Dell Latitude 9440 Review: 14-Inch 2-In-1 Laptop Superiority

Battery Life And Power Tests

The Dell Latitude 9440 comes equipped with a 60 Wh battery, which is actually kind of thin, at least compared to the recent crop laptops in this weight class. Here we're utilizing PCMark's Battery test that runs a 1080p video playback workload in a continuous loop, with the Windows 11 Movies and TV player, until the battery is exhausted. In all tests, Windows Quiet Hours / Focus Assist has been enabled and the displays are calibrated with lux meters on pure white screens to as close to 115 lux as possible. Wi-Fi is left enabled, which we feel is a common use case. However, enabling airplane mode in a travel use case, for example, would provide additional battery life over the results we'll show you here. 


So, let's dig in and do a bit of extrapolating. The Dell Latitude 9440 is slightly lighter than the HP Dragonfly Pro, at 3.38 lbs versus 3.42 lbs for HPs machine. It also has a slightly smaller battery at 60 Whr, versus HP's 64.6 Whr rating for the Dragonfly Pro. The final differential is the Dell Latitude 9440's 2560X1600 resolution display versus HP's 1080p display on the Dragonfly Pro. So, factoring all that in, HP scores nearly an hour and a half of extra video playback uptime, likely due mostly to its lower resolution display and larger battery.

However, if you ask us, we'd take the 1600p display any day over HP's 1200p display on the Dragonfly Pro, but that's just us and your needs may differ, depending on your use case. In fact, we'd encourage HP to offer a 1600p option on its machine. Either way you slice it, the Latitude 9440 puts up excellent results here. 

Dell Latitude 9440 Thermal And Acoustic Performance

Our thermal and acoustic tests involved running 3DMark's built-in stress test on the Dell Latitude 9440 until its fans fully spun up and its thermal solution was saturated. We also set the machine to both its Optimized and Ultra Performance modes, the latter of which is essentially a worst-case scenario in terms of the system's peak noise output.


In terms of its thermal solution's acoustic signature, the Latitude 9440 is a very well-mannered machine. Here under a heavier graphics workload, the machine's fans spin up to audible levels, but at just 43db, this machine remains quiet. Its fan pitch is also an unoffensive whir, not an annoying high-pitched whine. 


As far as skin temps go, the Dell Latitude 9440 radiates a minimal amount of heat through the top side of its chassis, with the hottest spot (94.5ºF) popping up somewhere around the bottom of the machine's display bezel. The keyboard area remains cooler than that still, and the bottom side of the machine, where the intake vents reside, also stays comfortable enough on your lap, even under heavier workloads. Here, the Dell Latitude 9440 easily surpasses HP's Dragonfly Pro at some 7.5C degrees cooler overall. 

Dell Latitude 9440 Takeaways And Our Review Summary

That said, the Latitude 9440 is not completely without shortcomings, like its pokey SSD that could easily have been a faster component selection for Dell, and perhaps the addition of an SD card reader, as content creation types might appreciate the easy media access. In the end though, these are only minor quibbles for us and the Dell Latitude 9440 delivers a top-notch experience overall, with a unique, handy feature in its integrated touchpad collaboration control buttons for video conference calls. We hope Dell gets Teams validated soon as well for this feature, but we're told it's imminent. 

All told, for its excellent performance, great battery life, gorgeous touch display, thoughtful features and spacious zero lattice keyboard, we're very impressed with the Dell Latitude 9440. We highly recommend it for anyone looking for a premium, classy, capable thin and light laptop.