Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme Laptop: A Very Strong Guy
Someone is sitting in front of computers in cozy offices, someone is working from home, and someone is lucky a little more, and now he is kodit under a palm tree in Thailand. Therefore, for most of us, “lightness” is an integral feature 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 doing research in Antarctica. And harsh professionals in the harsh conditions need the most reliable, durable and secure laptop. We will tell about one of such solutions today. Meet: Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme!
Protection against all evils
Only the appearance of this brutal computer tunes in a serious way. And rightly so, because the security here is built almost absolute. Judge for yourself! Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme can withstand a fall from a height of 185 centimeters off and half the height if it is on. In addition, the computer is not afraid of vibrations, which is important for those who work in vehicles while they are off-road. Recall the legendary American "tornado hunters", for example, although this is not only relevant to them.
')
Next on the list are protection from rain, dust, sand, high humidity and even salt fog. The latter - in case 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 electromagnetic interference Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is not afraid. Exact designations of all standards of protection are on our website . The most important among them are IP-65 and the US 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 immediately understand - a serious thing. The effect is enhanced if you take the laptop for a special rubber grip, because the device weighs 3.9 kilograms. Very much by the standards of ultrabooks, whose weight is already sometimes measured in grams. But quite up to the standards of the pros who take hundreds of kilograms of specialized equipment on an expedition to work far from civilization.
The corners of the laptop are reliably protected by thick rubber inserts, they also act as legs, thanks to which the gadget does not slip on smooth surfaces.
The cover and the main body are made of durable magnesium alloy, which is immediately recognized by professional-grade SLR cameras.
The hinges holding the screen at the right angle are very reliable, one can even say that it is a bit tight, but it was meant to be so.
In the closed position, a special latch presses the cover to the main part of the laptop.
Even the webcam lens here is closed by a curtain so that dirt does not accidentally get there!
All connectors are protected
On the case of the Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme there is not a single open connector - absolutely everything that we used to usually 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 with the left end of the computer, there are two protective panels. Under the first are the headphone jack, USB 3.0 and full-size HDMI.
And under the second battery is hidden.
On the right side is a bay with an optical drive, which also has a slot for SD-cards, USB 2.0, USB 3.0 and a compartment for smart cards. Having the latter is very important for many corporate users.
Under the second cover on the right side of the computer, there is a slot for the ExpressCard / 54 and a compartment for installing the drive. It is important to remember that the form factor of 2.5 inches is used exclusively 7 mm thick. You probably already guessed that the default SSD is installed here, but more about it later.
There are still four covers behind. There are two Ethernet ports at once, one of which can be used to connect to the global network, and the second one - to create a local network. Plus, another USB 2.0, RS-232, D-SUB and input for connecting the power adapter.
If you do not be lazy and look at the bottom side of the laptop, you can see the brilliant contacts for connecting the docking station. For example, the “desktop” version of it looks like this:
There is also a special docking station for work in the car.
Input Devices
The Dell developers did their best to make the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme keyboard as comfortable as possible. Of course, the digital unit is not here, otherwise it would inevitably affect the size and weight of the computer. But the keys are large, they have a smooth and deep move, and there is a lot of free space for the palms. Typing when the laptop is on your lap is very comfortable; convenient to work with him and standing.
But for desktop work in the office is better to buy a docking station, which you have already seen in the photo above. The computer is mounted on it at an angle, which eliminates the inconvenience of a large thickness (3.66 cm) of the main part of the computer. Still, the laptop was created entirely 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 situations when it is necessary to work in the dark. Therefore, the keyboard Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme has a bright backlight. And even more: the user can choose the appropriate color for the situation with the Fn + C keyboard shortcut. Diodes may burn in red, green, blue or white light.
The block with the keyboard, by the way, is easily removed. It looks like this:
Of course, it was not without touchpad. It is relatively small (90x50 mm) and matte. Under the touchpad, there are two large keys that replace the left and right mouse buttons.
Another unusual thing for many users is the 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 decision is necessary.
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 ease of replacement come to the fore.
The TN matrix with a diagonal of 14 inches and a resolution of 1366x768 pixels is suitable for both requirements. Moreover, experts work in difficult conditions, however, not with graphics in Photoshop, but with measuring instruments and software created for managing them. At the same time the picture is bright and contrast, and the viewing angles of the display are very wide by the standards of TN. The surface, of course, is matte - nobody canceled the work under the open sky in direct sunlight.
In addition, the screen touch - you can interact with the interface of the operating system and programs even in thin gloves. But if suddenly around it is so cold that you need to work in fur mittens, then the stylus will come to the rescue. Here it is, hidden in the recess on the left end of the laptop and attached to the case with a special stretching wiring so as not to get lost.
Filling and Performance
Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme runs on an Intel Core i5-4300U with two cores and a clock speed of 1.9 GHz. In TurboBoost mode, the chip can accelerate to 2.9 GHz. In addition to the integrated graphics Intel HD Graphics 4400 is a discrete adapter NVIDIA GeForce GT 720M with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory. There are two slots for RAM, in the standard configuration only one of them is filled - a 4 GB DDR3L-1600 bar is installed in it, the maximum recognizable volume is 16 GB.
The solid-state drive from the case of the laptop is the easiest to get. In our case, this is Samsung SSD SM841N with 128 GB of memory, but there are modifications with 512 GB. The read speed reaches approximately 500 MB / s, the write speed is about 400 MB / s. In short, it is a fast and, most importantly, reliable means of storing data.
The results of system performance tests in the PCMark 8 benchmark are as follows:
CPU test results for the Cinebench R15:
Well, in the 3D Mark benchmark the indicators will be like this:
Simply put, the third part of The Witcher and Call of Duty straight from the tin to play with pleasure on the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is unlikely to work, but you can count on a fun holiday after working in the company of virtual tanks and now already old. And not at the highest graphic settings, of course. Maximum - «high», but more often «medium».
Now let's look inside and see what's what. First of all, the inner surface of the bottom cover (and another two dozen screws that hold it) draws attention to itself - there is a very serious rubber gasket. By the way, note that it bypasses the side of the air intake holes of the cooler.
Directly “filling” occupies a little more than a quarter of the internal space. And at once the secret of the fan is revealed: if the water suddenly gets into it, then there is no way for it to get to the board. A heat pipe goes from the cooler to the processor, and it is located in a separate compartment.
Autonomy
The battery from the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is removed as easily as an SSD drive. This is a very serious “battery” with a capacity of 8550 mAh (or 97 Wh), which has a full charge, for example, more than 6.5 hours of playback of Full HD video with maximum display brightness. So you can really work with a computer for a long time, although when planning, of course, you need to take into account the negative effect of negative temperatures on the battery capacity. In addition, the ease of replacement allows you to carry several batteries at once.
By the way, the power adapter of the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is very compact and light. Next to the brutal computer, it seems like a completely weightless crumb.
Summary
Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is not the gadget you want to sit in the evening with a cup of tea. This is a harsh laptop, designed for the most serious challenges: Army standards of protection are not a joke. Protected from virtually all ills, he will easily continue working where many people absolutely refuse to work. And it is precisely this dignity 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 workshops, cold oil platforms, production sites with very high or, conversely, low temperatures, long studies away from civilization, and so on. In a word, there are many use cases, 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 against all evils
Only the appearance of this brutal computer tunes in a serious way. And rightly so, because the security here is built almost absolute. Judge for yourself! Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme can withstand a fall from a height of 185 centimeters off and half the height if it is on. In addition, the computer is not afraid of vibrations, which is important for those who work in vehicles while they are off-road. Recall the legendary American "tornado hunters", for example, although this is not only relevant to them.
')
Next on the list are protection from rain, dust, sand, high humidity and even salt fog. The latter - in case 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 electromagnetic interference Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is not afraid. Exact designations of all standards of protection are on our website . The most important among them are IP-65 and the US 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 immediately understand - a serious thing. The effect is enhanced if you take the laptop for a special rubber grip, because the device weighs 3.9 kilograms. Very much by the standards of ultrabooks, whose weight is already sometimes measured in grams. But quite up to the standards of the pros who take hundreds of kilograms of specialized equipment on an expedition to work far from civilization.
The corners of the laptop are reliably protected by thick rubber inserts, they also act as legs, thanks to which the gadget does not slip on smooth surfaces.
The cover and the main body are made of durable magnesium alloy, which is immediately recognized by professional-grade SLR cameras.
The hinges holding the screen at the right angle are very reliable, one can even say that it is a bit tight, but it was meant to be so.
In the closed position, a special latch presses the cover to the main part of the laptop.
Even the webcam lens here is closed by a curtain so that dirt does not accidentally get there!
All connectors are protected
On the case of the Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme there is not a single open connector - absolutely everything that we used to usually 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 with the left end of the computer, there are two protective panels. Under the first are the headphone jack, USB 3.0 and full-size HDMI.
And under the second battery is hidden.
On the right side is a bay with an optical drive, which also has a slot for SD-cards, USB 2.0, USB 3.0 and a compartment for smart cards. Having the latter is very important for many corporate users.
Under the second cover on the right side of the computer, there is a slot for the ExpressCard / 54 and a compartment for installing the drive. It is important to remember that the form factor of 2.5 inches is used exclusively 7 mm thick. You probably already guessed that the default SSD is installed here, but more about it later.
There are still four covers behind. There are two Ethernet ports at once, one of which can be used to connect to the global network, and the second one - to create a local network. Plus, another USB 2.0, RS-232, D-SUB and input for connecting the power adapter.
If you do not be lazy and look at the bottom side of the laptop, you can see the brilliant contacts for connecting the docking station. For example, the “desktop” version of it looks like this:
There is also a special docking station for work in the car.
Input Devices
The Dell developers did their best to make the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme keyboard as comfortable as possible. Of course, the digital unit is not here, otherwise it would inevitably affect the size and weight of the computer. But the keys are large, they have a smooth and deep move, and there is a lot of free space for the palms. Typing when the laptop is on your lap is very comfortable; convenient to work with him and standing.
But for desktop work in the office is better to buy a docking station, which you have already seen in the photo above. The computer is mounted on it at an angle, which eliminates the inconvenience of a large thickness (3.66 cm) of the main part of the computer. Still, the laptop was created entirely 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 situations when it is necessary to work in the dark. Therefore, the keyboard Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme has a bright backlight. And even more: the user can choose the appropriate color for the situation with the Fn + C keyboard shortcut. Diodes may burn in red, green, blue or white light.
The block with the keyboard, by the way, is easily removed. It looks like this:
Of course, it was not without touchpad. It is relatively small (90x50 mm) and matte. Under the touchpad, there are two large keys that replace the left and right mouse buttons.
Another unusual thing for many users is the 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 decision is necessary.
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 ease of replacement come to the fore.
The TN matrix with a diagonal of 14 inches and a resolution of 1366x768 pixels is suitable for both requirements. Moreover, experts work in difficult conditions, however, not with graphics in Photoshop, but with measuring instruments and software created for managing them. At the same time the picture is bright and contrast, and the viewing angles of the display are very wide by the standards of TN. The surface, of course, is matte - nobody canceled the work under the open sky in direct sunlight.
In addition, the screen touch - you can interact with the interface of the operating system and programs even in thin gloves. But if suddenly around it is so cold that you need to work in fur mittens, then the stylus will come to the rescue. Here it is, hidden in the recess on the left end of the laptop and attached to the case with a special stretching wiring so as not to get lost.
Filling and Performance
Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme runs on an Intel Core i5-4300U with two cores and a clock speed of 1.9 GHz. In TurboBoost mode, the chip can accelerate to 2.9 GHz. In addition to the integrated graphics Intel HD Graphics 4400 is a discrete adapter NVIDIA GeForce GT 720M with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory. There are two slots for RAM, in the standard configuration only one of them is filled - a 4 GB DDR3L-1600 bar is installed in it, the maximum recognizable volume is 16 GB.
The solid-state drive from the case of the laptop is the easiest to get. In our case, this is Samsung SSD SM841N with 128 GB of memory, but there are modifications with 512 GB. The read speed reaches approximately 500 MB / s, the write speed is about 400 MB / s. In short, it is a fast and, most importantly, reliable means of storing data.
The results of system performance tests in the PCMark 8 benchmark are as follows:
CPU test results for the Cinebench R15:
Well, in the 3D Mark benchmark the indicators will be like this:
Simply put, the third part of The Witcher and Call of Duty straight from the tin to play with pleasure on the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is unlikely to work, but you can count on a fun holiday after working in the company of virtual tanks and now already old. And not at the highest graphic settings, of course. Maximum - «high», but more often «medium».
Now let's look inside and see what's what. First of all, the inner surface of the bottom cover (and another two dozen screws that hold it) draws attention to itself - there is a very serious rubber gasket. By the way, note that it bypasses the side of the air intake holes of the cooler.
Directly “filling” occupies a little more than a quarter of the internal space. And at once the secret of the fan is revealed: if the water suddenly gets into it, then there is no way for it to get to the board. A heat pipe goes from the cooler to the processor, and it is located in a separate compartment.
Autonomy
The battery from the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is removed as easily as an SSD drive. This is a very serious “battery” with a capacity of 8550 mAh (or 97 Wh), which has a full charge, for example, more than 6.5 hours of playback of Full HD video with maximum display brightness. So you can really work with a computer for a long time, although when planning, of course, you need to take into account the negative effect of negative temperatures on the battery capacity. In addition, the ease of replacement allows you to carry several batteries at once.
By the way, the power adapter of the Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is very compact and light. Next to the brutal computer, it seems like a completely weightless crumb.
Summary
Dell Latitude 14 Rugged Extreme is not the gadget you want to sit in the evening with a cup of tea. This is a harsh laptop, designed for the most serious challenges: Army standards of protection are not a joke. Protected from virtually all ills, he will easily continue working where many people absolutely refuse to work. And it is precisely this dignity 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 workshops, cold oil platforms, production sites with very high or, conversely, low temperatures, long studies away from civilization, and so on. In a word, there are many use cases, 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.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/390283/
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