Dell sells one of the most famous (and one of our favorite) 13.3-inch ultraportables in the XPS 13, but did you know that consumer laptop has a pinstripe-suited sibling? The Latitude 7300 (starts at $1,349; $2,304 as tested) is a 2.75-pound compact that courts IT departments with Intel's vPro management technology.
It doesn't offer a 4K display as the XPS 13 does, but its greater array of ports makes it easier to connect to USB Type-A devices or HDMI monitors or projectors.
Its brisk performance keeps up with busy corporate execs, while its impressive battery life makes it easy to get through a long workday plus an evening of Netflix—or a long flight, plus a night at the hotel preparing tomorrow's presentation.
It's among the top business ultraportables—with, perhaps, one caveat—in a strong field of machines from Dell, HP, and Lenovo.
Just its pricing, and a few lesser quibbles, keep it from an Editors' Choice laurel.
A Choice of Exteriors
The $1,349 base model of the Latitude 7300 is flat-out too lean on components for the price.
It has a Core i5-8265U processor, a skimpy 4GB of RAM and 128GB solid-state drive, and an unacceptable 1,366-by-768-pixel display.
My $2,304 test unit is considerably better prepared for productivity.
It features a 1.9GHz (4.8GHz turbo) Core i7-8665U chip, 16GB of memory, a 512GB NVMe SSD, and a "super low power" 1,920-by-1,080-pixel non-touch screen.
About that panel: Dell claims it is 50 percent more efficient than a standard 1080p panel with no compromise in color or brightness.
Dell offers two other options for 1080p displays for the Latitude 7300, one a touch screen and one with a built-in privacy filter called SafeScreen.
Like HP EliteBooks' Sure View, SafeScreen narrows the field of vision to keep your airline seatmate from eyeing your financial spreadsheets.
Memory and storage ceilings are 32GB and 1TB respectively.
Another key option not found on my review unit is mobile broadband, with four instead of two antennas for better WWAN reception.
Dell describes the Latitude 7300 as "the world's smallest 13-inch premium business-class notebook" at 0.73 by 12.1 by 8.1 inches.
That's a bit bigger than the XPS 13 (0.46 by 11.9 by 7.8 inches) but smaller than the Lenovo ThinkPad X390 (0.7 by 12.3 by 8.6 inches).
You can order yours with either an aluminum or a carbon-fiber finish; mine was the former, a generic silver-gray wedge with a chrome Dell logo on the lid.
The Latitude has passed a variety of MIL-STD 810G tests against road hazards such as shock, vibration, and temperature extremes.
Indeed, it's rigid; there's almost no flex if you grasp the screen corners or press the keyboard deck.
You'll find a Thunderbolt 3 port on the laptop's left side, along with HDMI and USB 3.1 Type-A ports and the connector for the AC adapter.
On the right, you'll spot another USB 3.1 Type-A port (this one with device charging), plus an audio jack, a microSD card slot, and a Noble security lock slot.
The power button doubles as a Windows Hello fingerprint reader, which was, alas, fussy about learning my finger when I tried it.
Beyond Business Basics
The 720p webcam captures slightly dark but well-focused images with accurate colors and little noise or grain.
At a casual glance, it looks like there's no privacy shutter or function key to disable the camera, but there is: A tiny nub next to the camera lens is a slider that blocks the lens' view on demand.
Also, the F4 key mutes the onboard microphone if you're listening to a teleconference without participating.
The Dell's audio will do in a small room, but it sounds muffled even turned to maximum volume, with distant vocals and no bass.
The sound is not tinny or buzzy, but you can't hear overlapping tracks.
MaxxAudio Pro software lets you tinker with an equalizer to minimal effect.
The backlit keyboard is a highlight.
It has cursor arrows in the proper inverted T instead of a row; dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys; and Ctrl and Delete keys in their respective corners where they belong.
The vertical key travel is somewhat shallow, but the typing feel is crisp and responsive, with quietly clicky feedback.
The medium-size, two-button touchpad glides smoothly, and the buttons take just the right amount of pressure to click, though it takes a bit more pressure if you prefer to tap the pad.
If I had to guess, I'd rate Dell's battery-saving screen at the fairly common level of 300 nits of brightness—well, maybe 275—rather than the more desirable 400 or more.
Backgrounds aren't shiny white even with the backlight turned all the way up, and the contrast is merely good.
But viewing angles are wide and colors are clear, perhaps not super-saturated for image editing but more than lively enough for productivity work and video viewing.
Details are sharp and an anti-glare finish fights reflections.
The display doesn't quite earn the high marks that the keyboard does, but it's by no means a demerit.
Dell backs the Windows 10 Pro laptop with a three-year warranty with onsite service after remote diagnostics.
Dell SupportAssist centralizes troubleshooting and help options, while other house-brand utilities keep drivers up to date and monitor the battery.
For Spreadsheets, Not Shoot-'Em-Ups
For our performance benchmarks, I matched the Latitude 7300 against two other 13.3-inch business laptops in 12.5-inch chassis: the HP EliteBook 830 G5, and the Lenovo ThinkPad X390.
That left two slots for the Acer Swift 7 and VAIO SX14, which are 14-inch ultraportables.
Though the lightest of the group at 1.96 pounds, the Acer is also the slowest thanks to a 5-watt, dual-core Y-series CPU instead of a 15-watt, quad-core U-series processor, as the comparison table below reveals.
With their humble integrated graphics, neither the Latitude nor any other contender proved able to play games, but the Dell acquitted itself admirably in our other performance tests—not crushing the competition, but often finishing on top.
Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark).
The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows.
We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing.
The test generates a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.
PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a Storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the boot drive.
The result is also a proprietary numeric score; again, higher numbers are better.
Three of the ultraportables exceeded the 4,000 points we consider triumphant in PCMark 10, with the Dell's narrow victory showing it a superb Microsoft Office or Google Docs worker.
All five SSDs aced PCMark 8's Storage subtest, a testament to their high-speed PCI Express-bus SSDs.
Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads.
Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image.
The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
The Latitude scored another gold medal, while the Swift's low-wattage CPU left it at the starting line.
Not even the quad-cores here are designed for workstation-style 3D rendering or video editing, but they're able to get through everyday tasks.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark.
Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image.
We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time (lower times are better).
The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.
The Dell and Lenovo basically tied for the win in this event, with the HP and VAIO taking another second or so per operation or filter and the Acer plodding through the process.
Graphics Tests
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting.
We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems.
Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff.
The results are proprietary scores.
Here comes the bad news: These scores are embarrassingly low.
As we've seen and said a thousand times, ultraportables with integrated graphics are strictly for casual or browser-based games, not the fast-twitch titles suited to gaming laptops with discrete graphics.
Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp.
Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes.
In this case, it's rendered in the company's eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark, for a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess.
Again: The operative phrase here is "embarrassingly low," but that is not a surprise.
Forget about anything but browser-based gaming with these systems.
Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test.
(We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the Blender Foundation short film Tears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system conks out.
The ThinkPad earns credit for joining the Acer in the 14-hour club despite its more power-hungry processor, but the Latitude's 16-and-a-half hours take the crown.
The battery-friendly display indeed seems like it's contributing in a positive way, in an admirable if not record-setting performance.
So What's the Caveat?
We don't hand out Editors' Choice awards like candy—nor scores of four-and-a-half or five stars in our reviews.
Nonetheless, the Latitude 7300 is a brilliant business ultraportable that's right on the cusp of rock-star status.
Its compact size, light weight, and long battery life make it hard to beat as a briefcase buddy versus machines from just a year or two back.
Its assortment of ports and the high-speed-typing-certified keyboard make work sessions painless.
And its build quality is topnotch.
That caveat? The very strong competition.
My one and only complaint is that back in June of this year, we gave an Editors' Choice award and a half-star-higher score to the Lenovo ThinkPad X390—and when I configured a comparable X390 on the Lenovo site, it came in about $300 under my Dell review unit once I added three years of onsite service.
That's not a prohibitive difference, but it's noticeable.
Call it a reason to check both machines carefully, knowing that you'll almost certainly be satisfied with either.
Also consider Lenovo's recently released 2019 version of the ThinkPad Carbon X1, another Editors' Choice winner in today's crowded, overachieving world of upscale business laptops.
Pros
Light but sturdy aluminum design.
First-class keyboard, performance, and battery life.
HDMI, USB-A, and Thunderbolt 3 ports.
Cons
No 4K screen option available.
Balky fingerprint reader.
The usual game-resistant graphics.
The Bottom Line
Dell's 13.3-inch Latitude 7300 is a plain-looking but excellent business ultraportable with a battery-sipping screen, a comfortable keyboard, and a wide array of upgrade options.
Dell sells one of the most famous (and one of our favorite) 13.3-inch ultraportables in the XPS 13, but did you know that consumer laptop has a pinstripe-suited sibling? The Latitude 7300 (starts at $1,349; $2,304 as tested) is a 2.75-pound compact that courts IT departments with Intel's vPro management technology.
It doesn't offer a 4K display as the XPS 13 does, but its greater array of ports makes it easier to connect to USB Type-A devices or HDMI monitors or projectors.
Its brisk performance keeps up with busy corporate execs, while its impressive battery life makes it easy to get through a long workday plus an evening of Netflix—or a long flight, plus a night at the hotel preparing tomorrow's presentation.
It's among the top business ultraportables—with, perhaps, one caveat—in a strong field of machines from Dell, HP, and Lenovo.
Just its pricing, and a few lesser quibbles, keep it from an Editors' Choice laurel.
A Choice of Exteriors
The $1,349 base model of the Latitude 7300 is flat-out too lean on components for the price.
It has a Core i5-8265U processor, a skimpy 4GB of RAM and 128GB solid-state drive, and an unacceptable 1,366-by-768-pixel display.
My $2,304 test unit is considerably better prepared for productivity.
It features a 1.9GHz (4.8GHz turbo) Core i7-8665U chip, 16GB of memory, a 512GB NVMe SSD, and a "super low power" 1,920-by-1,080-pixel non-touch screen.
About that panel: Dell claims it is 50 percent more efficient than a standard 1080p panel with no compromise in color or brightness.
Dell offers two other options for 1080p displays for the Latitude 7300, one a touch screen and one with a built-in privacy filter called SafeScreen.
Like HP EliteBooks' Sure View, SafeScreen narrows the field of vision to keep your airline seatmate from eyeing your financial spreadsheets.
Memory and storage ceilings are 32GB and 1TB respectively.
Another key option not found on my review unit is mobile broadband, with four instead of two antennas for better WWAN reception.
Dell describes the Latitude 7300 as "the world's smallest 13-inch premium business-class notebook" at 0.73 by 12.1 by 8.1 inches.
That's a bit bigger than the XPS 13 (0.46 by 11.9 by 7.8 inches) but smaller than the Lenovo ThinkPad X390 (0.7 by 12.3 by 8.6 inches).
You can order yours with either an aluminum or a carbon-fiber finish; mine was the former, a generic silver-gray wedge with a chrome Dell logo on the lid.
The Latitude has passed a variety of MIL-STD 810G tests against road hazards such as shock, vibration, and temperature extremes.
Indeed, it's rigid; there's almost no flex if you grasp the screen corners or press the keyboard deck.
You'll find a Thunderbolt 3 port on the laptop's left side, along with HDMI and USB 3.1 Type-A ports and the connector for the AC adapter.
On the right, you'll spot another USB 3.1 Type-A port (this one with device charging), plus an audio jack, a microSD card slot, and a Noble security lock slot.
The power button doubles as a Windows Hello fingerprint reader, which was, alas, fussy about learning my finger when I tried it.
Beyond Business Basics
The 720p webcam captures slightly dark but well-focused images with accurate colors and little noise or grain.
At a casual glance, it looks like there's no privacy shutter or function key to disable the camera, but there is: A tiny nub next to the camera lens is a slider that blocks the lens' view on demand.
Also, the F4 key mutes the onboard microphone if you're listening to a teleconference without participating.
The Dell's audio will do in a small room, but it sounds muffled even turned to maximum volume, with distant vocals and no bass.
The sound is not tinny or buzzy, but you can't hear overlapping tracks.
MaxxAudio Pro software lets you tinker with an equalizer to minimal effect.
The backlit keyboard is a highlight.
It has cursor arrows in the proper inverted T instead of a row; dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys; and Ctrl and Delete keys in their respective corners where they belong.
The vertical key travel is somewhat shallow, but the typing feel is crisp and responsive, with quietly clicky feedback.
The medium-size, two-button touchpad glides smoothly, and the buttons take just the right amount of pressure to click, though it takes a bit more pressure if you prefer to tap the pad.
If I had to guess, I'd rate Dell's battery-saving screen at the fairly common level of 300 nits of brightness—well, maybe 275—rather than the more desirable 400 or more.
Backgrounds aren't shiny white even with the backlight turned all the way up, and the contrast is merely good.
But viewing angles are wide and colors are clear, perhaps not super-saturated for image editing but more than lively enough for productivity work and video viewing.
Details are sharp and an anti-glare finish fights reflections.
The display doesn't quite earn the high marks that the keyboard does, but it's by no means a demerit.
Dell backs the Windows 10 Pro laptop with a three-year warranty with onsite service after remote diagnostics.
Dell SupportAssist centralizes troubleshooting and help options, while other house-brand utilities keep drivers up to date and monitor the battery.
For Spreadsheets, Not Shoot-'Em-Ups
For our performance benchmarks, I matched the Latitude 7300 against two other 13.3-inch business laptops in 12.5-inch chassis: the HP EliteBook 830 G5, and the Lenovo ThinkPad X390.
That left two slots for the Acer Swift 7 and VAIO SX14, which are 14-inch ultraportables.
Though the lightest of the group at 1.96 pounds, the Acer is also the slowest thanks to a 5-watt, dual-core Y-series CPU instead of a 15-watt, quad-core U-series processor, as the comparison table below reveals.
With their humble integrated graphics, neither the Latitude nor any other contender proved able to play games, but the Dell acquitted itself admirably in our other performance tests—not crushing the competition, but often finishing on top.
Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark).
The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows.
We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing.
The test generates a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.
PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a Storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the boot drive.
The result is also a proprietary numeric score; again, higher numbers are better.
Three of the ultraportables exceeded the 4,000 points we consider triumphant in PCMark 10, with the Dell's narrow victory showing it a superb Microsoft Office or Google Docs worker.
All five SSDs aced PCMark 8's Storage subtest, a testament to their high-speed PCI Express-bus SSDs.
Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads.
Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image.
The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
The Latitude scored another gold medal, while the Swift's low-wattage CPU left it at the starting line.
Not even the quad-cores here are designed for workstation-style 3D rendering or video editing, but they're able to get through everyday tasks.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark.
Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image.
We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time (lower times are better).
The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.
The Dell and Lenovo basically tied for the win in this event, with the HP and VAIO taking another second or so per operation or filter and the Acer plodding through the process.
Graphics Tests
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting.
We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems.
Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff.
The results are proprietary scores.
Here comes the bad news: These scores are embarrassingly low.
As we've seen and said a thousand times, ultraportables with integrated graphics are strictly for casual or browser-based games, not the fast-twitch titles suited to gaming laptops with discrete graphics.
Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp.
Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes.
In this case, it's rendered in the company's eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark, for a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess.
Again: The operative phrase here is "embarrassingly low," but that is not a surprise.
Forget about anything but browser-based gaming with these systems.
Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test.
(We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the Blender Foundation short film Tears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system conks out.
The ThinkPad earns credit for joining the Acer in the 14-hour club despite its more power-hungry processor, but the Latitude's 16-and-a-half hours take the crown.
The battery-friendly display indeed seems like it's contributing in a positive way, in an admirable if not record-setting performance.
So What's the Caveat?
We don't hand out Editors' Choice awards like candy—nor scores of four-and-a-half or five stars in our reviews.
Nonetheless, the Latitude 7300 is a brilliant business ultraportable that's right on the cusp of rock-star status.
Its compact size, light weight, and long battery life make it hard to beat as a briefcase buddy versus machines from just a year or two back.
Its assortment of ports and the high-speed-typing-certified keyboard make work sessions painless.
And its build quality is topnotch.
That caveat? The very strong competition.
My one and only complaint is that back in June of this year, we gave an Editors' Choice award and a half-star-higher score to the Lenovo ThinkPad X390—and when I configured a comparable X390 on the Lenovo site, it came in about $300 under my Dell review unit once I added three years of onsite service.
That's not a prohibitive difference, but it's noticeable.
Call it a reason to check both machines carefully, knowing that you'll almost certainly be satisfied with either.
Also consider Lenovo's recently released 2019 version of the ThinkPad Carbon X1, another Editors' Choice winner in today's crowded, overachieving world of upscale business laptops.
Pros
Light but sturdy aluminum design.
First-class keyboard, performance, and battery life.
HDMI, USB-A, and Thunderbolt 3 ports.
Cons
No 4K screen option available.
Balky fingerprint reader.
The usual game-resistant graphics.
The Bottom Line
Dell's 13.3-inch Latitude 7300 is a plain-looking but excellent business ultraportable with a battery-sipping screen, a comfortable keyboard, and a wide array of upgrade options.
