The Dell Latitude 9520 is quite a weird laptop for me to define. It’s a small laptop but not exactly thin and light, it’s tuned for business-class performance but has a fairly medium front-facing camera for online meetings. In this Dell Latitude review, we will look at its advantages and disadvantages but more importantly, we will see if it is really worth the Rs 2.12 lakh price tag.

Dell Latitude Review Specs

Processor: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1185G7 4-core / 8-thread processor with 3.00Ghz base clock and 4.80Ghz boost clock
GPU: Intel Iris XE graphics
RAM: 32GB DDR4
Display: 15-inch IPS LCD 1920×1080 pixels
Storage: 256GB SSD
Connection: Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac, Bluetooth, 1 X Thunderbolt Type C port, 1 X Type-C port, 1 X USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A port, and multi-card slot

Dell Latitude 9520 Design, Build Quality, Trackpad and Speaker

By 2021, most OEMs want their laptops to have a 16:10 aspect ratio, to make them look more square-ish. However, Dell Latitude 9520 looks more rectangular. I’m not sure but I think Dell did it for two reasons. First, make sure the keys are at a sufficient distance, and second, to accommodate the two upward speaker grills on each side of the keyboard.

In terms of fit and finish, Dell always delivers and this time is no exception. The Dell Latitude 9520 has an aluminum chassis and everything from the hinges of the laptop to the trackpad is sturdy. Since we are talking about the trackpad, I would like to highlight its build quality. Typically, on most laptops, the trackpad is tilted inwards to the side you press the most, left or right click. Dell Latitude 9520 seems to be relatively immune to that problem.

The keys feel strong and have a decent amount of travel, probably more than a FUJITSU UH-X 2-in-1 laptop and a 2021 LG Gram 17. My only complaint with the Dell Latitude 9520 keyboard is the squeaking sound of its keys. Sometimes made. Specifically, the space bar will make a light scream whenever I type in a hurry. It doesn’t happen all the time but enough for me to notice.

The overall combination of trackpad and keyboard is good. And my only suggestion to Dell is to include a higher refresh rate screen in the next generation because it makes the trackpad measurable faster and easier.

The Dell Latitude 9520 is a laptop that you can use for business purposes, including online meetings. As a result, it comes with a set of powerful speakers that are loud and have a pretty good base. Compared to the MacBook Air speakers, which are often the benchmark, Dell speakers offer a better base but not as loud or clear. The enhanced bass prevents online voice processing which makes the speaker’s voice higher pitch during online meetings. Overall, the Dell Latitude 9520’s speakers are great. Speaking of online meetings, I’m disappointed with the 0.9MP front-facing camera. It is optimally serviceable and does not support the Rs 2.12 lakh price tag.

Dell Latitude 9520 Synthetic Benchmark and Performance Review

The Dell Latitude 9520 is based on Intel’s Core vPro platform. In addition to the official details, all you need to know about this platform is that the Wipro platform is used to “remotely manage, diagnose and update a PC without being there”. Therefore, these laptops prioritize safety and battery life.

For security, the Dell Latitude 9520 Windows Hello comes with a fingerprint sensor located on top of the face login and power button. Fingerprint reader is fast and accurate but does not log in automatically when you press the power button. I found the Windows Hello Face login to be faster. For added security, you can disable the microphone and front camera using the dedicated key.

While running the Synebench R23 we have seen that the 11th Gen Core i7-1185G7 has a good single-core score of 1349 and a multi-core score of 4006, moving towards the synthetic benchmark. Note that the single-core performance of this chip is slightly lower than the Intel Core i7-1165G7 powered by 2021 LG Gram 2017 and FUJITSU UH-X 2-in-1 laptops.

On the Cinebench R20, the 11th Gen Intel Core-i7 1185G7 scored 1625, which is quite decent and should not be a problem for most laptops to perform productivity and perform office tasks. On the PC Mark 10 Extended Benchmark, which tests the overall performance of a PC, Dell has scored Latitude 9520 4446. In particular, laptops scored high scores on “essentials” that cover daily tasks such as video conferencing, web browsing, etc., and good marks in productivity, which include editing spreadsheets and word documents.

To test battery life in this regard, I constantly run daily productivity tests on PC Mark 10 and keep battery efficiency at maximum and brightness at 100%. At the end of this result, the laptop returned 8 hours 44 m battery life. It’s pretty impressive. You can easily get more battery life by reducing the screen brightness to 70%.

The Dell Latitude 9520 comes with a 256GB SSD and has read and write speeds of 2486MB / s and 973MB / s, respectively. In real-world performance, Dell Latitude 9520 has returned a great number. It transferred a 35GB file from my phone to my laptop in 18 minutes and took 2 minutes 33 seconds to make a copy.

When playing games like Valorant in 1080p resolution and low graphics settings, the laptop maintains around 85FPS, and when playing Shadow of the Tomb Rider in 1080p and minimal graphical settings, the laptop returns 21 FPS.

In everyday use, the Dell Latitude 9520 is quite great. Thanks to the 32GB DDR4 memory that comes with the laptop, you can open multiple tabs and the machine will work really well. In addition, opening, closing, and running multiple apps can be very quick.

I tested Dell Latitude 9520 for thermal throttling and yes it also suffers from this problem. However, during intensive work pressure the CPU temperature ranges from 40 to 85 degrees Celsius, it sometimes rises to 95-99 degrees Celsius but quickly drops to normal range. Overall, the Dell Latitude 9520 is relatively cool considering how cool it is and the type of components it packs.

Dell Latitude 9520 Display Review

There’s nothing better than telling me about the Dell Latitude 9520’s display. During our tests, we found that the brightness of the laptop is 478.1 nits. However, it has a pretty high black brightness of 1.187 nits. As a result, shades and shades of black, in general, are relatively less attractive on the Dell Latitude 9520.

In addition, in ColorChecker analysis, the maximum delta value was 10.4 and the average delta value was around 4.3. This means that the display color of the Dell latitude is incorrect. However, since the use case of this laptop is to work as a business laptop and not as a video editing machine, I do not see any problem with this.

The display of this laptop covers 98.7% sRGB, 77.6% DCI-P3 and 76.3% Adobe RGB color space. Furthermore, the average color temperature of the Dell Latitude display 7453K puts it in a cool color palette. The same thing is visible in the RGB balance of this screen which is mainly in favor of blue.

The Dell Latitude screen has a 60Hz refresh rate and a 1920 x 1080p display. I would prefer at least a 1400p display or a higher refresh rate here. Yet, overall, Dell Latitude screens are perfect for everyday use.

Judgment

The Dell Latitude 9520 is a no-nonsense business laptop designed to provide high computing performance and long battery life. Fortunately, it does these things very well. For a powerful speaker set it is a great laptop for video conferencing, it is a great machine for presentation for its long battery life and it is a good machine for content use due to its fairly bright display. The Dell Latitude 9520 is a well-designed laptop and differs from the competition in terms of build quality and specs but suffers from front-facing video cameras.