Dell Latitude E5570 Review

A business powerhouse, the 15.6-inch Dell Latitude E5570 offers a compelling combination of performance, security and usability. Armed with a 6th Generation Intel Skylake processor and customizable to a high degree (starting at $779, tested at $2,096), the E5570 wowed us with its blazing speed, colorful full-HD touch screen and strong audio. The notebook also feels built-to-last, complete with 180-degree hinges. Our model came with a Core i7-6280HQ processor, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, which can plow through any workload. We only wish this system were lighter and ran a bit cooler.

Design

A big, matte-black slab, the Latitude E5570 looks like it's ready to get things done. This notebook is also built strong, with carbon fiber reinforcements, a spill-resistant keyboard and an optional scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass touch-screen display ($140). The E5570's speakers are hidden underneath the notebook's front lip, and a 180-degree hinge allows you to bend the lid back until its flat on a table.

Dell says the E5570 has been built to pass the MIL-STD-810G durability tests. That means you can operate this machine at temperatures as high as 140 degrees Fahrenheit and as low as minus 20.2 degrees. The notebook can also be operational while sand and dust are blasted at it for 12 hours, and at heights of up to 15,000 feet.

Two USB 3.0 ports sit on the right side along with an SD memory reader, a headphone jack and a lock port. Ethernet, VGA and HDMI ports live with a third USB 3.0 port and a micro SIM tray on the notebook's backside.

Weighing 5.6 pounds and measuring 0.9 inches thick, the Latitude E5570 is notably heavier than -- but about as thick as -- the HP ZBook 15u G2 (4.23 pounds, 0.84 inches), Toshiba Tecra Z40t-B (3.7 pounds, 0.8 inches) and Lenovo ThinkPad W550s (3.7 pounds, 0.92 inches).

Security

The Latitude E5770 has a number of security and manageability features that IT departments require, including FIPS 140-2 and TCG-certified TPM 1.2 modules (which should be upgradable to TPM 2.0 in the spring). You can buy added security with an optional Smart Card reader ($7) or Smart Card reader with fingerprint reader ($21).

This notebook also comes with Dell's Data Protection technology, including the company's Security Tools software and Protected Workplace data protection (for which Dell includes a one-year subscription). These tools should help your IT department secure sensitive information, no matter if it's stored locally, in the cloud or on external media.

Keyboard, Touchpad, Touch Screen and Pointing Stick

As I tested out the E5570's keyboard on the 10FastFingers.com Typing Test, I clicked my way past my average of 69 words per minute with 99 percent accuracy to an improved 79 wpm with 99 percent accuracy. The notebook's responsive keys have a comfortably deep 2 millimeters of travel and require 60 grams of force to actuate. We hope to find keys with 1.5mm to 2mm of travel that require at least 60 grams of force.

The E5570's 3.9 x 2.1-inch touchpad provided accurate navigation as I moved around the desktop, while the discrete mouse buttons offered a soft, cushioned feel to each click. The touchpad was also quick to respond to my scroll, zoom and swipe multitouch gestures, without a hint of lag.

Similarly, the notebook's black-and-blue pointing stick provided an excellent way for me to navigate my cursor around the screen, without lifting my fingers off of the home row. The concave nub is soft and has a matrix of 12 rubber dots that make it easy to grip.

Display

The Latitude E5570's optional 1080p touch-screen display offers vibrant colors but only modest brightness. As I watched the 1080p trailer for X-Men: Apocalypse on the Latitude E5570's 1920 x 1080 display, I was impressed by the preview's strong colors and sharp details. Mystique's blue skin looked rich and accurate on the display, and Psylocke's purple blade appeared bright and vibrant as it sliced through a car. The display also did a fine job showing the details of that bisected vehicle, as I noticed the glowing singe marks, tire treads and various pieces of flying debris.

According to our colorimeter, the E5570's display can produce 107.4 percent of the sRGB color spectrum. That's a wider range than you get from the ZBook 15u (103.4 percent), ThinkPad W550S (100.2 percent) and average mainstream notebook (84.9 percent).

The E5570 also earned high marks for color accuracy, earning a score of 0.72 in the Delta-E test (where best scores are closer to zero). That mark beats the ZBook 15u, ThinkPad W550S, notebook average and the Tecra Z40t-B.

Unfortunately, the E5570's display produced only 242 nits of brightness, which is dimmer than the category average (252 nits), as well as the ZBook 15u (307 nits), ThinkPad W550s (312 nits) and the Tecra Z40t-B (265 nits). Despite its modest brightness numbers, the screen offers wide viewing angles, with colors staying true even when we moved up to 70 degrees to the left or right.

I tested the E5570's 15.6-inch touch-screen panel by doodling erratically in MS Paint; the notebook did a fine job of keeping pace with my fingers and staying accurate to my motions.

Audio

With the MaxxSense audio software presets enabled, the full bass of Kanye West's "Gorgeous" reverberated with a strong warmth through the Latitude E5570's speakers. The notebook also did a great job handling the rest of the sound spectrum. The myriad of drum cymbals in Future's "Xanny Family" hit crisply, and the track's high-pitched synths sounded sweet to my ears.

Webcam

The Latitude E5570's 2.0-megapixel webcam captured a fairly attractive and accurate selfie in our office. While the images have some noise, you can clearly pick out details, such as the black-and-white flecks of my sweater. The red Purch wall and my blue shirt both look accurate.

Performance

Our review configuration of the Dell Latitude E5570 packs a 6th Generation Intel Core i7-6280HQ processor, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD hard drive. The E5570 did not lag as I edited a document in Microsoft OneNote, started a round of Candy Crush, used Weather to check the forecast and then started a race in Asphalt 8, all with a dozen tabs open and a video streaming.

The E5570 dominated its competition in the GeekBench 3 benchmark test, which measures overall performance, notching a score of 12,148. That beats the Core i7-5600U-powered Lenovo ThinkPad W550S (6,860) and Toshiba Tecra Z40t-B (6,427), the Core i7-5500U-powered HP ZBook 15u (6,892), and the mainstream laptop average (8,938).

Dell's workhorse handily beat its competitors in our OpenOffice Test, matching 20,000 names to their addresses in 3 minutes and 29 seconds. All of the E5570's competitors took more than 4 minutes.

The notebook's 256GB M.2 SATA SSD hard drive did not impress us as much. It took the Latitude 32 seconds to copy 4.97GB of mixed-media files, resulting in a transfer rate of 159 MBps. That's about the same as the average mainstream notebook (160.5 MBps) and the 512GB SSD in the ThinkPad W550S (159 MBps), but slower than the 256GB SSD in the HP ZBook 15u (175.5 MBps).

Graphics

Our configuration of the Latitude E5570 offers discrete graphics with its AMD Radeon R7 GPU, which gives it more 3D oomph than the typical business laptop has. The system earned a score of 1,593 in the 3DMark Fire Storm benchmark test, which beat the ZBook 15u (1,461), ThinkPad W550S (719) and the Tecra Z40t-B (TK).

Heat

The brawny performance of the E5570 comes at a price, but one that you'll only feel if you use the notebook on your lap. After streaming 15 minutes of full-screen HD video, the notebook's underside spiked to a temperature of 102 degrees Fahrenheit, well above our 95-degree comfort threshold. The touchpad (80 degrees) and keyboard (90 degrees) stayed cool during this test.

Battery Life

Road warriors should be able to get through most of a workday on a charge with the Latitude E5770. The laptop lasted 7 hours and 17 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test (constant Web browsing at 100 nits of brightness), which is longer than the times of the ZBook 15u (6:44) and the average mainstream notebook (5:45). However, the Tecra Z40t-B (8:23) and the ThinkPad W550S (15:52) lasted longer.

Our test unit of the Latitude E5570 came with a six-cell, 87-watt-hour battery, which is available as a customization option on the higher-end versions of the E5570. We highly recommend this  $34.30 upgrade from the default three-cell, 47-watt-hour battery.

Configurations

Dell offers the Latitude E5570 in a variety of configurations, and some of them are customizable. The entry-level Dell Latitude E5570 costs $769 and has a dual-core 2.3GHz Core i3 processor, 1376 x 768 nontouch display, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive. For $1,169, you can buy the E5570 with a dual-core 2.6GHz Core i7-6600U processor, with the same 1376 x 768 nontouch display, 4GB RAM and 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive. It costs $70 to upgrade to a nontouch 1080p display but a full $210 to get the same resolution with touch.

The review unit of the Dell Latitude E5570 we tested costs $2,096 and offers a quad-core 2.7GHz 6th Generation Core i7-6820HQ processor, a 1080p touch screen, 16GB of RAM, 256GB of SSD storage, a 6-cell 84 watt-hour battery and an AMD Radeon R7 GPU. You can save $140 by opting for a nontouch display, and $105 by moving down from the 256GB drive to its 128GB counterpart.

Some versions of the E5570 have a three-cell, 47-watt-hour battery, which you can upgrade to a four-cell, 62-watt-hour battery for $34.30. Other models start with that four-cell battery, and offer an upgrade to the six-cell, 84-watt-hour battery that our review unit came with, selling for $35.00.

Docking Options

The Latitude E5570 has a proprietary docking connector on its bottom, which lets the notebook snap into Dell's E-Port docks. These range in price from $169 to $219 and offer both charging and a wide range of ports, including DVI, DisplayPort and several USB ports. 

Bottom Line

The Latitude E5570 is one of the best 15-inch business notebooks you can buy. Our configuration offered more power than we knew what to do with, along with an excellent keyboard, colorful full-HD display and high-quality audio. We also appreciate the sturdy design and robust security features. Only the relatively heavyweight and warm-running bottom prevent this system from earning an Editors' Choice award. If you want to save some money, you can spend $434 less by opting for 8GB of RAM rather than 16GB, and  choosing a dual-core Core i7-6600 CPU rather than the quad-core i7-6820.

If battery life is your priority, we suggest you consider the Lenovo ThinkPad W550S, which lacks a quad-core CPU option but can provide twice as much juice with its optional six-cell, 72-watt-hour battery, and costs $1736 when similarly configured to the Dell. Overall, though, the Latitude E5570 is an excellent business laptop for power users.