Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 review: All these flaws for $3,000?

It’s no secret that business laptops manufacturers expect consumers to pay top dollar for their premium features, and the Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 is no different. Packing powerful performance, an alluring display and a sturdy aluminum chassis, it’s clear that this is a top-tier laptop within its category.

But considering the issues I’ve had with it, including an awkward near-edgeless keyboard, inconsistent trackpad and underwhelming SSD speeds, the Latitude 9440 2-in-1’s pricing feels excessive. It’s hard to deny that it’s a good product with great security features and some of the best performance scores among competitors, but it might not be worth its $3,000 price point, especially with its slightly underwhelming battery life. As a result, we don’t expect the Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 will make our best business laptops, but read more to find out if it’s right for you. 

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 price and configuration 

Our model of the Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 comes with Intel Core i7-1365U-vPRO processor, Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage space, and a 14-inch 2560 x 1600-pixel IPS display. This configuration costs $3,126 on Dell’s website.

Its base model costs $2,367 and is built with the same display, but instead has a Intel Core i5-1335U processor, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage. It also doesn’t have vPro Advanced Management enabled, which could be a deal breaker for business-minded individuals. The cheapest 9440 with vPro compatibility gives it an Intel Core i5-1345U vPro processor for $2,415. Adding a fingerprint scanner to either one adds an additional $29.

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 design 

Pulling the slender Latitude 9440 out of its box was a treat, greeted by a dark gray finish atop an aluminum lid with a silver reflective Dell logo at the center. While the obsession with darker and cooler colors in business laptops can get exhausting, I do enjoy the sleek simplicity that this 2-in-1 offers.

I was surprised after lifting the lid as it revealed nearly borderless keys atop a similarly compact deck. The keyboard fills up a large chunk of the center, broken up by a small border before thin speakers rest at the sides. The trackpad is similarly borderless, and although the design looks appealing, it’s not particularly practical for the keyboard (which we’ll get more into later). At the very least, the lid and deck feel sturdy and firm to touch.

The Latitude 9440 comes in at 3.4 pounds and measures 12.2 x 8.5 x 0.32~0.56 inches. The Asus ExpertBook B9450 (2.2 pounds, 12.6 x 8 x 0.59 inches) and Dynabook Portege X40-K (3.1 pounds, 11.7 x 9.2 x 0.7 inches) are lighter, while the Lenovo ThinkPad T16 Gen 1 (4.4 pounds, 14.2 x 10.1 x 0.8 inches) is quite a bit heavier. 

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 ports 

Dell seemed to have crafted the Latitude’s port selection with a “do it yourself” attitude towards its consumers, as the laptop is limited to two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left side and one extra Thunderbolt 4 on the right, alongside a headphone jack and wedge-lock slot.

Don’t get me wrong, including three whole Thunderbolt 4 ports on this thing is great, but the omission of HDMI, RJ45, Type-A port or at least a microSD makes it seem like the company put so many USB Type-C slots on this to accommodate the various docking stations and USB Type-C hubs required to fulfill the average business user’s needs.

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 durability and security

It’s no surprise that the Latitude 9440 passed the MIL-STD 810H test, as I could feel its firmness from lugging it around. MIL-STD-810H tests durability potentially involving high or low temperatures, damage relating to moisture, shock and more. It’s not just physically safe, as Dell’s security features are plenty: Including a fingerprint reader, Dell Safe ID, Dell SafeBIOS, SafeSupply Chain, a TPM chip and lock slot.

ExpressSign-In is also included, which will automatically lock your laptop when you step away, and wake it when you return. Intelligent Privacy adds onto this technology by lowering brightness while the user is looking away, and if strangers are staring at your content, it will pixelate parts of the screen. And finally, SafeShutter will automatically close and shut your camera shutter depending on if an app is being used. It also makes a loud click when it does open, meaning you’ll probably notice any time it does.

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 display 

The Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 is built with a 14-inch 2560 x 1600-pixel matte IPS display and although I expected something a little underpowered as this is a business laptop, I came away impressed by its color depth and brightness.

I watched the trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and was taken aback by its color depth, with the darkest blacks of Spider-Man’s outfit appearing with a hypnotizing inkiness. As Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy overlook an upside-down New York city, I adored the subtle orange tinge complimenting the light blue sky over a glowing concrete city while the two grew closer.

The Latitude 9440 achieved an impressive 89.8% coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is a pretty high score for the average business user looking to watch a film every once in a while. This is a little below the 93.9% average, and while the ExpertBook B9 (80.4%) put up a decent fight, the Portege X40-K (47.3%) and ThinkPad T16 (45.8%) were completely outmatched.

It wasn’t surprising that it managed an average of 513 nits of brightness, which is far above the 393 nit category average. This is more than enough to bring the laptop outdoors and enjoy it even in sunlight. The ExpertBook B9 (354 nits), Portege X40-K (237 nits), and ThinkPad T16 (318 nits) were left in the dust. 

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 keyboard and trackpad 

The Latitude 9440’s compact keyboard features an especially tiny gap between each of the keys, giving the nearly edge-to-edge design, with thin speakers at the sides, a uniform look. I was skeptical of this style though, as the lack of distance between each key felt awkward during my early testing.

I took the 10fastfingers typing test and my early suspicions proved true, as I could only get 72 words per minute with a 92% accuracy. I normally get as high as 110 words per minute with a 95% accuracy, and beyond what the numbers show, I felt deeply uncomfortable typing on the Latitude 9440. Each key has a sufficient clickiness, but the lack of defined borders besides the tiny gaps resulted in me often clicking the wrong key due to my fingers unable to tell where one ends and another begins. It also just fundamentally creeped me out, as if I was typing against a solid block rather than a collection of buttons.

The Latitude 9440’s “haptic touchpad” features four haptic sensors, but it only offers feedback and additional LED buttons exclusively when used through Zoom, which seems pretty limited in function. Otherwise, It feels satisfying to click, but it does have an issue where it requires a significant amount of force to keep pressed.

While dragging and moving files and windows across my screen, I would often accidentally unclick from the touchpad. The only way to make sure this didn’t happen was to press far harder than comfortable. At the very least, the very top of the touchpad is clickable unlike some others I’ve used, but the overall experience was dreadful.

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 audio 

The Latitude 9440’s top-firing speakers are decent, offering clear and compelling audio quality while watching movies or listening to music. But you will occasionally wish it could get louder, alongside certain elements of songs being lost against others.

I watched the Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse trailer and was underwhelmed by the audio quality as Rio gives Miles a speech about looking out for the child within him, as the dialogue was surprisingly low even at maximum volume. And when separate cuts of Miles’ journey in the previous film slowly bleed into scenes from the new film, the gradually intensifying percussion and strings were a little hard to hear as the dialogue got louder.

The Latitude 9440’s speaker system fared a little better when I listened to “Am I Dreaming” by Metro Boomin, A$AP Rocky, and Roisee. The string melody was a bit low beneath the vocals, but it was clear and most of the percussion and background lyrics were easy to hear. I do wish the overall audio was a little louder, as the chorus barely filled my small office.

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 performance 

The Latitude 9440 packs an Intel Core i7-1365U-vPRO processor, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage space. Its performance is undeniably impressive in most categories, although we came away a little underwhelmed by its SSD speeds.

The Latitude 9440’s multi-core score of 9,706 on the Geekbench 5.5 overall performance test is great, putting it above the 7,778 category average. It also demolished its competitors, taking no prisoners amongst the ExpertBook B9 (7,365, Intel Core i7-1255U), ThinkPad T16 (7,068, Intel Core i7-1270P) and Portege X40-K (7,486, Intel Core i7-1260P).

It did pretty well on the Handbrake test, converting a 4K video to 1080p resolution in 9 minutes and 40 seconds, which is slower than the 8:17 category average. This is much faster than the ExpertBook B9 (15:31), but the Portege X40-K (8:00) and ThinkPad T16 (8:33) were over a minute ahead.

Its SSD could have been a lot better at this price, duplicating 25GB of multimedia files in 32 seconds for a rate of 828 megabytes per second, which is slower than the 1,371 category average This is a little disappointing when compared to the ExpertBook B9 (1,552MBps, 2TB SSD), but it surpasses the Portege X40-K (581MBps, 512GB SSD) and ThinkPad T16 (825MBps, 512GB SSD).

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 gaming 

The Latitude 9440’s Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics is absolutely not meant for gaming. On the Sid Meier’s Civilization Test at 1080p, the laptop averaged 31 frames per second. This is a pretty decent score for a non-gaming laptop, but you really shouldn’t be playing much on it. At the very least, it did better than the ExpertBook B9 (19 fps) and ThinkPad T16 (20 fps), but the Portege X40-K (41fps) pulled ahead.

During the Time Spy synthetic benchmark, it averaged a score of 1811, resulting in a clean sweep of its competitors. This was superior to the ExpertBook B9 (1115), ThinkPad T16 (1588) and Portege X40-K (1,520).

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 battery 

The Latitude 9440’s battery life is decent, but it couldn’t quite stand up against some similar products. On the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, the Latitude 9440 2-in-1 lasted an average of 10 hours and 55 minutes across three separate tests. Dell claims that the Mini-LED Backlit technology can save up to three hours of battery life, but we don't have tests to confirm or deny this.

While this is solid longevity, it was almost 2 hours less than the 9430 2-in-1 (12:39) and while a little over the category average (10:30), it’s not excellent. It also died quicker than the ExpertBook B9 (12:58) and ThinkPad T16 (11:46), although the DynaBook Portege X40-K (9:52) didn’t do all that well. 

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 heat

The Latitude 9440 stayed relatively cool and didn’t exceed our 95-degree comfort threshold at any point, but it got pretty close with its hottest point at the underside reaching 94.5 degrees. The G/H key stayed at 84.5 degrees and the touchpad at 79.5 as well, never getting uncomfortable at any point. 

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 webcam 

The Latitude 9440 features a software-based camera privacy shutter that can be activated and deactivated by clicking F9, and when it is deactivated, a small LED light will inform the user that it’s closed. But this isn’t the greatest benefit, as the closing and opening of the privacy shutter is loud. This is especially evident on boot-up, as it will close and open three separate times throughout the process, which initially made me think the laptop was broken.

It also makes this noise whenever you open a camera app or even swap between photo and video modes, which is rather distracting. Insofar as the camera quality itself, the 1080p image quality is grainy and underwhelming, with the details of my face turning into a hodgepodge of difficult to define features. The soft glow of my orange lamp also turned into an oversaturated nightmare on my white ceiling.

I recommend checking out our best webcams page if you desire a webcam with better image quality.

Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 software and warranty 

The Latitude 9440 2-in-1 comes pre-installed with Windows 11 and features a slew of Dell software. This includes Dell Display Manager 2.0, Dell Pair, Dell Peripheral Manager, Dell Command | Update, Dell Digital Delivery and Dell Optimizer.

Dell Digital Delivery makes it easy to get Dell software that you’ve purchased downloaded onto the laptop. Dell Display Manager allows you to manage Dell branded displays once connected to the laptop. Dell Pair activates a specific facet of Bluetooth that can be paired directly with other Dell peripherals, and with Dell Peripheral Manager, those can be managed in one place.

Dell Optimizer features categories for Applications, Audio, Network and Power. Applications allows the user to select up to five apps that will receive “intelligent optimization,” while audio settings can reduce background noise and monitor voice quality. Power offers intelligent battery settings, thermal management and more. Dell Command | Update simply lets you check update history and update the system.

The Latitude 9440 comes with a 3-year warranty, offering next business day on-site repairs. See how Dell did in our Tech Support Showdown! 

Bottom line 

There’s no denying that the Dell Latitude 9440 is a solid 2-in-1 laptop that offers powerful performance backed up by a gorgeous display, alongside a sturdy aluminum chassis and strong hinge that makes it feel like a truly premium product. But its $3,000+ price point is excessive when considering its bizarre keyboard design, awkward trackpad, less-than-great battery life and underwhelming SSD speeds.

If you’re looking for a less costly business laptop with great performance and a solid display, we recommend the Asus ExpertBook B9450. But if you are more than willing to put down the money for it, the Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 will deliver in its excellent performance and hypnotizing screen.