Review: Dell Latitude E5550 Delivers Strong Performance for Those On a Budget
The Dell Latitude E5550 offers solid performance and some additional features that place it near the front of the pack of similar low-priced notebooks, making it a good choice for budget-conscious agencies that need to equip large numbers of users.
Quick and powerful enough to support most enterprise applications, the E5550 and its Intel 2.2 gigahertz processor burned through most of our tests. Pushing the envelope with the latest version of Adobe Photoshop yielded reasonable performance, which was likely due to the included four gigabytes of DDR3L SDRAM. Even memory and drive-intensive processes such as anti-virus scanning ran smoothly without impeding performance.
A 500GB hard drive provides plenty of space for any operating system as well as storage, and the USB 3.0 ports work great with external hard drives for further expansion. Performance testing with an external hard drive produced results that were almost as fast as using the internal disk.
It was surprising to find a quality 15.6-inch screen configured to a widescreen, 16:9 aspect ratio as the main display. With a native resolution of 1366x768, everything from PowerPoint presentations to training videos really popped. What’s more, the anti-glare coating makes the Latitude suitable for almost any office environment, including those with traditional florescent overhead lighting that tends to obscure LEDs.
The internal speakers that support the display might not be movie theater quality, but are adequate for most presentations without requiring additional amplification.
Buyers can select from their choice of Windows 7 or 8.1 as the main operating system. Our evaluation unit came with Windows 8.1, which we immediately upgraded to Windows 10 for free as part of the package.
Dell Latitude E5550
Processor: 2.6GHz Intel Core i7 5600U Dual-Core
Dimensions: 10x14.8x0.9 inches
Weight: 4.72 pounds
Processor: 2.2GHz Intel Core i5-5200U
Memory: 4GB DDR3L SDRAM
Storage: 500GB
Ports: 3 USB 3.0 ports, VGA interface, HDMI graphics
CDW-G price: $823.93
