Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable review: for the professionals

If you were to design a laptop for business users, what factors would you want to prioritise? It should have a portable design, excellent battery life, capable performance, and of course, excellent security. Maybe a 2-in-1 design with support for a stylus for added productivity, and while you’re at it, a nice display for watching a movie or two while on a break. That pretty much sums up the Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable.

This 2-in-1 laptop from Dell comes with the latest Ultra processors from Intel, features an excellent display, and enough juice to power through an entire day of work. There is Dell’s trusted support and security in place too. But it all comes at a pretty expensive price tag, making you think whether the laptop is even worth it or not. Let’s find out, in our in-depth Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable review.

Design and Display

Starting with the design, the grey-blue vibe of the laptop should sit well with most users, thanks to its sophisticated look of looking professional and minimalistic. Similar to most 2-in-1 laptops, the Latitude 7350 features a kickstand on the back, with a gorgeous 13-inch display up front.



Weighing at just 0.83kg, this thing is less than a kilogram and extremely portable. Of course, the added keyboard does add a bit of weight, but thankfully, not on your pockets, since both the keyboard and the stylus come included in the package. However, as the name suggests, the Windows tablet itself is detachable and can be used separately from the keyboard.



As for the display itself, it’s a 13-inch 3K panel with a resolution of 2,880 x 1,920 pixels. It’s an IPS panel with a glossy finish on top, but with 500 nits of peak brightness, it can easily be used outdoors. The display also comes with low blue light, anti-reflective, and anti-smudge features. That said, the 60Hz refresh rate definitely felt sluggish to my eyes, especially since our eyes are used to higher refresh rate panels these days.



In terms of colour reproduction, it’s decent enough with close to 76 percent sRGB color gamut coverage. Then again, the laptop is intended for business users, and who cares if the green is looking a bit inaccurate in the spreadsheet app of your choice? Additionally, for entertainment needs, the panel does a good job, and there’s support for HDR as well.

Ports, Audio and I/O

Of course, the display alone isn’t enough for entertainment – you need a good pair of speakers too. Owing to its tablet-first design, the Latitude 7350 Detachable packs dual front-facing speakers positioned on either side of the display. Already the sound output is much better compared to any other traditional laptop that usually has downward-firing speakers. While trained ears will say that there’s definite room for improvement, especially since the mids sound a bit hollow, the overall output should suffice for most entertainment needs and definitely business call needs.



What might not suffice for most users is the lack of ports. Compared to a traditional laptop, there’s not a lot of room for adding ports, and the Latitude 7350 Detachable comes with a single USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 support on either side. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack in the top-left corner if you wish to plug in a wired headset. But yeah, that’s about it.



Considering the chassis thickness, or the thinness in this case, I wasn’t expecting a ton of additional ports. That said, including a single USB-A port would make sense for business folks since most users already have external devices that are for USB-A, and this just means carrying an extra set of adapters. Then again, it’s 2024, so the decision to go just USB-C isn’t wrong by any means.



The Latitude 7350 Detachable comes with not one but two cameras. Up front, there’s an 8MP IR camera for video calls and Windows Hello. It’s not the best, and for a business laptop, I was expecting better HDR performance, but as long as there’s decent lighting, it should output good results. The face unlock works perfectly fine too.



On the flip side, there’s another 8MP camera above the Dell logo, which has a significantly better performance. I say that in comparison to the front camera, but on its own that’s not a great camera either, and there’s massive room for improvement. And while we are at it, for a laptop targeted at professional users, the lack of a physical shutter for the webcam is also not acceptable in my book.

Keyboard and Trackpad

The Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable comes with a keyboard reminiscent of the Microsoft Surface Pro laptops, thanks to its seamless connectivity, as well as its premium finish. Despite its slim design, there’s decent key travel, and one can get accustomed to typing on this keyboard in no time.



There’s white light underneath as well for use in dark environments, and the angle at which the keyboard props up helps in offering a more ergonomic experience to the user. There’s also the Windows Copilot key as you’ll find on newer laptops these days, while the power button rests on the frame of the display, thanks to the laptop’s tablet-first design.



The keyboard can also be laid flat to reveal the spot for the Dell Active Pen PN7350A. It uses Wacom AES technology and works flawlessly with the Latitude 7350 Detachable’s display. When stored, it uses the pogo pins to quickly charge to 100 percent in just 30 minutes, which is great. I’ve always said that for a tablet, a stylus is a must-have, especially considering how poorly optimised Windows still is for touchscreen interfaces. Not only does it make overall interaction with the device easier, but it also helps in mundane tasks like taking notes, or sketching.



As for a laptop-like feel and productivity, Dell hasn’t skimped out on the trackpad, which has a large area considering the overall space available. There’s also a nice tactile feel to it, similar to most Surface laptops and the Apple iPad Magic Keyboard. The touchpad’s surface is also quite smooth, gestures work very well, and I can easily say it’s one of the better touchpads I’ve used in recent times, be it on a laptop or a convertible.



One nifty feature that the trackpad has for professional users is that it has collaboration icons light up when attending video calls. There are easy toggles for the video, screen sharing, chat, and microphone. At the time of review, the feature only works with Zoom and Microsoft Teams, so I’d like to see the feature be extended to Google Meet too, but it’s nice to have it in the first place.

Performance and Battery Life

Moving on to performance, the Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable’s base variant comes with the Intel Core Ultra 5 134U processor. However, our unit shipped with the more powerful Intel Core Ultra 7 164U processor coupled with 16GB of LPDDR5x RAM clocked at 6400 MT/s. As for storage, there’s a 512GB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD from Micron. However, in CrystalDiskMark, the disk was able to only reach a high of 4768 MB/s, which is far off from the promised speeds of Gen 4 SSDs.



The story continues with the Intel Core Ultra 7 processor as well, which on paper, should work very well. And in a vacuum, it definitely scores really well, with excellent scores across all synthetic benchmarks like Cinebench R23, Cinebench R24, and PCMark 10. In fact, a score of over 5,300 in PCMark 10 Extended is quite good, especially for thin and portable laptops of this kind.



However, when compared to other laptops, the difference is definitely noticeable. For instance, the Dell Inspiron 14 7430, which is also a 2-in-1 laptop, comes with the much older Intel Core i7-1355U processor and manages to easily outshine the Latitude 7350 in Cinebench R23 and R24. That said, it’s still worth noting that the Core Ultra 7 164U is a far more efficient processor, which manages to give good scores without consuming a lot of power.



Of course, the benefit of having a Core Ultra processor is that it comes with an integrated NPU, which helps in AI-related tasks. While Copilot features are slowly rolling out, and whether they make sense for your workload or not depends on your use case, it’s always nice to have a dedicated NPU to make things easier.



As for the battery life, the 164U processor is extremely efficient, with the laptop lasting close to 12.5 hours in PCMark’s battery video loop test.



That’s great for business users, which means they don’t have to carry the ever-so-light charger with you to work. And when one doed need to juice this puppy up, a 65W USB-PD charger will do it in no time.



Inside, there’s an upgradable M.2 2230 SSD slot alongside an optional WAN module, though it’s best to go to the Dell service centre to let them do the job.



As for thermals, the laptop’s dual fan setup with a vapour chamber cooler does an excellent job at keeping things cool, and the temps hardly ever cross the 50-degree Celsius mark, even under stress testing.

Verdict

The Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable has lots going for it, thanks to its premium design, excellent keyboard and trackpad, and all-day-battery life. However, its steep price tag of Rs 1,67,900 + taxes is still quite expensive. At that price, it goes head-to-head with the Microsoft Surface Pro, which offers a much better display, similar battery life, and faster performance. Of course, some applications will not run on Surface’s ARM-based processor, and you will need the x86 reliability of the Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable. Not to mention, Dell is still regarded as among the best in the country regarding customer service, which could be a deciding factor for you.

Editor’s Rating: 7 / 10

Pros:

• Premium build quality
• Versatile 2-in-1 design
• Excellent battery life
• Includes keyboard and stylus in box

Cons:

• Limited ports
• Performance limitations
• Display leaves room for improvement