Pros Rugged construction. Designed for school use. Full set of ports. Touch screen. Removable battery. Status light on top of lid. 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Anti-glare screen.
Cons Basic 1,366-by-768 resolution. SSD and hybrid drive systems boot faster.
Bottom Line The Dell Latitude 13 Education Series is a tough desktop-replacement laptop with a battery that lasts 10 hours. It should be on the top of your shopping list for the upcoming back-to-school season.
By Joel Santo Domingo
The Dell Latitude 13 Education Series (3340) ($769 as tested) is an excellent choice for the K-12 student in your life, and would make an excellent general-use PC for anyone who tends to be a bit rough on his or her equipment. Adding to its appeal is the fact that the Latitude 13 Education offers 10 hours of battery life and a 10-point touch screen. As our new Editors' Choice for entry-level desktop-replacement laptops, it should be on your short list for back-to-school shopping this summer.
Design and Features
The laptop measures 1.4 by 13 by 10 inches (HWD). A rubberized coating around the screen and bottom lid protects the system from the scrapes and dings that students can dish out. The coating also helps you grip the case when rushing from class, to the library, and back home. The chiclet-style keyboard and touchpad are fully sealed against accidental spills. Corning Gorilla Glass NBT covers the 13.3-inch 1,366-by-768 resolution touch screen, protecting the LCD panel from scratches and impacts.
Our review unit has a touch screen and Windows 8, but is only available in black. There is also a non-touch-screen version available with Windows 7, and that can be ordered with red or blue borders around the standard black body. The system weighs 4.28 pounds, which is imperceptibly lighter than our Editors' Choice for small business laptops, the 4.44-pound Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E431 and within a hair of our Editors' Choice for entry-level ultrabooks, the 4.2 pound Lenovo IdeaPad U430 Touch.
The LCD screen has an anti-glare coating to increase readability in bright classrooms or outdoors. Its 1,366-by-768 resolution display is much tighter than more expensive systems with 1,920-by-1,080 resolution (1080p HD), but still adequate. In any case, students are unlikely to be working on multi-page spreadsheets or professional-grade photo editing, where a 1080p HD screen would start to make more sense. Since these systems are designed for classroom use, an innovative network status light on the top of the lid lets teachers and parents know if the system is using the 802.11ac Wi-Fi or Ethernet.
The Latitude 13 Education Series has a robust, forward-looking set of I/O ports, including a Gigabit Ethernet port, an HDMI port, a mini DisplayPort, an SD card reader, a security lock port, and two USB 3.0 ports. This is an improvement over our previous Editors' Choice for entry-level desktop replacements, the Dell Inspiron 14R-5437, which lacks mini DisplayPort and has a USB 2.0 port instead of a second USB 3.0 port.
The system we tested has an Intel Core i3-4005U processor, 4GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive, and Windows 8 Pro. Other configurations on Dell's website come with options for Intel Celeron and Core i5 processors. Schools have a wider choice of options, like mobile broadband and solid-state drives, but those are off the table for parents just buying one laptop. Thanks to the Latitude 13's educational focus, there is no bloatware or preloaded software, aside from Windows 8.1. The system comes with a one-year warranty that can be extended up to five years for $350.
Performance
The Latitude 13 Education scored a very good 1,967 points on the PCMark 8 Creative Accelerated test, which strenuously tests the system on everyday tasks, including navigating the Web, multimedia editing, light gaming, and office tasks. This is better than the 1,009 points scored by the Acer Aspire E1-510P-2671 with its Intel Celeron N2920 processor, and was competitive with the Dell Venue Pro 11 (7139) tablet (1,931 points) with its Intel Core i5-4300Y processor. The Latitude 13 Education bumped into its limits on the Adobe Photoshop CS6 test, taking a leisurely 11 minutes, ten seconds to complete the 11-step test. The Dell Inspiron 14R-5437 was a smidge quicker, but the Lenovo U430 Touch (6:13) and Lenovo Edge E431 (5:38) took almost half the time, showing that their Core i5 processors are better suited for heavier workloads and multimedia tasks.
This is an all-day laptop, lasting an excellent 10 hours 17 minutes on our battery rundown test. The Dell 14R-5437 was closest at just under 10 hours (9:46). To add to the appeal, the Latitude 13 Education has a removable 65-watt battery, which can be replaced when it stops holding a charge. This is a nice alternative to the sealed ultrabooks like the IdeaPad U430 Touch.
The Dell Latitude 13 Education Series should certainly be on your short list when shopping for a moderately priced laptop for your K-12 student. Other systems may have faster processors or more memory, but the Latitude 13 Education has a ten-hour battery life and is designed to be a durable companion for the next few years (and then some). It's our new Editors' Choice for entry-level desktop replacement laptops.
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