Dell Latitude E6530 Review: Business Class Performance

Performance Summary: Performance-wise, the Latitude E6530 excels in a world where business-grade laptops are typically relegated to be average at best. The new Latitude E Series could certainly be considered the new face of business laptops, where design matters, power is important and ruggedness is embraced. In everyday use, the experience is best-in-class for this type of machine. There's something to be said about marrying a Core i7 processor with 6GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, and that "something" is wonderfully quick.  In the benchmarks, the story is occasionally diluted by the integrated GPU.

As one of the heftier 15.6" laptops on the market, the Latitude E6530 makes up for it by staying cool under pressure, keeping fan noise to an absolute minimum, throwing in a number pad, being extremely rigid and rugged, and offering both a DVD writer and a massive 9-cell slice battery that admittedly pokes out of the rear a bit. No question, many of these things you'd need to have a use for to appreciate. While the understated design is classy if a bit boxy, accountants and those who punch numbers into Excel for a living will get a lot of miles from that number pad. Those who find themselves in airports with no power outlet will love the 97Wh battery, which keeps this workhorse running for far longer than any rival that offers only a 4-cell or 6-cell option. The DVD writer is a boon for those who need to burn media or presentations, but moreover, it can be swapped for other bay accessories. And then, of course, the bottom docking station port keeps that dream alive, too.


While it feels a bit heavy and expensive for average consumers to look into, the addition of the Tri-Metal casing and the impressive spec sheet may have folks thinking twice. This is perhaps one of the sexiest "rugged" laptops you'll find, and considering that even the keyboard is resistant to spills, we're fine with labeling it as such. For $1745, we expected the $99 NVIDIA NVS 5200M GPU option to be tossed in; the integrated GPU occasionally bottlenecks the overall performance of an otherwise aggressive machine. If you're lucky enough to have your IT manager put one of these on your desk, however, you can safely know that you have a pretty darn good gig.