This is an honest story about driving the Dell Latitude 9450 daily for four months and counting.
Okay, whimsical title aside, after finishing our review of the Latitude 9450 2-in-1, I told Brian, “You can tell the Dell rep they will have to yell very loudly before I send this thing back.” And so began the last four-month journey of my life, replacing my old favorite travel notebook, the Lenovo X13S Snapdragon ARM, and surprisingly, my daily workstation, too.
Background
To set the stage, when the Latitude was given to us for review, the Snapdragon Elite ARM CPUs were “right around the corner,” and my X13S was growing old. It was serviceable, but with our on-the-go media and content creation needs increasing rapidly, I longed for more screen real estate and horsepower on work trips. It’s not a good place to be in this business.
Rewind to the days before the X13S. I firmly believed that carrying a workstation-class notebook on work trips was the answer, albeit to the mockery of my peers, I soldiered on. Epic workstation and content powerhouse during the day transforms into a powerful gaming rig at night, thanks to the RTX 5500 Ada class GPU and i9 CPU. Working on it was a fantastic experience: the large screen, full-size keyboard, and all the power I could want at my fingertips. However, as trips became more prolonged and frequent, something stopped working with this philosophy.
Chunky power bricks, a battery that could not last a single full flight, much less a press briefing, popping the overcurrent protection on the in-seat power outlet, it was all about to be too much. That’s when the X13S showed up at my door for a long-term review. Blown away by the actual all-day battery, touch screen, built-in 5G modem (OMG game changer, this isn’t AI written – ChatGPT loves to use game changer for some reason), slim power adapter, and lightweight design, I immediately dropped the workstation travel notebook in favor of my new-found joy. But it had a fatal flaw: Windows on ARM!
I don’t want to get into the weeds of the Windows on ARM topic with this post, but it’s worth addressing, as it’s something that has grown tremendously and is in a state of uncertainty. There are reliability and stability issues with the latest generation CPUs, and although the compatibility layer works excellent most of the time, it’s not enough to rely on. So, with the trusty X13S growing old and bloated with software issues, I was on the hunt for something else.
Act I
During our coverage of the 2024 Solar Eclipse, I was looking through the mountain of recently released Intel Core Ultra notebooks that had come in for review. I don’t generally review notebooks, as that’s not my area of expertise, but I like to at least touch and feel them for a few minutes to give honest feedback when asked. That’s when I saw the Latitude—cue dramatic music.
At first, I was intrigued by two features: the convertible flip-around touch screen and the keyboard, a monolithic set of buttons with no traditional spacing. We had seen this before, but it was the first time I sat down and gave it a go. It was fine; I was accustomed to the clicky feel of Lenovo’s business-world-renounced keyboards.
Back to the Eclipse. At that moment, since this was a literal Road Show, I decided to review the system in the real world, in the field. Things went well. It was a multi-day battery life for my traditional workload. After a brief adaptation period, about half a day, I was up to almost normal full desktop speed on the new keyboard, and the touchpad was all right; it just took some getting used to, moving to a total button-less implementation. I missed my 5G modem, but that’s an option you can get if you configure it, so I’m not knocking it for that; I’m just knocking our Dell Rep for not sending it with one.
Act II
This is when I started to put it through its paces with our benchmarks and testing. For that full detail, make sure you check out the review. The new Intel Ultra CPU, combined with Dell’s design and quality, made for a beautiful match. So that was that. I departed Cincinnati with the shiny new Dell in hand. I also snagged a Thunderbolt 4 dock that was a “spare” off Brian’s desk [Editor’s note: Ah, that’s what happened to it] and went home to set up the new machine.
The new Intel Core Ultra, AI promises aside from back in early 2024, actually proved to be a great chip. I will say that the most impressive effort was driving the integrated display at 4K???, an external ultrawide monitor, and another 1080p external monitor simultaneously. I like to keep a YouTube video up on the side screen, 3 or 4 Chrome windows on the ultrawide, and the built-in display for Slack or Teams. The Latitude kept up without any hitches.
This is not a high-end graphical editing, gaming powerhouse, or FPS-munching fire-breather. It sips power while providing an unapologetically fine experience. Office tasks are smooth, web work is a non-event, and I even found it capable of playing lightweight FPS/RTS games in the hotel after hours on low settings without problems.
The term “fine” should not be taken lightly. This is the highest praise I could ever give a tool. This laptop is designed for those who need a tool to perform their work. There are no complaints. The Latitude is what a proper tool should be, and that’s the end of the story as far as I am concerned. It does its job. It’s not in my way, so it’s perfect.
Act III
I have been taking the Latitude 9450 everywhere for over four months, and I’m just as happy as I was on the first day. In full transparency, I did have to replace it on desk duty after a few weeks, I had desktop CPU’s, GPU’s, and motherboards to test out. But when away from my desk, I have the Latitude 9450. Whether sitting out back needing to watch emails while enjoying the weather, going to my edge lab for testing, or on the other side of the world, the notebook has been as reliable as I could ever ask for. True multi-day battery life is a reality. I recall the Computex trip; I spent three days between plugging the system into power on light workflows and uploading media back to the lab for editing.
With new, more powerful, and efficient CPUs on the market, I hope the design team examines all the offerings and continues with their winning formula. We looked at a few variants on this line, including the ultralight and the detachable version, and in my opinion, the Latitude 9450 strikes a perfect balance and has the best of all the features.
Fin
I want to continue this style of testing in the future, as it was a lot of fun to live with this system. If you like this style of honest feedback on long-term laptop reviews, let us know. Also, big shoutout to Bubba at Dell for letting me have the opportunity to have such a positive experience with a work laptop over the last few months, and also that I’m sorry I lost it on a flight and you’re-erm… we’re never gonna see it again, airport pirate stole it, oh no how awful!
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