New Dell laptop, dock and displays

27th February 2021

Starting my new position at SixPivot is an opportune time for a hardware refresh. Part of the package includes a laptop allowance so I utilised that along with my own contributions to purchase some additional items to round out my ‘working from home’ environment.

The laptop

After some consideration I’ve gone with a Dell Latitude 7420 laptop:

• 11th gen Intel i7-1185G7
• 32GB of RAM
• 256GB SSD *
• 3840x2160 (4K) non-touch display
• 4 cell 63Whr battery

Why have I linked to Dell’s US site? Because if you look for those kinds of specs on Dell’s Australian site, you’ll be disappointed. Yes, they do have the 7420 but not with the 32GB (or higher) RAM option. If your organisation has a relationship with a Dell sales rep then they can facilitate orders like these.

That SSD is a bit on the small side. While Dell do offer a 512 or 1TB option, I calculated the cost would be the same or slightly cheaper if I then buy something like a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 or 2TB and swap it over myself.

As a side note, the SSD that came in the laptop is a “Kioxia” brand. Never heard of them before.

The Latitude comes with the following ports:

(Left)

• Thunderbolt 4 with Power Delivery/DisplayPort Alt Mode/USB 4 type-C
• Headset (headphone and microphone combo) port

(Right)

• micro-SD card slot
• Thunderbolt 4 with Power Delivery/DisplayPort Alt Mode/USB 4 type-C
• SuperSpeed USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A with PowerShare
• HDMI 2.0 port

So you get two Thunderbolt 4 type-C ports and just the one older style (type-A) USB port. If you have a few type-A USB devices to plug in you’ll definitely need a dock or some kind of type-C to type-A hub.

Windows “Hello” is fully supported either by the integrated webcam or the fingerprint reader (as part of the power button).

Here’s my three Dell laptops to compare the sizes. The XPS 15, XPS 9550 and now (on top) my new Latitude 7420.

Thoughts so far:

• It is nice to have a more compact laptop, but one downside is there’s less room for cooling so I almost immediately noticed it was doing a great impersonation of a hair dryer. Quite noisier than my older XPS 9550 (and as it as aged, I’ve noticed that does use the fan more). You can adjust the power settings so the fan doesn’t need to kick in so hard. The other option is to get some kind of laptop cooling stand (with the hope that the fans on the stand are quieter than the fan on the laptop).
• Performance is snappy
• The keyboard is compact. A little different to the 9550 layout as far as the placement of the Home and End keys (moved up to the top row to the right of Insert). I was concerned I might hit the power button instead of Delete but actually that hasn’t happened so far. I think I’ll probably get an external, full-sized keyboard soon and use that in preference to the laptop keyboard when it’s docked on my desk.
• I’m still playing with the power settings. Not sure if it’s being connected to the dock or something else but it seems like hitting the power button just turns off the screen, not actually sending the laptop to sleep.
• Yeah, it’s not a touch display. The US site only had touch available for the HD resolution, so I gave up touch to get 4K.

Dock

I had a lot of good suggestions for docks from my earlier post. I decided to go with the Dell WD19TB. Curiously in the few weeks since I got mine, they’ve dropped that model in favour of the WS19TBS (appears to be identical except it doesn’t have the 3.5mm port).

The WD19TB is a Thunderbolt 3 device. I did search for Thunderbolt 4 docks (as the Latitude supports Thunderbolt 4), but there’s not too many around at the moment and what is available is not cheap.

What I paid most attention to when selecting a dock was the support for multiple displays (and at what resolution). There’s a good summary of capabilities in the WD19TB Display Resolution Table. I want to run three displays, so the following information (extracted from that linked table) are of interest:

Thoughts:

• I tried the dock out with my older Dell XPS 9550 (with also came with a Thunderbolt port). Because that laptop doesn’t supports HBR3 it could only drive two displays. The 7420 manages 3 as expected.
• Interestingly the display combination I’m currently running isn’t really listed. The two 4K displays are connected to the dock using DisplayPort. The 3rd HD monitor I’m currently using is plugged in to one of the dock’s HDMI ports. A HD or QHD looks like it would be the maximum this setup could support. That is supported by a Dell Community Forum answer I got to a related question.
• Surprised it doesn’t have more Type-A outputs.

Displays

I’ve written earlier about really wanting to maintain 3 displays (and ideally also the laptop display). I had an existing Acer SA240Y that I’d bought last year, but I thought it was probably time to invest in some good displays, and 4K makes sense. I chose the Dell S2721Q. It’s a 27” 4K monitor with HDMI and DisplayPort 1.2 - a nice step up from the 22” HD monitors I’d been using for work previously. The colour contrast is also much better. I got two of these and are running them at 150% scaling. Interestingly, the laptop has the same resolution but I have that at 300% scaling (as it’s a smaller display).

Both of the monitors are plugged in using DisplayPort adapters to the Dock.

Further plans

I’m almost there, but a few things remain on my list:

• Samsung SSD
• Replace the Acer monitor with a newer model (that has a VESA mount)
• Monitor display arms. Currently using some stacks of books, which is not ideal!
• External keyboard
• A/V upgrade. I’m still using my trusty Plantronics headset that I got from TechEd 2009. Maybe one of those fancy microphones could be the go?

We’ll see how far I get with those. Yes, I can claim the costs on tax, but it’s still my money I’m spending so it depends on how the household budget is going too.

I’ll publish additional blog posts if I have anything more to report on this hardware combination. So far, so good.