Dell Latitude D620 Laptop Review

The Dell Latitude D620 is a 14-inch widescreen business notebook equipped with the latest Intel Core Duo processor. The D620 replaces the D610 and provides quite an overhaul in both design change and internal components. The new industrial charcoal grey and black look of the D620 conveys its strong build, which Dell calls "Road Ready", and with a slew of available built-in wireless communications this notebook is road ready in more ways than one.

Design and Build

The D620 is most interesting in that it adopts a widescreen format, a feature that hereto date really has been pushed more in the consumer channel of notebooks. Dell reckons that business-types will prefer this format too though. After all, a widescreen (available in WXGA and WXGA+ resolution) does allow you to more easily have two windows open next to each other at the same time. Side-by-side comparison of documents, web pages or spreadsheets is an example of common business tasks more easily done on a widescreen.

Aesthetically the D620 looks nice and professional. It is mostly a dark charcoal-grey (almost black) inside with silver accents and silver lid. This provides for an industrial and muscular look, quite the opposite of the light-grey and white design of the Dell Inspiron line of notebooks. All of the new Latitude notebooks (D420, D620 and dell latitude d800 battery) carry this new color scheme, in my opinion it is distinctive and professional looking -- it's not exactly elegant and sleek like an Apple or Sony, the Latitude favors deep and noticeable grooves as opposed to an Apple smooth all over look, but the look works. And it's certainly an improvement over the former D610 look which was business boring and all too typical with its grey and boxy appearance.

The industrial looking aesthetics are true to the actual build of the notebook. The D620 is very sturdy; it uses an all magnesium-alloy case. This results in strong overall physical protection of the notebook, worry-free of case cracks appearing or problems with excessive flexing. The hinges are constructed of steel, Dell claims they have been tested for up to 20,000 cycles (openings and closings) to assure freedom from loosening and wobble. The D620 hinges also have a new barrel design to withstand vibration better than past Latitude notebooks. Another moving part on the D620 is the screen latch, this is also constructed of metal to provide durability and a nice look to boot.

The most important thing to protect in a notebook is in most cases the hard drive (where all of your data is stored), data is irreplaceable and sometimes invaluable, while hardware not quite so. As such Dell has implemented StrikeZone technology that reduces the amount of shock experienced in the hard drive area during a drop situation. You can also get Shock Resistant hard drives in 60GB and 80GB capacities that offer further physical protection to data.

The D620 weighs about 5.6lbs with a 6-cell battery, optical  drive installed and the power cord and adapter. Given the fact this notebook is a magnesium-alloy casing and not too much plastic is used, the weight is pretty impressive. It's not the lightest thin-and-light by any stretch, and it is thicker than the ThinkPad T-series of notebooks for example, but it's still fairly comfortable to carry around in say a backpack without feeling the weight too much.

RELIABILITY: Straight out of Dell Leasing, you will surely be pleased with the quality and functionality of this laptop. This Laptop has been used in a corporate environment and is in great condition. This item is professionally refurbished, but might show some signs of NORMAL use and wear (MINOR cosmetics). It has been thoroughly tested and is 100% functional.

EXPANDABILITY: The Latitude D620 has a modular bay located conveniently on the front that can hold an optical drive (CD/DVD/CD-RW/COMBO/DVD-RW see specs for which drive is included with this option), floppy drive, an extra battery or second hard drive.

PIECE OF MIND: Bid with piece of mind. We are offering a 30 day limited warranty on all laptops we sell.

DUMMY PROOF: No Configuring necessary. Within minutes after receiving you will literally be up and running.

NOTHING ELSE NEEDED: This laptop package is complete and nothing else is needed for you to get started.

Good battery life and an impressive set of business features
Dell's Latitude range of corporate notebooks have been a long-term mainstay for many a business person on the move, offering a good balance of performance and dell latitude d620 battery power. Dell has recently refreshed its Latitude series and new D620 sits in the middle of the range. Our review sample came with an Intel T2500 Core Duo processor clocked at 2.0GHz; Dell currently offers the T2600 (2.16GHz) or T2400 (1.83GHz) as alternatives. Backing this up is 1GB of PC2-5300 memory, although once again Dell offers other choices. eher kurz gehaltener Test; online abrufbar

Keyboard and Touchpad

One of the most important parts of a notebook is of course the ease of input, aka how easy it is to type and move the cursor around the screen. The D620 keyboard is full size, it is nice and firm with no flex and overall a pleasure to use. As with typical Dell keyboards, the key touch is lighter than say a ThinkPad -- meaning you don't have to push a key quite as hard to register a keystroke, but it's a bit more easy to accidentally brush a key and register a keystroke. Depending on your typing style you may or may not like this, very fast light touch typers tend to like Dell keyboards though.

Screen

The D620 is offered with a WXGA (1280 x 800) or WXGA+ (1440 x 900) display. The WXGA+ will give you about 26% more screen real estate. As mentioned before, Dell is adopting the widescreen format with the thinking that it allows business users to more easily display side-by-side document windows. The widescreen format also offers a lower overall profile, this is good for in tight spaces such as a plane, and actually means the notebooks footprint is about 2% less overall.

The D620 has a built-in ambient light sensor built-in that will control the screen brightness when on dell laptop battery. For example, in a dark room the screen will dim as less brightness is needed to see the screen, but in bright light the screen will crank up in brightness so it is easier to see. When on power the screen will automatically become brighter. You can override the ambient light sensor to control brightness yourself of course.

As far as screen quality, the brightness is decent, but certainly not the best on the market and nowhere near as vivid as some of the high-end screens for consumer notebooks. It is a matte screen so you won't get any reflection from office lighting. There is some backlight leakage from the bottom and the overall picture is slightly washed out. Below are some pictures of the screen in the dark, notice the light leakage from the bottom on the all black Windows XP screensaver background.

Wireless Communications

Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and IrDA are all things we've seen in the past with the D610 of course, the broadband cellular communication addition to the D620 is new and much welcomed. Dell provides the option of configuring your D620 with an internal antenna for either EVDO or HSPDA, depending on the region you live in and cellular provider you have. My review unit D620 came configured with the Dell Wireless 5700 EVDO modem. I love the fact that there's no ugly side antenna or extra humps on the notebook where the antenna sticks out as just about every other WWAN equipped notebook uses (such as the ThinkPad T60 or Sony VAIO TX). Rather, Dell puts the antenna in the screen and the D620 looks the same whether do or don't have the WWAN option.

EVDO via Verizon is a real treat, if you have an existing Verizon wireless account it's $60 a month for unlimited data transfer and if you don't then the cost is $80 a month. You also have the option of paying $15 for 24 hour access to the Verizon EVDO network. If you're a highly mobile worker EVDO can be a real blessing and keep you from fretting about where you'll find the next hotspot to send/receive email or connect to your corporate intranet from the field. As we know, when you don't need a wi-fi hotspot they're all around, but when you need a hotspot to access the net and help land a critical business deal the trail goes cold.

Speaking of finding wireless hotspots, Dell has included a unique feature called "Wi-Fi Catcher" located on the left side of the notebook. You can use this switch to turn off all wireless radios by putting it in the Off position, but far cooler than that, push it all the way forward and it will blink green as it searches for a Wi-Fi network and if one is present it glows solid green, if none is found it shows orange. This Wi-Fi Catcher works whether the notebook is on, off or in standby mode. So there's no need to boot up and search for wireless networks, just push this button to find out.

Battery

The D620 can be configured with a 4-cell, 6-cell or 9-cell dell latitude d620 battery. The battery location is rather odd relative to other notebooks in that it is at the front and not the back of the laptop. If you get an extended life 9-cell dell d620 battery it will stick out of the front a bit and create a sort of lip that extends 0.9". I have the 6-cell type battery and it does not stick out at all. With wi-fi on and screen at mid-brightness and doing tasks such as web browsing and emailing I got 2h 36m of battery life. That's decent, but not great. There are certainly thin-and-lights with better and I prefer to see 3 hours or a little more for a thin-and-light travel notebook. If you were to upgrade to the 9-cell you would certainly exceed 3 hours, but at the cost of extra weight and increased notebook size.