Dell Latitude 12 5000 Series Review
by Brett Howse on January 19, 2015 10:30 AM ESTSystem Performance
Our Latitude 12 5000 model uses the Haswell based Core i5-4310U, which is a dual-core, quad-thread processor with Turbo Boost. Base clocks are 2.0 GHz, and the boost frequency is 3.0 GHz under a 15 watt TDP. Integrated graphics are provided by the Intel HD 4400 GPU, with a 200 MHz base frequency and 1.1 GHz boost frequency. The Haswell-U range is well-known in our benchmarks at this time, so we do not expect any surprises. The sample we received does have 8 GB of memory, but it is single channel only, so performance could be better if Dell instead offered 2x4 GB. Dell does offer their Power Vault software, so you can tune whether you want the system to target quiet, balanced, or performance depending on your needs. With all of our benchmarks, we run at maximum performance to reduce the chance of throttling.
Performance Graphs
For general performance, PCMark 8 from from FutureMark covers a large range of scenarios including Home, Creative, and Work. TouchXPRT runs tests based on five usage scenarios in the Modern environment. As a comparison, most of these laptops are U series CPUs, but I have included the Retina Macbook Pro and HP Stream 11 to bracket the scores with a higher wattage quad-core part and a low wattage Atom part. You can compare the E5250 with any other device we have tested with our online database, Bench.
For normal tasks, the i5-4310U does a good job. For those that need more performance, the Core i7 models will be of interest. As Broadwell is an option now, it would be great to get the identical device but with the 5th gen Core part as a comparison.
Storage Performance
The model we received has the Samsung PM851 based 128 GB SSD. This is a very popular OEM SSD from Samsung based on the TLC 840 EVO. The smaller capacity might have led to the slightly lower score in PCMark 8’s Storage benchmark, although the difference is negligible.
This device is offered with spinning disk options, which I would not recommend for anyone concerned about performance. For those that require encryption, Dell offers several models with SSD encryption as well.
GPU Performance
This is a business laptop, so I won’t bother with our normal game benchmarks, mostly because we have tested them on the Yoga 2 Pro and found that all of our games were unplayable with the built in graphics. We can still run the synthetics though to get a feel for where this device fits in.
The Intel HD4400 GPU is no powerhouse. Gaming on this device will be restricted to games with low graphics demand, or Windows Store, Flash or basic Unity games.
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DanNeely - Monday, January 19, 2015 - link
Poking around on Dell's website, it appears that the pointy stick is only offered on 14" or larger models; and the only Latitude line to still offer full power mobile CPUs is the 6000 series. Since the latter are all still last years 6x40 models, it's possible that only reflects their not having been refreshed yet instead of a deliberate decision to keep a more powerful CPU (and optional dGPU) available for business customers outside of the Precision line.nerd1 - Monday, January 19, 2015 - link
Ulv processors nowadays have very high base clock so theres no real need for full voltage one. Mbp 13 also uses ulv cpu.DanNeely - Monday, January 19, 2015 - link
Intel's 37-57W Quadcore Haswell i7's have base frequencies about 1ghz higher (2.2-3.1ghz) than the 17W dual models (1.5-2.1). For anyone who's doing work (compiling medium+ code bases, cad, engineering modeling, etc) that's compute bound not human speed bound; the higher clock rates, extra cores, gpu compute, etc all make a huge difference. The current generation of 2 core ULV laptops are all downgrades from the ~2-3 year old laptop I'm using at worknerd1 - Tuesday, January 20, 2015 - link
It's 2015 now, and broadwell i5-5200U has 2.2-2.7Ghz clock speed.nerd1 - Tuesday, January 20, 2015 - link
If you are really doing computation bound work why do you even bother with 12" business laptops?You can always get clevo P751ZM with 4Ghz Devil's canyon desktop GPU at almost the same price nowadays.
drgigolo - Tuesday, January 20, 2015 - link
But MBP13 uses 28W TPD parts, not 15W. Which gives room for higher performance, especially on the GPU (even more so when running single channel).nerd1 - Tuesday, January 20, 2015 - link
I have compared MBP 13 base model to XPS 13 i5-5200U model and rMBP had only 5% advantage for computation and 9% advantage for GPU. Of course this will change with rMBP update though.BMNify - Monday, January 19, 2015 - link
1.56kb => 1.56kg on the conclusion page , Dell Latitude 14 7000 series is almost perfect laptop in ultrabook business lineup. Hope you review it.cwolf78 - Monday, January 19, 2015 - link
Agree fully on this. The company I work for is going to the E7440's as their default laptop. We used the E6400, E6410, E6420, then E6430 before going to these. A dramatic leap forward in every aspect except performance (compared to the E6420/30). But the increased battery life, quite operation, and lighter weight are a good trade-off. The E7440 does have all around decent performance, but does tend to bog down with a lot of stuff open (especially CPU intensive tabs in Chrome). We're using the i5-4310U, 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD, and 14" 1080p IPS multi-touch screen.Samus - Monday, January 19, 2015 - link
I appriciate the review simply as a reminder why Dell is increasingly irrelevent. When you consider an HP Probook 430 can be had for $300 in Celeron configuration with better build quality (aluminum/magnesium chassis, thinner, lighter.) Dell's charging Elitebook prices for this thing. HP and Lenovo are just killing it while Dell is still making laptops styled from the 90's.