Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable review: Collaboration made easy

Dell isn’t the first to produce a 2-in-1 tablet. Indeed, if you’ve dreamed of the convenience of a minimalist laptop, you can take your pick of a whole collection, Microsoft’s Surface laptops, for example.

Yet, the Latitude 7350 Detachable stands out for several reasons. Firstly, its chassis and display are incredibly robust, the former boasts dollops of metal and the latter Gorilla Glass Victus. Indeed, it’s undoubtedly a premium quality laptop, where many rivals feel like just tablets with keyboards.

The display also has a higher peak brightness than most and it’s one of the thinnest and lightest of its kind. Admittedly, there are a few tradeoffs for all that minimalism, the I/O availability, for example. But for mobile professionals on the move, this laptop remains an extremely useful tool.

Further reading: Best laptops 2024: Premium, budget, gaming, 2-in-1s, and more

Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable: Specifications

As is usually the case on Dell’s website, you can personalize the Dell 7350 Detachable to your requirements. It comes in two Core Ultra chip flavors, either an Intel Core Ultra 7 164U, or my laptop’s more modest Intel Core Ultra 5 134U processor.

Both variants feature Integrated Intel Graphics and sport 2880 x 1920p touchscreens. My review unit’s exact specifications are as follows:

• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 5 134U
• RAM: 8GB DDR5 / 6400 Mt/s RAM
• Graphics: 13-inch 3K (2880 x 1920p) LCD, IPS grade, touch-sensitive, anti-reflective, Gorilla Glass Victus, low blue light, pen support.
• Display: Intel Integrated Graphics
• Storage: 235GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
• Networking: 2 x Thunderbolt 4 (Power Delivery 3.0, DisplayPort), wedged-shaped lock, 3.5mm combo jack
• Battery capacity: 45.6WHr
• Dimensions: 8.19 x 11.53 x 0.35-inches
• Weight: 1.76lbs (0.79kg)
• Cost: $1789 (with standard 16GB RAM)

It’s worth noting that while my review unit had only 8GB of DDR5 RAM, the standard model on Dell’s website comes with 16GB. You can choose to double that again but can only pair 32GB RAM with the Ultra 7 processor, so that change will cost you $690 more than the price of this review model.

Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable: Design and Build

Designed to be barely there in your work bag or satchel, the Latitude 7350 Detachable is impressively thin measuring just 0.35 inches and weighing just 1.76 pounds. For comparison that beats out the 0.37-inch, 1.97-pound 2024 Microsoft Surface Pro tablet and the 0.43-inch thin 2024 Asus Zenbook S13 in both metrics (but a quick comparison shows it’s pricier than both).

That of course makes it perfect for carrying around to meetings, presentations and the like. As to airplane travel, it’s going to be a breeze resting it on a tray table, after which you can easily slip it into the compartment in front of you.

“One of the best things about this laptop is its Dell Collaboration touchpad, which has built-in touch icons that light up for quick and easy control of your media in Microsoft Teams or Zoom chats.”

Yet despite its pint-sized dimensions, the Latitude is very strong. The magnesium in the chassis and aluminum in the kickstand bestows a sturdiness that you just don’t find in some 2-in-1s. The volume of that metal that comes from recycled sources is also very impressive – a fact that will surely win over some environmentally minded professionals.

The scratch and drop-proof Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus covering in the display is also just the kind of protection you’ll want in a laptop that you’ll be holding up and manipulating from a height.

The laptop is orientated like the Microsoft Surface laptops, so the chassis is tablet-like with rounded edges and thin bezels set into the display itself. A very thin detachable keyboard clips on to the bottom via very strong magnets. That attachment is very smooth, the keyboard snaps into place effortlessly and requires a firm yank to set it free, so you’re assured of stability once you’re set up.

I give the kickstand a big thumbs up too because of its very tight and broad hinge. It’s nothing like the notch systems you see in some ultralights that restrict you from viewing the display at specified angles.

Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable: Connectivity and audio

Such a thin and lightweight design does, however, come with drawbacks, in this case it’s the number of connectivity options you get. Two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a 3.5 mm audio jack are still useful – the former for quick file transfers and streaming video out to external displays, but if you have a lot of devices that require USB-A or HDMI ports, you may feel a little shortchanged.

To be fair, though, the 7350 Detachable is a tablet PC. Its main use case is mobile workers on the go, which are mainly going to depend on the laptop’s wireless connectivity. Thankfully that’s top-notch. It consists of both Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 functionality, so you can be assured of the fastest browsing and download speeds.

The 7350 Detachable’s two front-facing speakers are located on the sides of the display. That’s higher than on a conventional laptop, so the sound is directed straight to your ears. As to quality, the audio is clear enough to enjoy music and video, but you wouldn’t choose it over sound from a good pair of PC speakers – the lower frequencies are just too shallow.

Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable: Keyboard and trackpad

The 7350’s Detachable backlit keyboard is an optional purchase costing $210 on top of the laptop, which isn’t ideal. It’s a decent size, though, even coming with a useful shortcut key for Microsoft Copilot. As to typing, it’s best suited for short stints, since the keys are low set, with not great feedback. They’re a decent size, however, so mistyping is barely an issue.

One of the best things about this laptop is its Dell Collaboration touchpad, which has built-in touch icons that light up for quick and easy control of your media in Microsoft Teams or Zoom chats.

As a tragic fumbler in the settings of these programs, especially when I enter meetings, I was very grateful for the opportunity to be able to simply press the icons to mute myself, turn the camera on and off and open chat dialogue boxes with a single press. It was all so convenient.

Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable: Display and webcam

The laptop’s 2880x1920p LCD display does a decent job rendering images crisply and with adequate detail. The contrast is adequate too, but the sRGB color gamut of 76 percent won’t blow the socks off users who have already experienced the rich color saturation of OLED panels.

That said, it does outmuscle most OLEDs for brightness. I measured a peak brightness of 481 nits with my LUX meter in HDR mode, which was more than enough to keep it visible in brightly lit rooms. The display’s touch functionality is also very good. Touch points register very quickly and accurately. The Active Pen is yet another additional purchase, though, that will cost you an extra $55 at the checkout.

When it comes to the webcam offering, the 7350 Detachable has both an 8-megapixel front-facing and world-facing camera. The world-facing camera allowed me to snap on the go — virtually eliminating the extra step I usually take having to load media on to my laptop via a separate device.

The image quality of both cameras is quite good too. Autofocus keeps the image sharpness nice and crisp.

Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable: Performance

My review unit’s Intel Core Ultra 5 134U chip came with 12M cache and a maximum speed of up to 4.40GHz. This first-generation chip from Intel’s Core Ultra lineup also boasted an integrated AI Boost NPU with two AI engines.

Some of the benefits promised by Dell for from the NPU include a 38 percent power savings when utilizing AI-enhanced collaboration tools in Zoom calls, and 132 percent faster performance when running on-device AI photo editing in Adobe programs.

Looking at the chip’s low to mid-range positioning amongst Intel’s Core Ultra chip lineup, however, and just for pure processing power, I was expecting it to be one of the more lightweight performers in the series. Which is how things panned out in my performance testing.

In Maxon’s Cinebench R20 Multi-Threaded benchmark, for example, which flexes all the Cores of the laptop’s Core Ultra 5 chip, the 7350 Detachable placed just modestly amongst our comparisons.

In the bespoke HandBrake test I got to see how the Detachable fared encoding a 30GB MKV video file to MP4. The result shows my laptop took a little longer than some comparisons to finish the task. It suggests the Core Ultra 5 chip did experience some minor throttling in this CPU-intensive task.

In the productivity benchmark, PCMark 10, however, the Latitude 7350 Detachable impressed me. A quite decent score of 5,144 shows it’s a versatile laptop for work, capable of performing well in commonly used applications and everyday office tasks.

Lastly, I tested the laptop’s graphics performance using 3DMark’s Time Spy 1.2 Overall benchmark. A score of 1,608 implies it will easily play videos and render simple 2D and 3D imagery, but that’s where the buck stops. Heavy 3D rendering or applications that require high frame rates aren’t this laptop’s forte, so it’s likely to struggle with those tasks.

My takeaway from all that is that this laptop’s performance is fine for what it’s designed for, that is, light productivity tasks. Some clever reconfigurations of the internal chassis by Dell, like making the fans 30 percent thinner this year, and placing air vents near the laptop’s kickstand have done well to keep performance snappy enough in most apps, even if it slows down a bit on heavier tasks.

If you’re looking for even snappier performance, you might want to opt for the model with a Core Ultra 7 chip. This variant’s step-up Core Ultra chip, theoretically, should score higher than my laptop in these benchmarks. According to Dell, Core Ultra 7 models also ship with an extra feature — a dedicated vapor chamber in the chassis — which should help alleviate some of the throttling I saw in CPU-intensive tasks.

Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable: Battery life

The Core Ultra 5 134U processor’s unique Meteor Lake architecture is designed for low power consumption under a low CPU load.

To achieve that two of the CPU’s 10 E-Cores are located on what Intel has dubbed a ‘Low Power Island.’ In simple terms, it’s essentially a SoC inside a SoC that remains active while the rest of the chip’s parts are shut down to conserve power.

While I couldn’t measure how well those cores were doing their job, PCWorld’s battery rundown test at least gave me a glimpse of the laptop’s battery life. To that end, I charged the laptop to full capacity, set a few parameters, and started a 4K video to run on repeat.

The Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable lasted a whole 12 hours and 45 minutes before it switched itself off. That’s a decent result, which suggests you can safely expect it to last more than a full working day once charged.

Conclusion: Should you buy the Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable?

The Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable is the kind of laptop you’d want with you on a long-haul flight or at a trade show where you’re jumping in and out of meetings all day. Exceptionally lightweight and almost as thin as a dinner plate, you can tuck it under your arm like a magazine and then juggle any other number of other things – a coffee, a brochure, or just shake people’s hands. It also performs admirably in most common productivity tasks. On the flipside, it doesn’t have a lot of I/O options, and you’ll need to pay extra for a keyboard and Active Pen. But those gripes are pretty commonplace in tablet PCs.