Close

See How Your Peers Are Moving Forward in the Cloud

New research from CDW can help you build on your success and take the next step.

Click Here to Read the Report
Jan 25 2016
Hardware

Review: Dell Latitude E5550 Delivers Strong Performance for Those On a Budget

This solid-performing notebook offers mid-tier features at an entry-level price.
John Breeden II
by

John Breeden II is an award-winning reviewer and public speaker with 20 years of experience covering technology.

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.

How to Upgrade the Dell Latitude E5550 to Windows 10

Dell offers users a choice of operating systems for the Latitude E5550 notebook: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10.

Most likely, state and local governments will choose to work with either Windows 7 or Windows 10. Windows 8.1 was never really adopted in business settings for a variety of reasons. If an organization has standardized on Windows 7, then they can order a Latitude to come with that OS. However, agencies considering a migration to Windows 10 can upgrade the Latitude for free from any Windows 8.1 build.

Our review unit was configured with Windows 8.1. After a few quick baseline performance tests, we upgraded to Windows 10. Upgrading is relatively painless, if somewhat time-consuming.

To begin the upgrade, first configure the system to work with Windows 8.1 as part of the standard setup process. Windows should remember all network names, IP addresses, ID information and even things like time zones and wallpapers when moving up to 10.

Once the setup is complete, click on the upgrade icon. Clean systems can ignore the option of backing up everything first, which provides another reason to perform this step quickly.

Windows will then download the files needed to run Windows 10. Given the size of the file, it may take an hour or more over a slower connection. There’s nothing for a user to do but wait, so the process can be set to run overnight.

The actual installation process that accompanies the download went fairly quickly. It took 46 minutes from start to finish to upgrade our evaluation unit from Windows 8.1 to 10.

While this is an extra step, it’s not too labor-intensive. Obtaining the free upgrade to Windows 10 presents an option for governments that want to combine Windows 10 with the economic and performance benefits of the Dell Latitude E550 model.

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

LDProd/ThinkStock

More On

Related Articles