Dell Latitude D420

Dell doesn’t seem to be able to do much wrong with the new line of Latitude notebooks. The D620 (see A-List) arrived and flew straight to the top of the A List, and it’s a similar story for the D420 – the baby of the Latitude family. With the D420 weighing just 1.5kg with its six-cell battery there’s little reason to look any further for a business ultraportable.

It’s powered by Intel’s U2500, a Core Duo CPU with a speed of 1.2GHz. If that doesn’t sound terribly impressive, the TDP (thermal design power, the maximum amount of power the CPU can draw) of merely 9W certainly does. The D420 isn’t the speediest laptop on the market, but it isn’t designed for intensive tasks such as media encoding or CAD, so the benchmark result of 0.65 isn’t enormously important – it’s more than fast enough. There’s also 1GB of RAM to keep things running smoothly when you’re running multiple applications.

Unfortunately, the 3G capabilities of this notebook remain potential rather than fact. A SIM card slot can be found beneath the main battery but it will be redundant until Dell announces an Australian 3G partner. Then we should be able to see its wireless 5505 card in action. This can offer standard 384Kb/s 3G bandwidth but also the new high-bandwidth 3G HSPDA (High Speed Packet Download Access) services which can push 1.2Mb/s – essentially mobile broadband. However, much will depend on Dell’s plans and that of its partner and coverage will inevitably be limited initially. As such wireless capability is limited to hotspots. If you want a mobile notebook with 3G now, note that new SKUs of Lenovo’s X60 (see A-List) is your best bet.

The D420 has most of the plus points of the D620. The chassis is built from magnesium alloy, and the build quality should survive all but the most reckless treatment. The excellent keyboard is another carryover, as are the trackpoint and trackpad. The smart card reader and fingerprint scanner between the mouse buttons remain, as does the TPM. The ambient light sensor on the screen is a welcome addition, although if you dislike the results you can switch it off and adjust the brightness manually.

The 12.1in widescreen has a resolution of 1280 x 800 and, thankfully, a matte
finish, which makes working in a fluorescently lit office comfortable. Contrast is uniformly excellent, as is colour accuracy, and while viewing angles aren’t the best we’ve seen, the small screen means that the D420 isn’t ideal for crowding around presentations anyway.

The hard disk is a reasonably spacious 60GB model with a lowly spin speed of 4200rpm. Unusually, it’s a 1.8-inch model, similar to that used in Apple’s video iPod, and weighs only 59g. The lack of an optical drive is a little more of a disappointment. The Sony VAIO VGN-TX27gp/b (see A-List) manages to squeeze in a DVD writer, yet weighs even less at 1.2kg – it’s also got a bigger hard disk. To use an optical device on the D420, you’ll need to attach the media slice, but at least this is included in the price. The media slice includes not only a CD combo drive but also serial, parallel, USB and DVI-I ports.

As standard, the D420 comes with a six-cell battery. The battery provided one hour 50 minutes of power in our intensive-use test, and an impressive four hours in our light-use test. You can also buy a nine-cell battery ($193), which extends a little beyond the front of the chassis and pushes the weight up to 1.7kg. This provided a magnificent six hours 43 minutes under light use, and three hours 11 minutes with the D420 running at full whack. With judicious swapping of batteries, you could get through a whole day, and easily both directions of the average commute.

The D420 is very much a business laptop, and the sober looks, high-end features and accompanying price reflect that, as does the excellent three-year on-site next-business-day warranty. It doesn’t quite get on the A-List as our primary business laptop, as most people would do better compromising on weight and going for the D620 with its 14.1in screen and swifter performance. For consumers in the market for an ultraportable, the Sony VAIO VGN-TX2XP is still the better choice, but if you’re a business user who’s tired of lugging around a full-sized notebook this is the choice to make. Great battery life, low weight and decent ergonomics make the D420 a superb purchase.

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