Dell Latitude 13 7370 Review: A Sleek Business-Class Ultrabook

Dell Latitude 13 Battery Performance

Dell has a couple battery options for the Latitude 13 7370. Our model features a 4-cell, 43Whr battery. We put the laptop through two tests to get a sense of how long the system can hold out in the real world.

In all tests, Windows 10 Quiet Hours have been enabled and displays are calibrated with lux meters on pure white screens to as close to 115 lux as we can get. For the average notebook this is somewhere between a 45 - 60% brightness setting. Since notebook displays significantly affect power consumption and battery life, it's important to ensure a level playing field with respect to brightness of the display for battery testing. However, since many notebook displays vary in brightness at each respective brightness setting in Windows, calibration with the meter is also critical to ensure all displays are set to as near identical brightness as possible before testing.

Battery Life
Heavy and Light Loads

Battery Eater Pro is our heavy load test. It taxes the device’s processor, memory, graphics, and other subsystems continuously until the battery dies. The test is designed to approximate the battery’s performance in situations where you are using multiple programs or creating content.

Our custom HotHardware video loop test takes a 1080p HD video with a 16Kbps bit rate and loops it repeatedly, with 1-minute break intervals in between. A timer log file incrementally tracks uptime every minute and a final count is recorded before system shutdown. This is a lighter duty test than BatteryEater, but it is still a bit more strenuous than many office productivity tasks.

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The Latitude 13 7370 didn’t last as long as one would hope in our video loop test, but hung for 178 minutes in BatteryEater Pro. Obviously, how long the ultrabook lasts for you depends on your usage. The high-res screen on our model was pulling plenty of power during the video test, which drains the battery rather quickly.  As for noise, the Latitude is nearly silent. Even the keyboard is whisper-quiet.

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