Dell Latitude 5300 2-in-1

If the Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1 is the best business convertible you can buy right now, then the Latitude 5300 2-in-1 (starts at $949; $1,519 as tested) is the best convertible business users can afford. This midrange 2-in-1 obliges you to trade sleek aluminum for a plastic enclosure, sacrifice some screen size, and carry around a few extra ounces. You also miss out on Dell's new proximity sensor that streamlines logging into the machine. For those trade-offs, you'll be able to make a much more compelling case to your office's budget manager for the Latitude 5300 2-in-1 than its pricier sibling.

Corporate Economy Class

Compared to Dell's flagship Latitude 7400 2-in-1, the 5300 lacks a few finer design points. In place of brushed-aluminum surfaces and diamond-cut edges, you get a plastic chassis dressed in basic business black. Everything from the lid and display hinges to the keyboard deck, keys, touchpad, and mouse buttons fits the monochromatic color scheme. This is no flimsy flip-and-fold, however—the plastic enclosure is carbon-fiber-reinforced and feels sturdy, with none of the worrying flex, rough edges, or large seams you find on cheap consumer models. The Latitude 5300 2-in-1 looks and feels well-put-together.

Convertibles are usually a bit heavier than traditional laptops because their 360-degree hinges and touch displays add extra ounces. At 3.15 pounds, the Latitude 5300 2-in-1 is fairly light for a convertible with a 13.3-inch screen, though it outweighs the Latitude 7400 2-in-1 (2.99 pounds) despite the latter's larger 14-inch display. It's also a bit thicker (0.78 versus 0.6 inch), though its narrow screen bezels keep its footprint to a trim 12.1 by 8.2 inches.

The keyboard features two-level backlighting but isn't spill-resistant, so you can remain productive in the dark cabin of a red-eye flight (perhaps not with a Diet Coke or coffee also on the tray table). The keys feel firm and springy with just the right amount of travel; I was comfortable and up to speed in no time. No keys are shortened that shouldn't be, and the middle of the keyboard deck flexes only the slightest amount under the fingers of this thunderous typist. To the right of the keyboard, the power button doubles as a fingerprint reader for speedy logins.

Below the keyboard sits a basic, slightly undersize (3.5-by-2-inch) touchpad. It's not the glass-topped pad you'll find on the Latitude 7400 2-in-1, but the slightly textured plastic surface offers nearly friction-free swiping and pinching; it feels accurate and responsive for mousing gestures. Below the touchpad are two mouse buttons that don't fall into the trap of offering too much travel to the point of feeling mushy. And they're quiet when pressed, without the loud clacky noise of some consumer models.

Sights & Sounds

The Latitude 5300 2-in-1 features a 13.3-inch, full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) IPS touch screen. Dell uses Corning Gorilla Glass to help protect the panel in all of its convertible modes: laptop, tablet, tent, and presentation.

The touch display feels responsive both to my fingertip and with a stylus, but the glossy Gorilla Glass layer does mean you might see some glare and reflection. The image looks crisp, and the viewing angles are wide, but brightness is only so-so. I wouldn't go so far as to call the display dull, but in a bright, sunlit room, I wanted to push the display past its peak brightness.

I also wanted to boost the laptop's audio output, particularly the bass. The sound suffices for video conferences during the workday and Netflix at night, but you'll need headphones or an external speaker for anything resembling enjoyable music playback.

Above the display is a 720p webcam. It produced well-balanced photos and videos with accurate skin tones, but it lacks the nifty proximity sensor on the Latitude 7400 2-in-1 that wakes up the system as you approach it. Also, the webcam on my test system was not an IR camera, but that's an optional upgrade if you want to be able to log in via Windows Hello facial recognition.

Ports are minimal but adequate for business users. On the left, you'll find a USB Type-C port, a USB 3.1 Type-A port, an HDMI video output, and the power connector. (In some models, this tester included, the USB Type-C is also a Thunderbolt 3 port.)

On the right is a second USB 3.1 Type-A port—this one able to charge your handheld devices even when the laptop is powered off—along with a microSD card reader, an audio jack, a Noble security-cable locking notch (notably, not a Kensington-style one), and a nano SIM card tray for the optional LTE broadband modem, which wasn't present on this review unit.

While business users will appreciate the HDMI port for monitor or projector presentations, a single USB-C port seems skimpy. I'd gladly trade the round, proprietary power jack for a USB-C port for charging the system, and I'd like a Type-C port on either side of the laptop.

My test system featured a familiar dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter, but you can outfit the Latitude 5300 2-in-1 with an 802.11ax adapter, otherwise known as Wi-Fi 6.

Dell backs the Latitude 5300 2-in-1 with a standard one-year warranty with onsite service after remote diagnosis. Part of the added cost of the Latitude 7400 2-in-1 is its three-year warranty; stretching the 5300's warranty to three years adds $136.50 to its price.

No Gamer, But No Slouch

The base-model Latitude 5300 2-in-1 comes with an Intel Core i3-8145U processor and a skimpy 4GB of memory and 128GB solid-state drive. My review unit stepped up to a 1.6GHz Core i5-8365U chip, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD—about the least you should expect for its $1,519 price. Other laptops will feature a Core i7 CPU, 16GB of memory, and a 512GB SSD as you creep closer to $2,000. That said, the 5300 did well in PC Labs' testing when matched up against other business convertibles.

We included in our test comparisons below results from two other Dell business-minded 2-in-1s of various families and form factors to illustrate the gradations in performance between their CPUs. Meanwhile, everyone in our competitive set relied on the same flavor of integrated Intel UHD Graphics, which is common across today's business laptops...

Productivity, Storage & Media Tests

PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing. The test generates a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.

PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a Storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the boot drive. This yields another proprietary numeric score; again, higher numbers are better.

The Latitude 5300 2-in-1 turned in a positive if predictable result on PCMark 10, finishing just ahead of its two Core i5 peers with 8GB of RAM and slightly behind the two Core i7-based systems that enjoy the benefit of 16GB of memory. Like most laptops we test with speedy SSDs, the systems were tightly grouped in the PCMark 8 Storage trial.

Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.

The 5300 was able to keep pace with its Core i7-based competitors because both its Core i5 chip and the Core i7 CPUs in the others are quad-core chips with eight processing threads. That puts the systems on close footing for a highly threaded test like Cinebench.

Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video (the open-source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file. It's a timed test, and lower results are better.

The systems all finished within a minute or two of each other in Handbrake. A Core i7 CPU and 16GB of RAM aren't needed for light video editing chores; the Core i5-based Latitude 5300 2-in-1 won't keep you waiting.

We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time; as with Handbrake, lower times are better here. The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.

The Latitude 5300 2-in-1 again landed in the middle of the pack, besting the two other Core i5 systems and finishing only a few seconds off the pace set by the two Core i7 convertibles. Occasional photo touch-ups hold no terrors for it.

Graphics Tests

3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores.

Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes. In this case, it's rendered in the company's eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario for a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess.

None of the systems here will be confused with a gaming laptop. With their integrated graphics, these business convertibles failed to move the needle on 3DMark and Superposition. They're designed to run productivity apps and do a bit of media editing, not to play intensive 3D games. With no option to upgrade to dedicated graphics, the Latitude 5300 2-in-1 is not a good pick for creative departments.

Battery Rundown Test

After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop in airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the same Tears of Steel movie we use in our Handbrake trial—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system conks out.

The display is the biggest drain on a laptop's battery, so one benefit of not having the brightest screen is the ability to run longer. The Latitude 5300 2-in-1 lasted for more than 14 hours in our unplugged trial, an impressive result second only to the HP EliteBook x360 1030 G3 in this group. The 5300 should stay with you through the longest of workdays on a single charge.

Saving Cents Without Sacrifice

The Dell Latitude 5300 2-in-1 lacks the wow factor—light weight, aluminum design, and futuristic proximity sensor—of the Latitude 7400 2-in-1. Many business users (or, more accurately stated, IT department managers), however, are willing to cast aside such niceties for a better bottom line. And the 5300 convertible does just that—it drops the flashy aspects of its more spendy sibling to deliver a solid, well-rounded hybrid at a more approachable price. It offers Intel's latest silicon inside a sturdy, compact design that delivers strong performance and tremendous battery life. You may want to date the Latitude 7400 2-in-1, but you'll end up happily married to the Latitude 5300 2-in-1—with your office's budget manager performing the ceremony.

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