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Following my review of the excellent Acer Spin 7, I have been sent the business orientated Dell Latitude 5289 2-in-1.

The model I have reviewed is one below the top of the range and priced at £1,127 currently (minus VAT).

The specification includes:

  • 7th Generation Intel Core™ i5-7300U (Dual Core 2.60Gz 3MB cache)
  • Windows 10 Pro 64-bit English
  • 8GB LPDDR3, 1866 MHz
  • 256G M.2 2280 SSD
  • 8cm (12.5″) FHD 16:9 1920×1080 AR + AS Wacom Touch, Corning Gorilla Glass, HD Cam, WWAN Antenna
  • 2 Display Port over USB Type-C™
  • 2 USB 3.0 (with PowerShare)
  • 1 uSD 4.0 Memory card reader
  • 1 uSIM card slot (WWAN only)

With it being a business orientated laptop there are a range of security features including:

  • TPM 2.0 FIPS 140-2 Certified, TCG Certified
  • Touch finger print reader (Optional)
  • FIPS 201 Contacted Smart Card reader (Optional)
  • Contactless Smart Card / NFC
  • Control Vault 2.0 Advanced Authentication with FIPS 140-2 Level 3 Certification
  • Dell Client Command Suite
  • Optional Dell Data Security and Management Software

There is no specific weight for the laptop, just an ambiguous starting weight of 1.345kg (2.97lbs) which I was a little sceptical of as the Spin 7 is classed as 1.6KG. However, I decided to weigh both laptops on the kitchen scales and the Acer came in at 1.3KG and the Dell at 1.4KG.

The Dell is all business in the looks department, there is nothing fancy going on here. It is all black in a sort of soft touch plastic/rubber. Coming from the Acer it is quite chubby too at 17.64 mm vs the 11mm of the Acer. The small 12.5” screen means that the Dell is actually less wide than the Acer though which makes it look surprisingly compact when they are next to each other.

The hinge of the display is nice and firm and you can position it into any mode and it will stick there. The display itself is an IPS screen with LED backlighting and a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. It used a glossy screen which I found caused some visibility issues when travelling, this is a common issue though. The quality of the display is good, but it was not as nice as the Acer. By default, the screen is set to 125% scaling, and at this level is comfortable to use. I tried to drop it back to 100% and while it is usable it does cause some eye strain. With it being a convertible, the screen is also touch sensitive using a capacitive 10-point touchscreen. Using the screen for touch input worked flawlessly and it was nice and responsive. It is excellent when using the laptop to watch media.

One of the main benefits of this 2-in-1 versus ultra-thin consumer options is the increased number of ports. It’s dumpy proportions allow for 2 full sized USB ports and 2 USB type-C. There is also a memory card ready and a sim card slot. The USB type-C ports are display port compatible too. All this makes the Dell far more capable than the Acer.

Another aspect I really like about the Dell is the trackpad. The dedicated buttons are much easier to use than the all in one trackpad style that the Acer used. This does mean the touchpad itself is smaller than other convertibles, it also is not a precision touchpad which means it isn’t officially compatible with Windows 10 touchpad gestures. So, it is likely other users might have a different opinion to the touchpad than myself.

During day to day use, the Dell performs excellently, between the i5 CPU and SSD there were never any slowdowns. I didn’t do much to tax the system though. My typical day use consists of a lot of chrome tabs open, work, outlook, FTP, Sublime text etc. I used it to stream and play some downloaded movies on a short business trip and it never had any issues with any playback of 1080P files. Even though it uses an i5 CPU compared to the i7 CPU on the Acer, this is the full-fat mobile CPU so the base clock is much higher and there is more memory bandwidth.

Battery life was also excellent, I comfortably got a days’ worth of use out of it. Similar to the Acer, I did not run a timed test using a set software config, but I would normally get 8+ hours’ worth of general office work out of it.

The one big downside (for me) was that under moderate load the fan becomes audible in it. I could just about hear it over my TV. It is considerably less noisy than the laptop I own personally and I doubt it would be an issue for 99% of people. This is also a compromise you have to take for the increased processing power of the higher clocked i5-7300U.

Overall

This is a superb business laptop, it can handle pretty much any office task and the battery will easily last you a days’ worth of work without charge. It is small and light enough to carry around for a day comfortably too. All these factors make this a perfect commuters laptop.

It is even tempting as a consumer laptop but you will have to factor in VAT and take into account it is a lot uglier than the consumer versions. If you don’t mind a little extra weight you can pick up the Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1 for £700 which has very similar specifications and therefore would be a more logical choice.

 

Dell Latitude 5289 2-in-1
Overall
85%
85%
  • Overall - 85%
    85%

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