Review: Dell Latitude 13 7370 Laptop Is Worth A Look

First Things First

We here at the CRN Test Center are pretty aggressive typers, so after opening up the Latitude 13 7370, a new Ultrabook from Dell, we were glad to find that the keyboard does wonders for keeping key-banging noise to a minimum. The keys feel great, the keyboard is a good size and it's backlit, too.

Of course, there's more to a laptop than just its keyboard. For solution providers, the laptop offers customers a combination of durability, portability and horsepower.

Here's a look at how the rest of Dell's Latitude 13 7370 stacks up.

Size

Let's back up a moment to sum up what this new business-class laptop has to offer on the whole. It's durable and highly portable -- very thin (0.56 of an inch) and light (2.48 pounds) -- but still has a sizable display (13.3 inches, very thin bezel). And the display is a high-resolution LCD touch-screen on the version we're testing out, which actually has plenty of practical uses for work.

Design

The Latitude 13 also looks pretty nice, especially compared to the stereotypical business laptop. The black exterior is made from "aerospace grade" carbon fiber, and the fibrous design is kind of cool. (Reminds us, fondly, of our old black MacBook.)

Processor And Battery Life

The machine is pretty fast, though not light-speed -- it's got a low-power Intel Core m5 chip, which helps enable the small form factor. The device doesn't come with an estimate on battery life but we get 5.5 hours on our first day (which included some Netflix watching) and 4 hours 17 minutes on the second day, not surprising because we were using the touch screen a lot more extensively this day.

Touch Screen

Partly we've been using the touch screen because it really is just a fast way to navigate between programs and browser windows. And anything that makes us feel a little more like Tom Cruise near the beginning of "Minority Report" is great as far as we're concerned.

Trackpad

The other reason we're using the touch screen so much, though, is that it's often faster for navigation than using the trackpad. During our several days of testing we spent a significant amount of time trying to get the trackpad to work the way we wanted -- i.e., flawlessly, without it being over- or under-sensitive -- and never quite nail it. (Adjusting the settings on the trackpad is a bit of an intricate process, too, since Dell has its own separate procedure for that from the Windows 10 OS).

Touch Screen Part 2

The biggest place where we find the touch screen to be superior to the trackpad is in scrolling on a webpage or Word document. The touch screen provides flawless control over page scrolling, and we find ourselves sometimes sitting back in our chair a bit and lazily scrolling through a Web article, just because we can. The trackpad, on the other hand, basically never controls scrolling the way we want.

Hinge

We're neutral on one of the laptop's other features -- a 180-degree hinge that lets user fold the device out flat, as we're not sure when it would be necessary.

Price

On price, the version we tested is definitely up there, however -- $2,269 -- given that it's the touch-screen version and comes with 8 GB of memory and 256 GB of storage. Non-touch versions of the laptop are available for less -- starting at $1,299 (with less memory and storage, and a less-powerful processor).

The Bottom Line

The Dell Latitude 13 7370 could be a great device for solution providers whose customers need to get a majority of their work done on the go.

As a main productivity machine for employees, the laptop has a lot to offer. It had us at the keyboard.