Review: Dell Takes On 2-In-1 Market With Latitude 3379 Laptop

Dell has jumped into the 2-in-1 laptop game with the Latitude 3379, and we found a lot to like with this machine beyond how flexible it is.

The big news here is that this laptop offers some major improvements over another Latitude we tried out recently, the Latitude 7370, but costs much less.

For starters, the touch pad on the Latitude 3379 is a huge improvement over the Latitude 7370, and it's a faster machine since it comes with an Intel Core i3 or i5 processor. It has great battery life for a touch-screen laptop--we got 5.5 hours in our test.

The laptop also has a sturdy, durable feel to it and an appealing brushed aluminum design on the outside.

The 13-inch display is sharp but we wish the bezel was smaller. We felt constrained by the size of the display while using some web apps such as Google Docs.

Another nitpick is the placement of a volume control on the right front side of the laptop. We found ourselves accidentally turning the volume on a lot while moving the laptop around.

At three-quarters-of an-inch thick and 3.5f pounds, it's also not the most portable laptop out there. Certainly not as portable as the Latitude 7370.

But the price difference is pretty amazing. The Latitude 3379 starts at $900 for the Intel Core i3 version. That's compared with the $1,300 starting price for the Latitude 7370, which has the slower Core M chips.

And as we mentioned, the Latitude 3379 is the first Dell laptop that can fold its display all the way back, like with the Lenovo Yoga series.

Even apart from that feature, we think Dell is getting closer to finding a killer mix of portability, power and price with the Latitude 3379. The fact that it comes with 2-in-1 flexibility is really just a bonus.