Dell Latitude E6410: Minding Intel's Business
by Jarred Walton on December 2, 2010 2:45 AM ESTConclusion: One Year Later, Arrandale Still Looks Good
Dell didn't send us this laptop, and it may not be their best foot forward. That's not to say that the E6410 is a bad laptop, but like the ThinkPad T-series there's a price premium for the build quality and reliability. During the past month or so of using the E6410 as my primary work/travel laptop, I've been quite happy with it. It's not too heavy, plenty fast, and gets good battery life. I also appreciate the move back to an old-style 16:10 aspect ratio, though I still prefer the 1080p LCD in the Studio XPS 16 over WXGA+. I had no issues with crashing or stability, and about the only real complaints are the lack of a "context key" on the keyboard and performance that just didn't feel quite as snappy as the new XPS 15. I'm not certain whether it's the small 160GB HDD in the test system, or if it's the lack of a faster discrete GPU, or if it's something else, but for performance the XPS 15 still wins out in my book. Aesthetically, though, I'd take the Latitude design (E6410 or E6510) over the rounded XPS chassis if given the choice.
That takes care of the Dell side of things; what about the Intel aspects? Arrandale showed up at the beginning of 2010, and nearly a year later it's still going strong. In many ways, I'm amazed at the fact that Intel is about to replace Arrandale with something "better", but we'll have to wait a bit longer to see exactly how Sandy Bridge laptops stack up to the Arrandale competition. When Clarksfield arrived last September, we got substantially faster mobile processors but also worse battery life. If Sandy Bridge can at least deliver Clarksfield performance and Arrandale power characteristics, it will be a success. We might finally have the ability to get our quad-core mobile cake without the need to pack a power brick everywhere we go. Or we might not.
Intel's current Calpella (Arrandale CPUs) platform delivers good application performance, very good to excellent battery life, but generally poor (but adequate for anything outside of gaming) graphics capabilities. Sandy Bridge looks set to improve the CPU performance by a decent amount (~20% with the same number of cores at the same clock speed), and potentially more than double the GPU performance. The one remaining question is what Sandy Bridge will do for laptops and in particular, how it will affect battery life.
Intel has been good since the Core 2 launch with keeping power requirements relatively constant, but there's certainly wiggle room if they can justify the performance increase. The Intel design philosophy is that every 1% increase in power requirements must come with at least a 2% increase in overall performance, so if Sandy Bridge ends up 50% faster we might see battery life drop, or we might see 10-20% more performance with the same battery life. Arrandale ULV was more like the former, with much better performance than CULV but clearly higher platform power requirements (i.e. the M11x R2 gets less battery life in every case compared to the original M11x). Where will Sandy Bridge fall? We're hoping battery life at least stays static, and ideally we'd like to see improvements—and not just when comparing quad-core Sandy Bridge to quad-core Clarksfield!
Now that we've got a final look at Arrandale in our charts, we're ready for Sandy Bridge to show up. We even know all the mobile Sandy Bridge names. It's a bit concerning that none of the parts have a TDP lower than 35W, but then all the current Core 2010 also list 35W TDP. If nothing else, at least we'll finally get the chance to see Intel quad-core laptops paired up with GPU switching technologies like NVIDIA's Optimus, so the next generation of gaming laptops could finally break into the 3+ hour range without using 95Wh batteries. And of course, we're still waiting to see the next generation of AMD mobile platforms. So mark your calendars, because early 2011 looks set to shake up the mobile market once again and make things interesting.
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G-Man - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Hey Jarred,thanks for your review. If I may, I have a question: How do you normally decide on what laptops to review? I'm guessing you have to prioitise, so is there a consensus that you mostly review laptops that are either equipped with new technology (like the first optimus laptops) or laptops that you somehow know are going to be highly recommended (like the recent XPS 15)?
Also, are there any plans on reviewing Vostro? I recently bought a Vostro 3500 with core i3 and 2gb ram for something around the equivalent of $ 400, which I thought was pretty nice.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Mostly, it's whatever we can get our hands on. ASUS is generally willing to send out their latest and greatest, as is Dell, but even they tend to be selective. If they don't think we're likely to give a reasonably favorable review, they're less likely to send a unit our way. At least, that's my experience after three years of laptop reviews.In this particular instance, Intel wanted to make sure I had an "Intel reference laptop" for times when I might want to compare, say, AMD IGP vs. Intel IGP, or old Intel vs. new Intel. So when they asked if I was interested, naturally I said sure. They offered a ThinkPad but as I mentioned, I wanted to play with a Latitude just as a change of pace. This review was obviously lower priority... basically, get it done before Sandy Bridge ships. Dell was also a little concerned with the review, as it's not what they'd deem their "best foot forward".
If I have the luxury of getting numerous laptops, I also try to prioritize on the stuff I think people will want to read/buy. A new technology is more interesting than "yet another standard Arrandale laptop". In the case of the XPS 15, I moved that ahead of a couple other laptops I've had longer (like this Latitude and the Acer 5551G). Toss in Dustin and Vivek and we get a fair selection of laptops reviewed all told. Now if only we could get Sony and HP to send us more stuff... Dustin has the Envy 17 now, but we're about three months late on that one. :-\
QChronoD - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Is there somewhere on the site that we can send in suggestions for reviews/stories that we'd like to see? If you had several things in the backlog, maybe have us vote on which we'd be more interested in...On that note, please bug ASUS to send you guys one of the new U36's as soon as they can. From the press release, it looks like it'll be a direct competitor to the Air, only with a much faster cpu.
I'm looking for a new super light laptop that I can carry all day when I'm at school, and it just jumped to the top of my xmas money shopping list.
jgrunhut - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Jarred,If you do have any pull with Dell, I would also love it if you reviewed the Vostro 3400/3500. I purchased the 3400 back in June and am mostly happy with it. It was definitely one of the best relatively thin/light laptops available at the time. The only problem, which seems very common, is that once the fan spins up to its medium setting, it doesn't want to return to its lower levels. Hopefully, if you get to review this model then maybe Anandtech can bring more media attention and push Dell to fix it sooner.
The only other issue with this laptop is the poor monitor. While I love the matte finish, the vertical viewing angles are absolutely terrible.
Thanks,
Jason
fabarati - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
I got a 3500 for my mother.Good build quality, good keyboard, pretty good touchpad, looks decent (it's the red one), typical 15.6" 1366x768 screen (i.e. not very good), but matte.
Battery life is good, there was little bloatware on it and it has a good port selection, save that it lacks firewire. It has express card, though, so you can just get a firewire card (we did).
It's a bit on the heavy side, but I'm comparing it to my brothers Macbook pro 15 (core i7).
Prices are good (well, we got the basic one when it was released), and for regular use, the intel igp is enough.
Compared to consumer laptops for the same price, you may lose a bit of performance (higher clocked cpu or a dedicated gpu), but the improved build quality, battery life and keyboard more than makes up for it.
Too bad on the display, though.
fabarati - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
I would like to point out that the 3300/3400/3500/3700 reintroduced magnesium alloy chassis to the main vostro line, accounting for the good build quality. It also uses aluminium (note the extra i, yanks) panels and fairly high quality plastics.mschira - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
'nough said!M.
jasperjones - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
On pricing: I think what makes Latitude and Vostro laptops attractive to consumers is the Dell outlet (you gotta use the coupons which are floating around regularly). E.g., I got a refurbished E6410 with i5-520m, WXGA+, 250GB 7200rpm HDD, 4GB, Intel IGP, Win 7 Pro x64, Bluetooth, 6300agn and some other stuff for $709 out the door (that included ~9% NY state tax). Given you still get the 3-year warranty, this is a mightily attractive price imo.Two minor things:
- I also had performance issues prior to doing a clean install. Apart from a clean install, the A05 BIOS also helped. The A06 BIOS (released today) promises a number of additional fixes as well as performance improvements. E.g., what bothered me is the slow POSTing of the E6410, the A06 BIOS seems to have fixed this.
- Probably our opinions differ here but my primary complaint about the E6410 is that the blue status LEDs are waaay too bright, they really bother me in low light.
LoneWolf15 - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Your point on the Dell Outlet is dead-on. I got a Latitude E4200 ultralight for a friend for $690 (they start at $1700 new) with a three-year warranty. Every Outlet order I've placed is indistinguishable from new product.I've just started working on some E6410s here, and like most Dell Latitudes, they're strong, well-built, and the Core i5 is fast. I own a ThinkPad T400 myself that's been souped to maximum performance, but considering Lenovo's slow slide in quality control standards, an E6410 would be my choice if I was in the market, rather than the T410.
Zap - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
Yup yup, I'm also a happy Dell Outlet customer. I picked up a Dell Latitude 13 with SU7300 CPU for $451 out the door. Mine has a big green REFURBISHED sticker on the bottom, some sticker residue on the bottom and the lid may be a hair warped, plus it showed up with a stripped screw on the bottom, but I'm still reasonably happy with it.