to being subjected to blowing sand and dust. 

Dell Latitude 9410 ports 

For such a portable laptop, the Latitude 9410 has a respectable assortment of ports. On the right side are a USB 3.2 Type-A input, a microSD card slot and a SIM card slot next to a headphone jack and a lock slot.

Peer over on the other side and you'll find a second USB 3.2 Type-A input (with power share), an HDMI 2.0 and two Thunderbolt 3 ports (one of which is for charging). 

There is no Ethernet jack but that's to be expected on a laptop this thin (you can always use a USB-to-Ethernet dongle if needed).

Dell Latitude 9410 display 

There is a single display option available on the Latitude 9410: a 14-inch, 1080p touchscreen with an anti-reflective and anti-smudge coating. It's not the brightest pane,l but videos I watched looked sharp and the colors were rich. 

The panel captured lots of detail in the trailer for Bill & Ted Face The Music. During the prison scene, I could read an "Elizabeth + Billie Forever" tattoo on one of the convict's six-pack. Pausing the trailer during one of Bill and Ted's radical conversations revealed wrinkles in the faces of these actors that weren't there in the previous film. 

Colors were rich and accurate, but they didn't pop off the screen; electricity running through the famous phone booth was a fiery orange. However, it could have radiated more if the screen got brighter. 

• Laptops with the Most Colorful Screens: 2020 Guide

The touch panel responded quickly to my swipes and taps. I try to avoid using the on-screen keyboard, but punching in URLs with my fingers wasn't too frustrating thanks to the Latitude's sensitive screen. I also want to highlight the display's anti-glare coating because it does a good job of blocking reflections, but still has that satisfying glossy look. 

We put a colorimeter up to the display and measured 111% of the sRGB color gamut. That makes the Latitude 9410's screen more colorful than the one on the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (101%) but less vibrant than the Elite Dragonfly's (117%) and the category average (121%). 

With a peak brightness of 287 nits, the Latitude 9410's screen doesn't get very bright. We expect at least 300 nits out of a premium laptop, so the Latitude doesn't hold up well in this area. For further proof, it was outshone by the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (364 nits), the Elite Dragonfly (373 nits) and the category average (368 nits). 

Dell Latitude 9410 keyboard, touchpad and stylus 

Most people will find the Latitude 9410's keyboard to be comfortable for writing long reports or punching numbers into spreadsheets. The backlit keys are generously spaced so my fingers felt right at home from the moment I started typing on it -- no learning curve required. 

People with larger hands will appreciate the spacing, but the small keycaps aren't ideal for my beefy, sausage fingers. Dell increased the size of the keys on the XPS 15 and XPS 13 by expanding the keyboard across the deck; I wish it had done the same with the Latitude. And while I'm nitpicking, a webcam on/off key to accompany the mute button would have been useful.

Nevertheless, the typing experience is great because the Chiclet-style keys are snappy and travel a decent distance before actuation. There is a satisfying heft to the keys that reminds me of the heroic keyboards on Lenovo's ThinkPad laptops. 

I wasn't rushing to connect a mouse because the Latitude's 9410's 4.1 x 2.4 touchpad reacted quickly to my swipes and Windows 10 gestures, like pinch-to-zoom. Its glass coating is smooth and soft, the ideal surface for sweeping your fingers across for hours on end.

The Latitude 9410 supports an $85 Wacom stylus (sold separately). Dell was nice enough to ship us a Premium Active Pen, which has 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, a 240Hz refresh rate and tilt support along with Wacom AES 2.0 technology. It's a good stylus that kept up with my swipes as I drew a picture in Paint 3D. 

Dell Latitude 9410 audio 

The dual stereo speakers on the Latitude 9410 sound surprisingly good considering they're located on the bottom of the laptop. 

Brandon Flower's vocals were crisp when I played The Killers' "My Own Soul's Warning" at 100% volume. While the drum hits lacked any punchiness, the guitars were nicely separated. But those agile drum beats and soaring electric riffs struggled to fill my living room, and there was some scratchy distortion in certain treble frequencies at peak volume levels. I hope Dell makes some upgrades in this area -- perhaps a quad-speaker setup with some top-firing speakers from the XPS 15 or 17 next time?

Dell Latitude 9410 performance 

Armed with an Intel Core i7-10610U CPU and 16GB of RAM, the Latitude 9410 aced my demanding real-world workload. I opened 40 tabs on the new Edge browser and loaded my favorite websites. The Latitude eased through it without a hint of lag. There wasn't any noticeable slowdown even when I played four 1080p YouTube videos and a Twitch stream.

As expected, the Latitude 9410 did well in our synthetic benchmarks, scoring a 16,849 on the Geekbench 4.1 overall performance test. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon (16,958, Core i7-10610U) scored a similar score while the Elite Dragonfly (14,114, Core i7-8665U) and the premium laptop average (16,521), lagged behind with its older 8th Gen CPUs. 

The Latitude also did a good job on the more demanding Geekbench 5.0 test, reaching 3,780. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon (3,913) got the win in this round, but the Dell did top the Elite Dragonfly (3,101). 

Those synthetic scores translated to our real-world test in which the Latitude 9410 took 19 minutes and 9 seconds to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution. It completed the task moments before the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (19:51) and crushed the Elite Dragonfly (22:23). The average laptop in this category (18:43) is quicker than all three of these.

It took the 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Class 35 SSD inside the Latitude 9410 just 5 seconds to duplicate 4.97GB of multimedia files, equating to a transfer rate of 1,017.8 megabytes per second. The 256GB SSD in the ThinkPad X1 Carbon was equally speedy (997.9 MBps) and both laptops crushed the Elite Dragonfly (424.1 MBps) and the average (696.5 MBps). 

Dell Latitude 9410 graphics 

Until Intel releases Tiger Lake CPUs, the integrated graphics in its chips will lag behind discrete options from Nvidia and AMD.

The Latitude 9410's UHD graphics struggled in our gaming benchmarks, playing Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm at a paltry 11 frames per second. Not only does that miss our 30-fps playability threshold, but it can't even match the category average (23 fps). 

We drifted around corners in Dirt 3 at a steady 38 fps, which is playable, but nowhere near the 65-fps average. Equipped with the same underwhelming graphics, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (33 fps) and Elite Dragonfly (31 fps) barely managed to muster enough oomph to run the game.

Dell Latitude 9410 battery life 

All hail the new king! The endurance king, that is. The Latitude 9410 lasted longer on a charge than any other laptop we've tested with a record-breaking 16 hours and 54 minutes of battery life. 

• Laptops with best battery life in 2020

Our battery test involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, so your results may vary. Regardless, the Latitude 9410 will stay powered through your workday without needing to be plugged in. And when it does power down, the upgraded 90-watt charger brings the battery to 80% in just one hour.

Rival notebooks offer some fierce competition but even the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (10:45) and Elite Dragonfly (12:25), two laptops whose endurance we praised, powered down hours before the Latitude 9410.

Dell Latitude 9410 webcam 

The 720p webcam perched atop the Latitude 9410's display is acceptable. A selfie I snapped in my dimly-lit apartment was grainy, but colorful. Visual noise obscured the finer details in my face but my pinkish skin tone and yellow/green eye color were properly captured. 

I wouldn't hesitate to use the camera while traveling or if you need to jump into a quick meeting, but external webcams are always a better option for important conference calls or job interviews. 

Dell Latitude 9410 heat 

The underside of this business notebook gets a bit toastier under a heavy workload. After we played a 15-inch, full HD video, the bottom panel reached 105 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 10 degrees warmer than our 95-degree comfort threshold. And while the touchpad remained cool to the touch (84 degrees), the lukewarm keyboard keys (95 degrees) kept the blood flowing in our fingertips. 

Dell Latitude 9410 software and warranty 

Dell spared the Latitude 9410 of any unneeded programs. The company installed four of its own apps, including Dell Command for BIOS, driver and firmware updates, Dell Optimizer for improving applications, audio and power performance, Dell Digital Delivery, which delivers software purchases, and the self-explanatory Dell Power Manager. 

The only third-party apps I found taking up valuable storage space include several Intel utilities and the apps Microsoft brings to Windows 10 Pro, like Groove Music, Solitaire Collection and the handy Your Phone app.

The Latitude 9410 ships with a three-year warranty. See how Dell fared in our Best and Worst Brands and Tech Support Showdown special reports. 

Bottom line 

Dell's Latitude 9410 2-in-1 is a great business laptop whose few shortcomings are offset by a couple of standout features. 

There's a lot to like about the Latitude 9410, but the clear highlight is its nearly 17 hours of battery life. That runtime makes it the longest-lasting laptop we have ever tested. And it delivers such impressive endurance despite having a relatively slim aluminum chassis that is tested to military-grade durability. 

On top of that, you get strong performance from its 10th Gen Intel CPUs and a good, if somewhat dim 14-inch, 1080p display. As you can see, the Latitude 9410 nails the important things, and yet it doesn't skimp out on extra features, like the optional IR camera and fingerprint sensor and stylus support, either. I do wish it had a webcam cover for the privacy-conscious consumers, but that's a small complaint.

If you need a long-lasting business notebook, the Latitude 9410 is an excellent candidate. However, lightweight competitors, like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and Elite Dragonfly, are a lot more portable, so road warriors and frequent fliers should consider those instead.