Intel's Whiskey Lake CPUs found their way into Dell's Latitude series. The redesigned Latitude 7300 features one as well, and surprised us with its decent upgradeability (RAM) and long battery life. Unfortunately, not all that glitters is gold, and the laptop's CPU performance was the fly in the ointment.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Latitude-7300-Laptop-business-subnotebook-falls-short-of-its-performance-goals.434588.0.html
Holy cook me batman! 54c?!? And this got 87% score? Seriously?
Now don't get me wrong, if it was ice lake and 10C cooler, I'd be the first to buy this. I think dell has the best on-site service that I've tried.
But please stop with the toasters! I mean we are talking 54C on integrated graphics here! And despite being so hot, it still has fan noise?
Notebookcheck, as I mentioned before I love your reviews, BUT one of these days you'll get a laptop that has the best specs, outperforms all your metrics but literally catches on fire right on your desk. And you'd be like... hmmm... well sure it caught fire, but by our metrics its a 99%, so 99% it is!
The impact of thermals really needs a re-evaluation! Not ever laptop needs 80-90% rating.
Lets be clear: 87 % is not a great score for such an expensive device. It is in fact a little bit underwhelming.
The problem with the heat is that yes, it hits 54°C – but only during the stress-test, which doesn't represent everyday use. This temperature is definitely a problem, which is why it is mentioned as a negative. Still: We won't say that this is a deal-breaker, because this problem won't affect all users.
@Benjamin Herzig - 87% is not a great score? 87% is good enough to hit almost every top 10 list on notebookcheck. And keep in mind those are on v6 and this is v7 which is suppose to up the bar.
As for the 54C, we are talking about intergrated grahpics here. It's not hard to stress an integrated gpu. Not to mention I do wonder what the temperature will be 1 year or 2 years later. Having an expensive laptop die early due to heat be it components or batteries is definitely an issue that will effect people.
But maybe the solution here would be to add "typical load" and this way the thermals can be better compared using same work task. Just like you do the witcher 3 test for the gaming laptops, do a similar test for other categories.
Honestly 7300 and 7400 seem to sort of lost parts of their souls. And just became corporate XPS's. Ethernet was a main differentiator for me. With it gone... meh.
So I do kinda hope they'll bring it back in a CPU gen or two, when it's time to upgrade 7390. Since it's increasingly harder to find portable laptop with ethernet in 13-14 inches.
I prefer the Dell 7300 and 7490 both because of the traditional touch pad with real buttons and interchangeable power supplies & connectors. The battery life will be noticed by more users than the very rare heat/fan. The
CPU is not slower on all tests so will not be noticed at all. Dell products and service can be trusted.