Dell Latitude 3330 review: A budget laptop with great battery life but lousy performance

Dell Latitude 3330 $561.00 Sleek and lightweight, the budget-priced Dell Latitude 3330 makes a good first impression. But it has difficulty running even the most routine multimedia—much less games—because of its bare-bones...

If someone tells you “Dude! You’re gettin’ a Dell!” in reference to the Latitude 3330, run away. Dell makes plenty of good computers, but this isn’t one of them.

Admittedly, the Latitude 3330 didn’t burst into flames or poke anyone’s eye out during our testing. But you have many better choices in the same price range. Though one of the five budget notebooks in this roundup (HP’s Pavilion TouchSmart 11z-e000) delivered even lower performance than this one—probably because it has an even less powerful CPU than the Dell’s 1.5GHz Intel Core i3-2375m—the HP also costs $110 less than the Latitude 3330 and has a ten-point touchscreen. The Dell’s 13.3-inch, 1366-by-768-pixel display doesn’t support touch, though its trackpad does support simple gestures such as two-finger scrolling.

ROBERT CARDINDell’s Latitude 3330 doesn't deliver the performance its price tag warrants.

The Latitude has only 4GB of DDR/1600 memory, but an open and readily accessible slot accommodates a second module to double its memory. Its puny 320GB, 5400-rpm hard drive is similarly easy to access and upgrade. And this is one of only two notebooks in our roundup to include a removable and upgradable battery (the other one again being the HP Pavilion).

One component that won’t be easy to swap out is the Dell Wireless 1504 single-band (2.4GHz), 1x1, 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter, which delivers a physical link rate of just 150 megabits per second. The laptop doesn’t provide Bluetooth support, either. But it does have a gigabit ethernet interface.

Unlike most of the notebooks in this price range, the Latitude 3330’s chassis contains some aluminum elements that render it considerably more rigid than the other machines we looked at. The lid, on the other hand, is rather flimsy, and the display inside doesn’t feature edge-to-edge glass, as most of the others do.

The PCMark 7 Productivity element of our benchmark suite evaluates a system's performance with everyday office tasks.

The Latitude 3330’s display isn’t wide enough to accommodate a deck with both a full-size keyboard and a numeric keypad, but the system’s arrow keys are full-size and not easily mistaken for anything else. Apart from not being backlit, the island-style keyboard is well designed and a joy to type on, delivering firm but springy tactile feedback. The Function keys in the top row play their traditional roles, so you’ll need to hold down the Fn key and tap them to access their alternative assignments, such as controlling a media player.

Benchmark performance

The Latitude 3330 tied for dead last in our Notebook WorldBench 8.1 benchmark. Its overall score of 64 was more than 35 percent slower than our reference Asus VivoBook S550CA. Drilling down into some of the individual benchmarks from that suite, I note that the Dell finished next to last in the PCMark7 Productivity benchmark and the BioShock Infinite test, beating out only the HP Pavilion TouchSmart 11z-e000.

Our Notebook WorldBench 8.1 suite includes a broad array of benchmarks for evaluating a notebook's performance.

Connectivity and conclusion

Dell broke the pattern of Intel-powered laptops providing only one USB 3.0 port. The Latitude 330 boasts two, plus one USB 2.0 port that can charge a device whether the computer is awake or asleep. It doesn’t have an optical drive, but its media card reader supports both SD and MMC media.

ROBERT CARDINThe Dell Latitude 3330 is one of the lighter laptops we evaluated.

Dell follows the crowd by providing HDMI and VGA video outputs. Because the Latitude’s Wi-Fi adapter isn’t an Intel model, the system doesn’t support Intel’s WiDi wireless media-streaming. If your primary concern is long battery life, however, be aware that this machine turned in a first-place finish, running for 5 hours, 13 minutes. And you can quickly pull out a run-down battery and snap in a fresh one to double the laptop’s useful life. But that’s one of the system’s few truly bright spots.

We also reviewed this model as a small-business laptop. You can read that review here.

Editor's note: This notebook was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five notebooks we compared it to, here.

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Dell adds consumer touches to Latitude notebook line

Dell’s latest revision of its Latitude notebooks borrows stylistic elements from its XPS consumer lineup, while retaining a traditional focus on the enterprise. The most important addition, however, is full touch capability.

Last-generation products like the Dell Latitude 3330 offered either Windows 7 or Windows 8, but not a touchscreen to take full advantage of the new Windows 8 operating system. That’s been fixed in the current generation, with Corning’s Gorilla Glass NBT to boot. Larger operations may be slower to roll out Windows 8, however, so while customers can opt for a touch display, a Windows 7 option is still there, as is Ubuntu.

As Dell has done before, the Latitude line is offered in three families—the basic 3000 series, the midrange 5000 series, and the premium 7000 series. Dell’s 3000 series will be priced at $599 and higher, with the option of either 14-inch or 15.6-inch displays. Dell will offer both 14.1-inch and 15.6-inch options in the 5000 series, though it did not disclose a base price. Dell classifies the 7000 series as ultrabooks, with 12.5-inch and 14.0-inch options, beginning at $1049. Both the 3000 and 7000 systems are available immediately; the 5000 series arrives in October, Dell said. All use Intel’s fourth-generation Core or “Haswell” processor.

According to Kirk Schell, executive director and general manager for Dell’s Business Client Product Group, businesses loved the Inspiron innards, but asked Dell why only the XPS lineup should look like a premium device. Dell obliged, taking the carbon weave from the XPS and applying it to the Inspiron line.

Dell executives said that the notebooks would launch with Windows 8, upgradeable to Windows 8.1 when the OS update is released on Oct. 17.

At press time, Dell only made available the spec sheet for the Latitude 7000 series. The Inspiron 7000s can be configured with Core i3, i5, or i7 processors and up to 16GB of RAM. Both only use Intel’s 4400 integrated graphics. Dell offers a range of connectivity options, from 802.11g/n Wi-Fi and WiGig, plus three USB 3.0 slots, an HDMI output, and a mini DisplayPort connector. Dell’s spec sheet does not mention SD card storage.

Both ultrabooks are backward-compatible with Dell’s existing E-series docks, and can be configured to dock wirelessly, using WiGig. In addition to the Gorilla Glass, both have been ruggedized to MIL-STD 810G specs.

The E7240 uses either a 12.5-inch 1366 x 768 non-touch display or a 1920 x 1080 touch display, with only SSD options, up to 256GB, available as storage. The battery options are a trifle smaller, with either a 3-cell (31Whr) or a 4-cell (42 Whr) available. (Both batteries are user-swappable.) The E7440 provides a larger, 14.5-inch display, with the choice of the cheaper 1366 x 768 display, or the 1920 x 1080 display in either touch or non-touch options.

The E7240 measures 12.2 inches wide by 8.3 inches deep by 0.79 inches thick, weighing 2.99 pounds, while the E7440 measures 13.2 inches wide by 9.1 inches deep by 0.8 inches thick, and 3.6 pounds.

The 3000 series is available in two models: the Latitude 15 3000, with a 15.6-inch display; and the Latitude 14 3000, with a 14.0-inch display. Both ship with either 1366 x 768, 1920 x 1080, or 1366 x 768 touch options.

The Latitude 15 measures 14.8 inches wide, 10.2 inches deep, and between 0.99 inches and 1.33 inches high depending on the battery selected and the display chosen. The weight of the Latitude 15 ranges from 4.8 to 5.1 pounds. The Latitude 14 measures 13.62 inches wide, 9.65 inches deep, and from 0.98 inches to 1.3 inches deep. The Latitude 14 weighs between 4.3 pounds to 4.6 pounds, depending on the configuration.

Detailed specifications for the Latitude 5000 series were not available. The 5000 series adds an ultra-low-voltage Core processor for extended battery, and both the 3000 and the 5000 series provide a discrete graphics option.

A few years back, “99 percent of the story would have been the hardware, and the rest software and services,” Schell said. Now, Dell, like other hardware makers, would like to bundle up its hardware with related software and services, selling them to customers as a complete package.

As such, Dell didn’t disclose what it would charge customers for services like Dell ProSupport, which offers unlimited repair, plus support for third-party software; if your tax software breaks, Dell can fix it, Schell said. Dell’s DDP Protected Workspace also “sandboxes” the OS and many applications, so if a user clicks on an infected document, it will just poison the sandbox, where it can be isolated and eradicated. The technology, first announced in June, will be offered free for a year, then for an annual subscription fee after that. Like an antimalware subscription, customers can let that subscription lapse and then later renew it, Schell said.

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