Review Dell Latitude E6430 Notebook

[Redaktion]

Ivy evolution. It took a bit over a year before Dell updated its new Latitude range business laptops for the known reasons. Our review reveals which new features we can expect apart from Intel's latest Ivy Bridge generation - and what the 14 inch business device has to set against the prestigious competition.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Latitude-E6430-Notebook.81780.0.html

[Mike1]

There were quite a few bad user reviews (currently taken down) of this on Dell's own website. Is the build quality worse or more plastic than the original E6400?

[OberusPL]

Quality is nothing like Any other, very fast , great battery and perfect ergonomy.  8)

[Hisham]

A little heavy perhaps but yes the keyboard is great.  With thinner machines coming with their ULV processor I kinda think that this it gonna be the last of decent machines.  I have doubt as to cooling ability of many of them thin laptops coming into the market.  I suppose there is a price for portability.

[admire]

how about webcam how do I install it ?

[CorpFi]

I have an E6420 with a i7-2760QM and the high res screen, and just bought a lightly used E6430 with an i7-3540M and the lower res screen.  I have to say that I am really impressed with the E6430.  I use the machines for heavy spreadsheet work using Excel (running VBA code for 60-90 minutes at a time) and the dual core processor is faster than the quadcore because the dual core runs at a higher clock speed (and Excel doesn't use more than 4 threads properly I have found).  The E6430 is actually cool on my lap (as I write this review)and 4 hours left on the battery after 2.5 hours of browsing using WIFI and writing.  My E6420 with the quadcore runs uncomfortably warm and doesn't have nearly the battery life (both with the 6-cell battery). I do not understand the moaning over the lower res screen.  Sure it is not as good as the higher res, but unless you have them side by side, and have super young eyes (where you actually can or want to see tiny things on the screen), the display resolution is not a huge deficiency IMHO.  Plus, I suspect that the lower res screen therefore comes without a discrete GPU, which then saves you battery draw.  I agree with another writer that this Latitude series may be the last of the decent portable workstations (strong full powered processor in a reasonable size (14") at a reasonable price and weight (~5 lbs)). The newer latitudes simply to not offer the CPU power that I need for my work, so I may need to wait a few generations of Intel chips until they catch up in terms of CPU performance at the lower power consumption that everyone is focusing on these days.  These U series and the even lower power Y series processors do not deserve to have i7 in front of their names and are sad to see in business class machines.

[ashok277]

Overall good performance. But battery got damaged in one year and the cable is too short. I always have problem in connecting it to power socket

[Darksun9210]

I've been running an E6430 as my primary work machine for a good while now, pretty much since dell updated the E6*20 range to the E6*30. I have a docking station and three screens in the office - 2x 30" off the display ports, and one 24" off the VGA.
I had the luxury of specing up my own machine, so went for all the fruit available at the time. So running with now what is probably quite dated 2.6Ghz quad core i7 3720QM CPU, nvidia M5200 graphics, 16gb ram, 256Gb solid state drive, 1600x900 screen.
it's provided sterling service, even allowing enough space to dual boot a little partition for my own win7pro install for a little gaming on the move without the company lock downs on their win7enterprise install. it's been absolutely solid as a rock, from games, to editing high def video on the plane home. which reminds me - a 14" laptop is about the most you want for a standard airplane seat.

a new group policey update from work screwed up the company windows installation. kept dropping off the domain. anyway, i was without my trusty E6430 while it was off to be re-imaged, and supplied with a replacement super thin E7440 to fill the gap. even though it was as top end, now gen4, i7 as this machine could be spec'd with, and also maxed out on the ram and SSD drive - it was a superslim machine, so the i7 was a dual core low power jobbie, and relying on intel integrated graphics.
while i didn't really notice the power downgrade initially, and while it was nice toting a thin and light machine for a change, the E7440 did feel a little bit... lacking... in comparison. Just in the day to day. Nothing you could really put your finger on.
Then after a few weeks, my E6430 came back.
my god what a difference. just moving windows about on big monitors was so smoooooth. the Nvidia graphics proving it's worth there - could only tell the difference in a back to back user test really. back on the quad core cpu, with good cooling and power supply you've basicly got to be running a dedicated cpu punishing benchmark or something to get it to break a sweat. nothing i do in my day to day slows this thing down.
Something i did find interesting. someone stole the 130Watt psu off my docking station, and all I could get till I got it back was a 65Watt psu from one of the E7440's. The laptop detects the lower output power supply, and downclocks the system accordingly - as it is unable to run full pelt with thecpu, graphics chips, charge the battery, and etc etc... quite cool i thought, but noticed a definate degredation in performance! unplug the low power PSU, and abviously switches over to battery, where it can get it s full quota of electricity, and boom, up to full speed again! it amused me that i got better performance off battery than plugged into the mains with a weak charger! fortunatly I had full batteries, so could last, and only plugged it in to recharge them when i was away from the desk, and wouldn't have to suffer the performance penalty! :D
Anyway...

While the E7440 I had was nice, slim and light, and looks pretty, and it put up with my day to day without a fuss, plus asthetically much more acceptable to the eyes of the macbook air set, and the guys who are traveling lots with even smaller E7420's are doing mainly officey stuff/emails/conferences love them, i wouldn't be without my workhorse E6430.

- Chassis. Metal screenback and belly, great for just throwing it in a bag and it surviving horrors like airport bagage handling. is sprayed aluminium, so will show scratches that make it through the paintwork.

- Keyboard, is the same size for the 12",13",14", and 15" laptops. the 15" just gets the extra numeric keypad. but the keys are a decent size, and have good feeling and travel.

- Pointer. trackpad's a trackpad i guess. it works. curious that it's not multi touch, and annoying that you're not able to type and operate the trackpad at the same time.

- Connectivity. everything you'd need for out and about and in the office, gig ethernet, wifi a/b/g/n, bluetooth 4/lowpower, optional 3G modem card. just hotspot your phone if needed

- Weight. i have the 97W/hr express charge battery and modular-bay2 battery installed, so it's a little more than most, but for a workstation in your bag, it's perfect for me. carry it everywhere. Wife actually gets worried when i don't have it with me.

- Battery. well, as above, have the longer life batterys installed, and left it on overnight accidentally. (high powerformance - no sleep mode, screen off after 30 mins), and it had a whinge at me about low power on the train into work the next morning. so no complaints really. but don't expect a full gaming session on a london to new york fight. can manage three hours or so of something like farcry3, tops. Definately longer just playing movies, maybe the whole flight. but passive media's not my thing, so i really couldn't comment. but i feel it could.
Can certainly go a working day or a weekend up at the parents without any bother.
If you're worried about power draw of that extra Nvidia chip, the E6430/E6530 support nvidia's optimus mode that switches off the nvidia chip when no video/3D stuff is needed, and you run entirely off the intel to save juice. when more graphics is needed, the Nvidia chip gets woken up, does it's thing, and copies it's output into the intel graphics chip's memory space for display. a least that's as i understand it.

- Display. Probably the only let down of the whole machine, or maybe i've just been spoilt with what i use elsewhere, but i found the 1600x900 "upgrade" screen to be a little bit of a dissapointment. The colour rendition could be better - "adequate" i think is a good term to use here. Definition, i feel could be much better, and is my main gripe here. You can see it is running at it's native resolution, but it just looks quite... "soft", maybe even go so far as to say fuzzy, rather than crisp or sharp. Refresh speed, again adequate, nothing i've really noticed as a problem, either for games, or video.
Viewing angle can be an annoyance if trying to show lots of people something. just about good for two or three peeps crowding round the screen, but no more. This maybe an advantage on planes or trains, as reduces the exposure to other people "shoulder surfing" what you're doing.
The xbox controller probably gives away that you'e not really banging out an excel spreadsheet though.

- Games performance. good enough. I have no reason at the moment to buy a personal laptop for gaming on the go. it certainly scratches that itch even if the nvidia M5200 is not the most potent graphics chip out there. i wouldn't want to try on the intel onboard, but apparently it's tollerable.

- Application performance. no problems there. nothing seems to slow this thing down.

- Temperature. can get toasty if working the machine hard, and it can't breathe, but the vents or positioned well. air intake vents - centrally underneith so you don't block it if it's on your lap, heat exhaust vent is on the left-thand side, which funnily enough the cat has taken up position on my left when i'm using it on the sofa . Normal use it won't get much beyond just noticing that "it's on" sort of temperature. But gaming or lots of processor usage and it can throw enough heat out the side to keep your beverages warm or your cat happy.
Using a docking station lifts the belly of the laptop off the desk allowing more air into the vents. As it's docked right now, Intel's turbo mode is almost permanently on at 110-120% overclock, as it can keep the temperatures in check. not sure about just plonking it on the desk type usage, as usually on battery and in "balanced", or low power mode if undocked.

- Noise. pretty quiet. fan noise is noticable in a quiet room if you're pushing it, but so far, no complaints from the missus - which I figure is "the" benchmark.

Overall. Good, solid, PC replacement laptop. not the slimest, or the lightest, or the most pretty - especially compaired to the newer machines from Dell, but in my expirience, especially when spec'd up, the E6430's are built to do the job - whatever that may be.

[CIB]

Just dropped one of these 1m off a table, it tanked it like a champ.

[zdislav uzdichcal]

The bluetooth signal reception is poor. But the wifi excellent.

[Ria]

I have two of these machines, my main one runs Fedora 29 Cinnamon Linux and is flawless with 8GB RAM. The second one runs Windows 10 with 16GB and is similarly excellent, although Windows in its infinite wisdom threw a wobbly when I installed a mobile broadband card, which the Linux machine took without so much as a blink of the eye. An update to the driver (the card I fitted was never sold with the 6430 so Windows didn't know about it) soon fixed the issue.

In short, excellent machines and I can't recommend them highly enough. The only thing I would really like to do is change the display on the Linux machine from 1366x768 to 1600x900, which the other machine already has, but looking at it, it's not an easy job, so I may just leave it. It works, and I can't really ask more than that  :)