Latitude E5400 Review

Since nobody has done much of a review on the Latitude E5400, I thought I would do one. I don't have 15 posts so I cannot link to images yet, so this is a text-only review for the moment.

Dell Latitude E5400 Review

The Latitude E5400 is part of Dell's new Latitude E series of corporate notebooks. The E series consists of the 12.1” E4200, the 13.3” E4300, the 14.1” E5400 and E6400, and the 15.4” E5500 and E6500. The E6400/6500 series are the top-line models, while the E5400 and E5500 are the “budget corporate” notebooks, falling in price and feature set between the E6000 line and the small-business Vostro line.

The test notebook has the following specifications:

• 14.1” WXGA+ (1440x900) matte display
• Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 (65 nm/2.00 GHz/2 MB L2/800 MHz FSB/35 W)
• 1 GB DDR2-800 RAM (plus 2 GB DDR2-667 I had on hand, so 3 GB in total)
• Intel GMA X4500MHD graphics
• Intel GM45/ICH9-M chipset
• 80 GB Hitachi 5400 RPM SATA hard drive
• 24x CD-RW/DVD-ROM
• Broadcom BCM5756ME PCIe gigabit LAN + Broadcom BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN
• One-year warranty
• 90 W E-series power adapter
• 56 Wh 6-cell battery
• OS: Windows Vista Home Basic x86 (as shipped), Ubuntu Linux 8.10 i386

The price as tested: $640. That includes a $250 instant discount and free shipping available at the time but does not include the cost of the 2 GB memory module. Current prices for a 2 GB DDR2 SODIMM are about $20 from online retailers.

Build and design

The Latitude E5400 is marketed as a corporate notebook and certainly looks the part. Dell seems to have taken a page from the ThinkPad design manual when they designed the E5400 as the entire machine is a matte black color and there are no fancy curves.

The chassis of the machine is has a thick plastic skin over an aluminum skeleton rather than the magnesium alloy used in the E600 lines. This less-expensive chassis material did not affect the sturdiness of the E5400's chassis one bit as it is very solid. You can pick up the Latitude E5400 by a corner and there is zero chassis flex. The lid has a metal outer cover and the hinges are very robust as well. The E5400 is extremely sturdy, but it does pay a little penalty for that sturdiness with using less-expensive materials by weighing the better part of a pound more than the magnesium-alloy E6400.

The screwdriver-turners out there will be happy to see that the Latitude E5400 has been set up for easy service and upgrading. About half of the bottom of the notebook is a single removable plate with captive screws. Both RAM slots, the wireless card, WWAN mPCIe card slot, hard drive, chipset, processor, fan and heatsink are all underneath the large access panel and very easy to access.

Screen

The matte WXGA+ (1440x900) screen in the Latitude E5400 is sharp and the backlight has plenty of brightness for use in a bright room or even outdoors, where the matte screen will result in less glare than the glossy TrueLife screen option. There are approximately 16 screen brightness levels available so it is easy to find the proper brightness level for the surroundings. However, the viewing angles are a bit narrow and there is some backlight bleed near the bottom of the screen.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard is a rather standard notebook keyboard and the layout will be familiar to anybody who has used a Latitude before. The feel of the key presses is not the greatest, but it is okay. The touchpad has a vertical and horizontal scrolling section and works decently.

Performance and Benchmarks

I ran the standard set of Windows benchmarks on Vista before I installed Ubuntu over it.

• wPrime 32M: 47.469 seconds
• 3DMark06: 790 (SM 2.0 score 223, SM 3.0 score 331, CPU score 1633)
• HDtune: I have a screeshot that I will post later.

Speakers

The Latitude E5400 has two speakers and they are rather decent as far as laptop speakers go. They are capable of a very loud volume without distortion. A nice touch is that there are separate volume adjustments for the main speakers and headphones, which prevents you from blasting your eardrums when plugging in headphones and forgetting to lower the main volume control.

Input and output ports

The selection of ports is pretty average for a 14.1" business laptop.

• Left: PCMCIA slot, 4-pin IEEE 1394a connector, SVHS connector, two USB 2.0 ports, modem port, Ethernet port, and an RGB monitor connector.
• Right: Optical drive, 3.5 mm headphone and microphone jacks, two USB 2.0 ports, power jack, and a notebook lock slot.
• Front: Wireless switch, SD/MMC card reader, monitor latch
• Rear: Battery and heatsink vent slot

Heat and noise

The Latitude E5400 has a reasonably decent cooling system and does not get excessively hot or noisy. The warmest part is the hard drive, which generally runs at about 40 C, which is a bit warm for a hard drive but not extremely so. Dell is probably aware of this as the fan's speed is largely controlled by the HDD temp. The fan is off if the HDD is under 37 degrees, the fan is on a low speed if the HDD is between 37 and 41 C, and the fan ramps up to a higher speed if the HDD is above 41 C. The fan speed is only controlled by the CPU if it exceeds 72 C (it turns on low if it was off), so the CPU temps are usually very low, often only a few degrees C above room temp at idle. The fan on the low speed is almost not noticeable and is noticeable but annoying at higher speeds.

The hard drive sits beneath the left palm rest and it gets slightly warm if the machine has been on for a while, but it is not anywhere near uncomfortably warm. The air coming out of the vent is not very warm nor is any part of the bottom of the computer.

Installing Linux

I am a Linux user and naturally wanted to install my preferred OS on my machine. I grabbed a copy of Ubuntu 8.10 x86 (aka “Intrepid Ibex”, 2.6.27 kernel) and installed it on the E5400. The installation went very smoothly and without a hitch and took about 20 minutes, which is typical for a modern Linux installation on a newer machine.

• CPU: works, scaling supported out of the box
• USB: works
• FireWire: not tested
• PCMCIA: works
• Wireless: works (requires the “wl” driver in 2.6.27 and newer kernels)
• Ethernet: works
• Card reader: works
• Graphics: mostly works. The screen resolution is set properly out of the box and 3D acceleration works but XvMC does not work as Intel's drivers do not currently support XvMC on 40-series chipsets yet.
• Keyboard and touchpad: works. You will need to enable the horizontal scrolling in the mouse properties.
• Modem: not tested
• Optical drive: works
• Suspend-to-disk: does not work. There is a bug with X and the Intel driver with 40-series chipsets.
• Suspend-to-RAM: does not work. There is a bug with X and the Intel driver with 40-series chipsets.

Conclusion

The Latitude E5400 is a reasonably nice machine and available at an excellent price. I recommend it to anybody looking for a decent professional 14.1” notebook.

 

Nice review, thanks!

Do you have some photos of your machine?

 

Yes, I do. I'll try to attach them in the review, if it will let me.

EDIT: It will let me attach six images. I will have to make a few more posts until it will let me link to Photobucket and such. I added the performance info plus one image of the machine itself.

 

This is a very helpful review.

Sorry about the anit-spam measures, but the spammers can be problematic at times. You can attach another 6 images to your next post and edit the original post to tell people to go down the thread for more.

John

 

I have ordered the same system with ofcourse P8700 2.53 Ghz processor and a 9 cell battery.

Ö)

 

I think Im going to get one to tide me over for 9-12 months until I can get an e4210 based on arrandale. Cheapest available at outlet, minus 20%. Sell it for roughly the same amount in a year...

Nice review.

 

Battery life?

 

I get about four and a half hours of run time out of the six-cell battery while taking notes with the wireless on and the screen dimmed to level 1, 2, or 3. If I just surf the Internet constantly, that drops to about four hours. It's not bad considering the relatively small size of the battery.

 

Thanks! Since you have the T processor, battery life should be longer for a P8600 processor, right?

 

Anyone knows where we can get the travel lite module? Can we get it for free from Dell?