Dell Latitude 7450 Ultralight Review

The Dell Latitude 7450 Ultralight more than impressed us with its low weight and business-friendly features.

Latitude is Dell’s renowned business laptop brand. The 14-inch Latitude 7450 reviewed here is part of the 7000 series, which sits above the entry-level 3000 and midrange 5000 series but isn’t quite as elite as the 9000 series.

The Latitude 7450’s three flavors include an aluminum model, an aluminum 2-in-1 convertible, and the Ultralight model we’re reviewing. Designed for everyday productivity, this laptop is based around Intel’s “Meteor Lake” Core Ultra processors and offers all the accouterments business IT looks for, including Intel vPro remote management and enterprise support.

Dell Latitude 7450 Ultralight Design and Ports

How light is ultralight? It’s 2.33 pounds by Dell’s definition, which is scant for a 14-inch laptop. The Ultralight is over a half-pound lighter than the aluminum Latitude 7450 (2.92 pounds). It’s not the thinnest laptop we’ve tested, at 0.7 by 12.3 by 8.7 inches, but otherwise has about the same footprint as the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 (0.6 x 12.3 x 8.5 inches). The Latitude is still lighter, if barely (the ThinkPad is 2.42 pounds).

Much of the weight savings come from using magnesium instead of aluminum. It almost feels and looks like plastic; telltale signs it’s metal are a scratchy sound when you run your fingers across it and a naturally cool feel (temperature-wise, that is). To Dell’s credit, up to 90% of the magnesium is recycled.

The strength of this laptop is less impressive; opening the lid by its corner creates rather severe flex and the chassis also shows a lot of flex, which we don’t care for. This probably isn’t a laptop you’d want to put in your bag without a protective sleeve and the lid should be opened carefully.

Port selection starts on the left edge with HDMI 2.1 video output and a pair of Thunderbolt 4/USB Type-C ports. The included power adapter plugs into either of the latter.

Right-edge ports include a 3.5mm universal audio jack, two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, and a Wedge lock slot. Mobile broadband models also have a SIM slot here. The traditional USB ports are a welcome sight.

Dell Latitude 7450 Screen and Input Devices

The 1920×1200 touchscreen on our review model looks bright and lively for almost everything. A sharper 2560×1600 screen is available but loses touch. Both screens include a 5MP webcam with infrared support for facial recognition and a manual sliding privacy shutter.

The Latitude’s keyboard has an assertive feel and is comfortable for long typing sessions. The white backlighting stands out nicely against the black keycaps. Layout-wise, the arrow key cluster confusingly combines half-height up and down keys with full-size left and right keys. The power button at the top right corner doubles as a fingerprint reader. This keyboard also has a Copilot key as we are seeing on many newer laptops.

Below, the touchpad has an accurate feel and a smooth surface. The touchpad is sized quite well for the notebook, using just about all of the available space between the keyboard and front edge of the case.

Dell Latitude 7450 Ultralight Specifications

Dell Latitude 7450 Upgradeability

The Latitude’s bottom panel is held on by eight screws. The only upgradeable components are the battery pack, M.2 2230 wireless card, and M.2 2230 SSD. The LPDDR5X RAM is soldered to the motherboard and can’t be upgraded later, which is normal for a laptop in this class. (We’d still prefer it to be upgradeable, of course.)

Dell Latitude 7450 Ultralight Performance

Dell provided us with a Latitude 7450 Ultralight equipped as follows:

• Intel Core Ultra 7 165U CPU w/ Intel vPro
• Intel Graphics (integrated)
• 32GB RAM
• 512GB SSD
• Intel Wi-Fi 7
• Starting price: $1,529
• Price as tested: $2,369

Our model is a step up from the base model’s Core Ultra 5 135U, 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD. The pricing we published here is from Dell.com, but Dell always tells us nearly all of its business PC purchases are through channel partners and not directly on its site, so your pricing mileage may vary. With the components of this platform leaning towards power efficiency, one benefit was the minimal noise and thermal activity on the notebook.

We will be comparing the Latitude 7450 Ultralight to the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12, which we tested with the same Core Ultra 7 165U CPU.

Luxmark

Our first test is LuxMark, an OpenCL GPU benchmarking utility. Neither of these laptops will be that useful for 3D work, but the Intel Graphics shared by the Latitude and ThinkPad performed about the same as we might have predicted.

7-Zip Compression

We also run 7-Zip’s built-in memory benchmark on laptops. The decompression testing is more telling as to which system is faster and the Lenovo has a minor edge, but the numbers are close enough that we won’t declare an outright winner.

Blackmagic RAW Speed Test

Our next test is the new Blackmagic RAW Speed test. The Latitude dominated the OpenCL testing, but we suspect it’s more likely the ThinkPad hiccupped there.

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test

Our review unit’s 512GB has passable performance for a Gen4 drive. This laptop likely won’t be used for anything storage intensive, so not having the fastest disk performance should be a non-issue.

y-cruncher

y-cruncher is a multi-threaded and scalable program that can compute Pi and other mathematical constants to trillions of digits. Since its launch in 2009, it has become a popular benchmarking and stress-testing application for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts. The Latitude and the ThinkPad continued to perform closely.

Geekbench 6

Geekbench 6 is a cross-platform benchmark that measures overall system performance. You can find comparisons to any system you want in the Geekbench Browser. We continued to see competitive performance between the Latitude and the ThinkPad.

Cinebench R23

This benchmark uses all CPU cores and threads to generate an overall score. The multi-core test is a good test for long-running thermal stability, where the Lenovo showed a slight advantage.

Cinebench 2024

We saw similar results in this latest Cinebench version as we did in R23, with the Lenovo having a slight advantage in the multi-core scenario.

UL Procyon AI Inference

UL’s Procyon estimates a workstation’s performance for professional apps. The Latitude did slightly better here but as in the other tests, the numbers are very close.

PCMark 10 Battery Life

We run the PCMark Battery Life benchmark in Modern Office mode. The Lenovo clearly had the advantage here, lasting two and a half hours longer than the Latitude 7450 Ultralight.

Conclusion

The Dell Latitude 7450 Ultralight more than impressed us with its low weight and business-friendly features, including Intel vPro remote management and enterprise support. It works very well as a productivity platform, thanks to its high-resolution screen, comfortable input devices, and available mobile broadband. USB Type-A ports and HDMI video output also enhance its practicality. Build quality is our only major complaint, as we saw quite a bit of chassis flex in its otherwise well-made magnesium chassis. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 is stronger and also offers longer battery life, so it remains our go-to 14-inch business laptop. The Latitude 7450 Ultralight is an excellent runner-up.

Dell Latitude 7450 Ultralight Configurator

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