Form 1040-EZ.
Orange juice from concentrate.
Reader's Digest Condensed Books.
To these marvels of miniaturization you can add an increasingly popular one: 13-inch business laptops in 12-inch ultraportable chassis.
The Dell Latitude 7390 (starts at $1,199; $2,197 as tested) is an up-to-date example that courts business travelers and IT departments with everything from Intel vPro manageability to MIL-STD-810G certification against shock, vibration, and environmental extremes.
It's a solid contender, but it's pricey and has a few minor flaws such as a cramped, flat keyboard.
It's not as dazzling as Dell's celebrated consumer ultraportable, the XPS 13, or our Editors' Choice business laptop, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon($999.99 at Amazon).
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7390 Times Two
The Latitude 7390 seen here—a non-convertible clamshell laptop, not to be confused with the Latitude 7390 2-in-1($1,379.00 at Dell Technologies) we reviewed in April 2018—starts at $1,199 for a model with a Core i3-8130U processor and a modest 4GB of RAM and 128GB SATA solid-state drive (SSD).
The system Dell sent me for review steps up to an Intel Core i7-8650U quad-core CPU, 8GB of DDR4 memory, and a 256GB Samsung NVMe SSD, as well as a full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) touch screen.
It rings up at $2,197 with three years of onsite service, which strikes me as a bit steep—at that price, it should have 16GB of memory and a 512GB drive.
The notebook follows Dell's design aesthetic, with an etched-chrome company logo centered in the black carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer lid.
Thankfully, the lid doesn't pick up too many fingerprints.
I noted a small but not unacceptable amount of flex when I grasped the screen corners or pressed in the middle of the keyboard, and the screen wobbled briefly when tapped.
At 0.7 by 12 by 8.2 inches (HWD), the Latitude 7390 is more compact than HP's EliteBook 830 G5 (0.7 by 12.2 by 9 inches) and even a tiny bit smaller than Lenovo's ThinkPad X280 (0.7 by 12.1 by 8.3 inches), despite the latter's 12.5-inch versus 13.3-inch display.
(The Dell XPS 13 is smaller still, at 0.46 by 11.9 by 7.8 inches.) The Latitude weighs a trim 2.8 pounds, again undercutting the EliteBook 830 G5 (3.3 pounds) but not setting any records.
(The wildly light LG Gram 13 weighs a waiflike 2.01 pounds.)
Port selection is impressive.
On the Latitude's left side, you'll find a SmartCard slot, USB 3.0 and HDMI ports, a Thunderbolt 3 port, and the power connector.
(The last is a proprietary plug, not the USB-C charging of the Latitude 7390 2-in-1.) On the right are an Ethernet port, another USB 3.0 port, micro SD and SIM card slots, an audio jack, and a Noble lock slot for securing the laptop to an antitheft cable.
Slim Sound, Slim Bezels
Speakers located under the Latitude 7390's front edge produce fairly good sound, but not a whole lot of volume—what I heard is adequate for a quiet conference room, but the sound needs to be dialed up to 100 percent to match most laptops' 50 to 70 percent.
By contrast, you'll definitely hear this Latitude's cooling fan.
Instead of coming on only occasionally while running benchmarks or other strenuous apps, it surprised me by whirring loudly while the system was just sitting with the Windows 10 desktop on display.
If you hate typing passwords, you can use Windows Hello to sign in using either the fingerprint reader near the right edge of the palm rest or via the face-recognition webcam.
The camera, centered in its natural place above the screen instead of below it as on the Dell XPS 13($799.99 at Dell), captures average-brightness, slightly soft-focus shots.
Speaking of the 13.3-inch screen, it's a highlight, with skinny side bezels and a matte finish instead of the mirror gloss that turns so many touch screens into reflection fests.
Details are sharp, and viewing angles are broad; there's plenty of brightness, so long as you stick to the top couple of backlight settings, and colors are crisp and saturated.
Our test spreadsheet charts, photos, and 1080p videos all looked great.
Touch operations, helped by the default 150-percent zoom level that enlarges icons and other screen elements, are smooth and sure.
The backlit keyboard is, let's say, okay, but not the Latitude 7390's finest feature.
For one thing, it's slightly cramped—the A through apostrophe span is 7.7 inches instead of the desktop-standard 8 inches, requiring a bit more caution or attention during fast typing.
For another, it's shallow.
The keys bottom out with a clicky, plasticky feel as you type.
I got used to it and got up to speed within an hour or two, but I would never call it a favorite.
On the positive side, the touchpad is comfortable and responsive, with two big, soft-touch buttons that take just the right amount of pressure to click.
A Strong Quad-Core Performer
With its eighth-generation, 1.9GHz Core i7-8650U processor and speedy SSD, the Latitude 7390 runs roughshod over spreadsheets and word processing documents, approaching the 3,500 mark in our PCMark 8 office productivity test.
(We consider a score of 3,000 excellent.) Matched against a group of 13.3-inch rivals (as well as Lenovo's 12.5-inch ThinkPad X280($1,061.10 at Lenovo) and 14-inch ThinkPad X1 Carbon), it was the fastest of the lot in our Adobe Photoshop image-editing exercise and second only to the Dell XPS 13 in our Cinebench CPU performance measurement.
Unfortunately, the Latitude relies on Intel's integrated graphics instead of a dedicated GPU, so you already know the next sentence: It's suitable only for casual or browser-based games, not the latest fast-twitch titles.
The Latitude 7390 struggled to keep up with the lackluster pack in our Valley and Heaven game simulations, and it trailed the field in our 3DMark graphics tests.
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As for battery life, the winning ThinkPad X1 Carbon showed almost 17.5 hours of stamina in our battery rundown test.
The Latitude managed 12 hours and 35 minutes, which placed it only in the middle of this group.
But that is no slouch, and more than enough for a full day's work plus an evening of casual gaming or Netflix.
Wanted: A Price Cut
My main beefs with the Latitude 7390—things like the flat keyboard and frequent fan noise—are little more than nitpicks.
But nitpicks count in a category as competitive as business ultraportables, especially business ultraportables priced over $2,000.
Even as is, the Latitude 7390 is well worth a look if you want a lightweight traveling companion with plenty of ports, but a discount of a few hundred dollars would boost its prospects considerably.
The Bottom Line
Dell's 13.3-inch Latitude 7390 business laptop is compact and lightweight, with fine fit and finish, but its steep price magnifies its minor flaws.
