Hands-On With Dell’s Innovative Latitude 9420 And Impressive 7090 Ultra Modular PC For CES 2021
However, what's inside the stand of this pretty panel is what might interest some of you; especially those of you looking for a clean home or office environment aesthetic.
But of course, that isn't all that we have for you today. We also laid hands upon the Latitude 9420, which is Dell's premium 14-inch 2-in-1 convertible. There is a mixture of high-quality materials all around, including an aluminum top cover/keyboard deck that is married to a polycarbonate bottom tray. The keys have good travel and feel great under our fingers, and you'll find a fingerprint reader integrated into the power button.
The 14-inch display that we have on our example features a QHD (2560x1600) panel that is both touch-enabled and has an anti-reflective coating. Maximum brightness for the panel is rated at 500 nits, and it supports 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut. One other thing about the display that you will notice is that it has incredibly thin bezels all around, thanks to a low-profile IR camera.
But the relatively small size of the webcam isn't the only innovation here; it also has what Dell calls SafeShutter. With SafeShutter, the shutter is automatically closed any time the camera is not in use. Then, when you open an app that requires the webcam -- say, Google Meet or Skype -- the shutter will automatically open. It's basically automating the process of the manual webcam covers that are featured on many of today's business laptops, and it's a nice touch here on the Latitude 9420.
There's also a proximity sensor onboard which uses Intel camera sensing technology. Together with Express Sign-In 2.0, your presence is automatically detected to quickly log you in with Windows Hello as soon as you open the lid on your machine.
Powering the Latitude 9420 is one of Intel's latest 11th generation Tiger Lake processors; in this case a Core i7-1185G7 (4-cores/8-threads) that features an integrated Iris Xe GPU. As for connectivity, Dell threw in everything but the kitchen sink with the Latitude 9420. Not only do you find the requisite Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1, but our system was equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G modem. The modem has an embedded SIM (eSIM), but there's also an external nano SIM that you can use as well.
When it comes to physical connectivity, there's an HDMI 2.0 port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB 3.2 Type-A port, and a microSD slot for storage. Throw in a 60WHr battery with 65W Express Charge support and you've got a machine that should satisfy any mobile warrior when on-the-go.
The Dell Latitude 9420 will be available in the Spring with a starting price of $1,949. Be sure to also check out our coverage of HotHardware picks for the best hardware revealed during CES 2021.
