February 15, 2016 at 15:30Notebook Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme: a very strong guy
Someone is sitting in front of computers in comfortable offices, someone is working from home, and someone is a little luckier, and now he is coding under a palm tree in Thailand. Therefore, for most of us, “lightness” is an integral characteristic of a modern laptop. But there are serious guys who work with equipment in extreme conditions: for example, they are looking for new mineral deposits in the Far North or are engaged in research in Antarctica. And harsh professionals in harsh conditions need the most reliable, durable and protected laptop. We will talk about one of these solutions today. Meet: Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme!
Protection from all misfortunes
The appearance of this brutal computer alone tunes in a serious way. And this is right, because the security here is elevated almost to the absolute. Judge for yourself! Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme withstands a fall from a height of 185 centimeters when turned off and half the height if turned on. In addition, the computer is not afraid of vibration, which is important for those who work in vehicles during their off-road driving. Remember the legendary American "tornado hunters", for example, although this is relevant not only for them.
Further down the list are protection against rain, dust, sand, high humidity and even salt fog. The latter - if the computer is equipped with an optional rubberized keyboard. Plus, of course, resistance to extremely low and extremely high temperatures. The laptop operates in the temperature range from –29 to 63 ° C, and during storage it can be even wider: from –51 to 71 ° C. And even Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is not afraid of electromagnetic interference. The exact designations of all protection standards are on our website . The most important among them are IP-65 and the American military standard MIL-STD 810G.
Brutal design
But back to the look of the computer. In principle, he already speaks for himself: you look at Latitude 14 and you immediately understand that this is a serious thing. The effect is enhanced if you take the laptop by a special rubber handle, because the device weighs 3.9 kilograms. A lot by the standards of ultrabooks, the weight of which is sometimes measured in grams. But it’s quite uplifting by the standards of the pros, who take hundreds of kilograms of specialized equipment to the expedition to work away from civilization.
The corners of the laptop are protected by thick rubber inserts, they also act as legs, thanks to which the gadget does not slip on smooth surfaces.
The lid and the main body are made of durable magnesium alloy, which is immediately recognized by users of professional-level SLR cameras.
The hinges that hold the screen at the right angle are very reliable, we can say that it’s even a little tight, but it was intended to be so.
In the closed position, a special latch presses the cover to the main part of the laptop.
Even the webcam lens is closed by a shutter to prevent dirt from accidentally getting in there!
All connectors are protected
There is not a single open connector on the Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme - absolutely everything that we used to see on the sides of laptops is hidden behind the protective panels. Each of them is fixed with a latch and supplemented with a soft gasket that protects the electronics from accidental ingress of moisture, dirt and dust.
Let's start from the left side of the computer, there are two protective panels. Under the first are the headphone jack, USB 3.0 and full-sized HDMI.
And under the second is the battery.
On the right side is an optical drive bay, which also has an SD card slot, USB 2.0, USB 3.0 and a smart card slot. The presence of the latter is very important for many corporate users.
Under the second cover on the right side of the computer is an ExpressCard / 54 slot and a drive bay. It is important to remember that 2.5-inch drives are used here exclusively in 7 mm thickness. You already probably guessed that the SSD is installed by default here, but more about it a bit later.
There are four more covers on the back. There are two Ethernet ports at once, one of which can be used to connect to the global network, and the second to create a local network. Plus another USB 2.0, RS-232, D-SUB and an input for connecting a power adapter.
If you are not too lazy and take a look at the bottom of the laptop, you can notice the shiny contacts for connecting the dock. For example, the “desktop” version of it looks like this:
There is a special docking station for working in a car.
Input Devices
Dell developers have done their best to make the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme keyboard as comfortable as possible. Of course, there is no digital unit here, otherwise it would inevitably affect the dimensions and weight of the computer. But the keys are large, they have a smooth and deep stroke, while there is a lot of free space for the palms. It is very comfortable to type texts when the laptop is on your lap; convenient to work with him and standing.
But for desktop work in the office, it is better to purchase a docking station, which you have already seen in the photo above. The computer is installed on it at an angle, which eliminates the inconvenience of the large thickness (3.66 cm) of the main part of the computer. But still, the laptop was created for those who are not used to sitting in a warm chair for hours.
Since we are talking about extreme conditions, we clearly do not exclude the situation when you need to work in the dark. Therefore, the keyboard Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme has a bright backlight. And even more than that: the user can choose the color appropriate for the situation by pressing Fn + C. Diodes can be lit in red, green, blue or white.
The block with the keyboard, by the way, is easily removable. It looks like this:
Of course, it could not do without a touchpad. It is relatively small (90x50 mm) and matte. Under the touch panel are two large keys that replace the left and right mouse buttons.
Another unusual thing for many users is a fingerprint scanner. In everyday life, it may not be very relevant, but for the corporate world, which is full of its secrets and secrets, the solution is right.
Display
Before you start talking about the screen Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme, it is appropriate to recall that this is one of the most vulnerable parts of any laptop. In the case of a laptop designed to work in extreme conditions, not only durability but also the ease of replacement come to the fore.
A 14-inch TN-matrix with a resolution of 1366 × 768 pixels fits both requirements. Moreover, specialists work in difficult conditions, nevertheless, not with graphics in Photoshop, but with measuring instruments and software created for controlling them. At the same time, the picture is bright and contrasting, and the viewing angles of the display are very wide by TN standards. The surface, of course, is matte - no one canceled the work in the open air in direct sunlight.
In addition, the touch screen - you can interact with the interface of the operating system and programs even with thin gloves. But if suddenly it is so cold around that you need to work in fur mittens, a stylus will come to the rescue. Here it is, hidden in a recess on the left side of the laptop and attached to the case with a special stretching wiring so as not to get lost.
Stuffing and performance The
Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme runs on an Intel Core i5-4300U with two cores and a clock frequency of 1.9 GHz. In TurboBoost mode, the chip can accelerate to 2.9 GHz. In addition to the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4400, there is a discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT 720M adapter with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory. There are two slots for RAM, in the standard configuration only one of them is filled - it has a bracket with a capacity of 4 GB DDR3L-1600, the maximum recognizable volume is 16 GB.
The SSD is the easiest to get out of the laptop. In our case, this is a Samsung SSD SM841N with 128 GB of memory, but there are modifications with 512 GB. The read speed reaches about 500 Mb / s, the write speed is about 400 Mb / s. In a word, it is a fast and, most importantly, reliable means of data storage.
The results of system performance tests in the PCMark 8 benchmark are as follows:
Cinebench R15 processor test results:
Well, in the 3D Mark benchmark, the indicators will look like this:
Simply put, in the third part of The Witcher and a fresh little Call of Duty, play with pleasure on Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is unlikely to succeed, but you can count on a fun holiday after working in the company of virtual tanks and now the old Diablo III. And not at the highest graphics settings, of course. The maximum is “high”, but more often “medium”.
Now look inside and see what's what. First of all, the inner surface of the bottom cover (and two dozen screws that hold it) is noteworthy - this is a very serious rubber gasket. By the way, note that it seems to bypass the air intake holes of the cooler.
The “filling” itself occupies a little more than a quarter of the internal space. And immediately the secret of the fan is revealed: if water suddenly enters it, then it can’t get to the board in any way. There is a heat pipe from the cooler to the processor, and it is located in a separate compartment.
Autonomy
The battery from the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is as easy to remove as an SSD. This is a very serious “battery” with a capacity of 8550 mAh (or 97 Wh), which is fully charged, for example, for more than 6.5 hours of Full HD video playback with maximum display brightness. So you can work with a computer for a really long time, although when planning, of course, you need to take into account the negative impact of negative temperatures on the battery capacity. In addition, the ease of replacement allows you to carry several batteries with you at once.
By the way, the power adapter of the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is very compact and lightweight. Next to a brutal computer, it seems like a completely weightless crumb.
Summary
Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme - not the gadget in front of which you want to sit in the evening with a cup of tea. This is a harsh laptop designed for the most serious tests: army standards of protection - not a joke. Protected from almost all misfortunes, he will easily continue to work where many people categorically refuse to work. And it is this advantage that comes to the fore, making the gadget an attractive choice for companies whose employees are forced to work in extreme conditions.
We are talking about dusty factory floors, cold oil platforms, production sites with very high or, conversely, low temperatures, long research away from civilization and so on. In a word, there are many options for use, but they are all very specific, so we are talking about a niche solution for quite serious money - 180,000 rubles. However, where such a computer is really needed, it pays for itself very quickly.
Protection from all misfortunes
The appearance of this brutal computer alone tunes in a serious way. And this is right, because the security here is elevated almost to the absolute. Judge for yourself! Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme withstands a fall from a height of 185 centimeters when turned off and half the height if turned on. In addition, the computer is not afraid of vibration, which is important for those who work in vehicles during their off-road driving. Remember the legendary American "tornado hunters", for example, although this is relevant not only for them.
Further down the list are protection against rain, dust, sand, high humidity and even salt fog. The latter - if the computer is equipped with an optional rubberized keyboard. Plus, of course, resistance to extremely low and extremely high temperatures. The laptop operates in the temperature range from –29 to 63 ° C, and during storage it can be even wider: from –51 to 71 ° C. And even Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is not afraid of electromagnetic interference. The exact designations of all protection standards are on our website . The most important among them are IP-65 and the American military standard MIL-STD 810G.
Brutal design
But back to the look of the computer. In principle, he already speaks for himself: you look at Latitude 14 and you immediately understand that this is a serious thing. The effect is enhanced if you take the laptop by a special rubber handle, because the device weighs 3.9 kilograms. A lot by the standards of ultrabooks, the weight of which is sometimes measured in grams. But it’s quite uplifting by the standards of the pros, who take hundreds of kilograms of specialized equipment to the expedition to work away from civilization.
The corners of the laptop are protected by thick rubber inserts, they also act as legs, thanks to which the gadget does not slip on smooth surfaces.
The lid and the main body are made of durable magnesium alloy, which is immediately recognized by users of professional-level SLR cameras.
The hinges that hold the screen at the right angle are very reliable, we can say that it’s even a little tight, but it was intended to be so.
In the closed position, a special latch presses the cover to the main part of the laptop.
Even the webcam lens is closed by a shutter to prevent dirt from accidentally getting in there!
All connectors are protected
There is not a single open connector on the Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme - absolutely everything that we used to see on the sides of laptops is hidden behind the protective panels. Each of them is fixed with a latch and supplemented with a soft gasket that protects the electronics from accidental ingress of moisture, dirt and dust.
Let's start from the left side of the computer, there are two protective panels. Under the first are the headphone jack, USB 3.0 and full-sized HDMI.
And under the second is the battery.
On the right side is an optical drive bay, which also has an SD card slot, USB 2.0, USB 3.0 and a smart card slot. The presence of the latter is very important for many corporate users.
Under the second cover on the right side of the computer is an ExpressCard / 54 slot and a drive bay. It is important to remember that 2.5-inch drives are used here exclusively in 7 mm thickness. You already probably guessed that the SSD is installed by default here, but more about it a bit later.
There are four more covers on the back. There are two Ethernet ports at once, one of which can be used to connect to the global network, and the second to create a local network. Plus another USB 2.0, RS-232, D-SUB and an input for connecting a power adapter.
If you are not too lazy and take a look at the bottom of the laptop, you can notice the shiny contacts for connecting the dock. For example, the “desktop” version of it looks like this:
There is a special docking station for working in a car.
Input Devices
Dell developers have done their best to make the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme keyboard as comfortable as possible. Of course, there is no digital unit here, otherwise it would inevitably affect the dimensions and weight of the computer. But the keys are large, they have a smooth and deep stroke, while there is a lot of free space for the palms. It is very comfortable to type texts when the laptop is on your lap; convenient to work with him and standing.
But for desktop work in the office, it is better to purchase a docking station, which you have already seen in the photo above. The computer is installed on it at an angle, which eliminates the inconvenience of the large thickness (3.66 cm) of the main part of the computer. But still, the laptop was created for those who are not used to sitting in a warm chair for hours.
Since we are talking about extreme conditions, we clearly do not exclude the situation when you need to work in the dark. Therefore, the keyboard Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme has a bright backlight. And even more than that: the user can choose the color appropriate for the situation by pressing Fn + C. Diodes can be lit in red, green, blue or white.
The block with the keyboard, by the way, is easily removable. It looks like this:
Of course, it could not do without a touchpad. It is relatively small (90x50 mm) and matte. Under the touch panel are two large keys that replace the left and right mouse buttons.
Another unusual thing for many users is a fingerprint scanner. In everyday life, it may not be very relevant, but for the corporate world, which is full of its secrets and secrets, the solution is right.
Display
Before you start talking about the screen Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme, it is appropriate to recall that this is one of the most vulnerable parts of any laptop. In the case of a laptop designed to work in extreme conditions, not only durability but also the ease of replacement come to the fore.
A 14-inch TN-matrix with a resolution of 1366 × 768 pixels fits both requirements. Moreover, specialists work in difficult conditions, nevertheless, not with graphics in Photoshop, but with measuring instruments and software created for controlling them. At the same time, the picture is bright and contrasting, and the viewing angles of the display are very wide by TN standards. The surface, of course, is matte - no one canceled the work in the open air in direct sunlight.
In addition, the touch screen - you can interact with the interface of the operating system and programs even with thin gloves. But if suddenly it is so cold around that you need to work in fur mittens, a stylus will come to the rescue. Here it is, hidden in a recess on the left side of the laptop and attached to the case with a special stretching wiring so as not to get lost.
Stuffing and performance The
Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme runs on an Intel Core i5-4300U with two cores and a clock frequency of 1.9 GHz. In TurboBoost mode, the chip can accelerate to 2.9 GHz. In addition to the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4400, there is a discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT 720M adapter with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory. There are two slots for RAM, in the standard configuration only one of them is filled - it has a bracket with a capacity of 4 GB DDR3L-1600, the maximum recognizable volume is 16 GB.
The SSD is the easiest to get out of the laptop. In our case, this is a Samsung SSD SM841N with 128 GB of memory, but there are modifications with 512 GB. The read speed reaches about 500 Mb / s, the write speed is about 400 Mb / s. In a word, it is a fast and, most importantly, reliable means of data storage.
The results of system performance tests in the PCMark 8 benchmark are as follows:
Cinebench R15 processor test results:
Well, in the 3D Mark benchmark, the indicators will look like this:
Simply put, in the third part of The Witcher and a fresh little Call of Duty, play with pleasure on Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is unlikely to succeed, but you can count on a fun holiday after working in the company of virtual tanks and now the old Diablo III. And not at the highest graphics settings, of course. The maximum is “high”, but more often “medium”.
Now look inside and see what's what. First of all, the inner surface of the bottom cover (and two dozen screws that hold it) is noteworthy - this is a very serious rubber gasket. By the way, note that it seems to bypass the air intake holes of the cooler.
The “filling” itself occupies a little more than a quarter of the internal space. And immediately the secret of the fan is revealed: if water suddenly enters it, then it can’t get to the board in any way. There is a heat pipe from the cooler to the processor, and it is located in a separate compartment.
Autonomy
The battery from the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is as easy to remove as an SSD. This is a very serious “battery” with a capacity of 8550 mAh (or 97 Wh), which is fully charged, for example, for more than 6.5 hours of Full HD video playback with maximum display brightness. So you can work with a computer for a really long time, although when planning, of course, you need to take into account the negative impact of negative temperatures on the battery capacity. In addition, the ease of replacement allows you to carry several batteries with you at once.
By the way, the power adapter of the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is very compact and lightweight. Next to a brutal computer, it seems like a completely weightless crumb.
Summary
Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme - not the gadget in front of which you want to sit in the evening with a cup of tea. This is a harsh laptop designed for the most serious tests: army standards of protection - not a joke. Protected from almost all misfortunes, he will easily continue to work where many people categorically refuse to work. And it is this advantage that comes to the fore, making the gadget an attractive choice for companies whose employees are forced to work in extreme conditions.
We are talking about dusty factory floors, cold oil platforms, production sites with very high or, conversely, low temperatures, long research away from civilization and so on. In a word, there are many options for use, but they are all very specific, so we are talking about a niche solution for quite serious money - 180,000 rubles. However, where such a computer is really needed, it pays for itself very quickly.