Review: Dell Latitude 6430u offers high quality throughout

Whatever happens to Dell in the near future, let’s hope that the company keeps making notebooks as nice as the Latitude 6430u. In a world of cheap-feeling merchandise, it stands apart. It’s sedately handsome, ruggedized, remarkably stable in your hand and on the table, and a tactile joy to use. It’s also fast and available with a wide variety of warranty and support options, as a good corporate computer should be.

Why on earth would anyone start a review by talking about a laptop’s physical stability and feel? Partly because it’s better than talking about the 6430u’s 4-pound bulk, but also because there’s palpable pleasure in handling a well-balanced unit sporting a silky, soft-to-the-touch feel. The unusually uniform weight distribution comes courtesy of the flat battery pack that occupies the lower front quarter of the unit. That balance makes the unit feel lighter than it actually is.

The 6430u’s heft also makes it a very stable typing platform, which accentuates the already nice feel of the Chiclet-style keyboard. The keyboard response is a little lighter than a Lenovo’s, but combined with the solidity of the 6430u, the overall experience might actually be a wee bit better—high praise in my book. The keyboard is backlit, and you can control the lighting intensity via a function-key combination. The unit’s touchpad has silky-smooth response, and buttons on the top and bottom reduce hand travel when clicks are required. Even the eraserhead pointing device is well adjusted. Someone at Dell obviously spent considerable time designing the ergonomics.

Our test configuration of the 6430u sported an Intel Core i5-3427u processor, 8GB of DDR3 memory, and a 128GB Samsung PM830 solid-state drive, which helped the unit earn a very capable score of 78 on PCWorld’s WorldBench 8 test suite. The integrated Intel HD 4000 GPU’s game play is mediocre but doable at 800 by 600 or so. There’s no discrete-GPU option, but this is a business machine first and foremost.

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Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2032253/review-dell-latitude-6430u-offers-high-quality-throughout.html#tk.rss_laptopcomputers

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