Dell Latitude 9440 Hands On: LED Touchpad and Sleek Keys Make a Cooler Business Laptop

Dell has a wave of new commercial PCs for 2023 in its Latitude, OptiPlex, and Precision lines—but of the bunch, it's the Latitude 9440 that turned our heads. This laptop's top-end components, executive style, and helpful features make it stand out as a truly cool business laptop to C-suite staff and fleet managers alike.

We got a chance to check out this sleek business machine prior to its announcement. You can see our impressions and get a closer look at the Dell Latitude 9440 in the video above, and read below for even more details.

Doing Business in Style

Business-centric laptops usually aren’t the most exciting, but this Dell's fresh design features and premium build have our attention. At the most basic level, this is a 2-in-1 convertible business laptop with a touch screen. The panel is a 16:10 QHD+ touch display, rated at 500 nits of brightness.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Taking portability into account for mobile professionals, the laptop weighs in at 3.38 pounds. It's made with sustainable materials, including ocean-bound plastic, recycled copper, recycled aluminum, and recyclable packaging. My initial impression is that the Latitude’s overall look was inspired by the Dell XPS 13 Plus, with its larger flush keys and some LED touch elements. The lack of key spacing may take some getting used to, but unlike the XPS 13 Plus, the function row is still made up of physical keys.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The LED touch button feature has been moved to the haptic touchpad. The touchpad itself is a large, nearly unsegmented pad—again like the XPS 13 Plus. However, a difference is that this touchpad has demarcations on either side for where the bounds of the touch area end.

On the top edge of the touchpad, you’ll find four LED buttons for toggling the mic, camera, screen share, and chat controls. These are of course meant to be used during online meetings and calls, which are more common than ever with more people working remotely, and will show up contextually.

I think it looks pretty sleek overall, and if the exterior still looks like it’s all business, that’s probably for the best in professional settings. The physical build is rounded out by three Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports and an audio jack.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

On the inside, we’re looking at Intel’s 13th Generation Core processors with vPro up to Core i7, as much as 64GB of memory, Intel Iris Xe Graphics, and as much as 2TB of solid-state storage. Those are straightforward selections for a business laptop, but we appreciate that the parts can scale pretty highly for more demanding users.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The design and performance are key, but Dell also rounds out this offering with a pro feature set, including a full HD IR camera, Dell Optimizer software to enhance your performance and privacy, intelligent audio and noise cancellation, fast charging, and smarter accessory pairing.

Dell has yet to reveal its price, but the Latitude 9440 will be available later this year with more details forthcoming.

The Rest of the Dell's Commercial Lineup

As mentioned, the Latitude 9440 is just one of the new product announcements, even if it's our favorite so far. The other new products range through Dell's Latitude, Precision, and OptiPlex lines. The Optimizer software will also launch on March 23 along with the Latitude. These products are as follows:

• Latitude 7340, 7440, 7640 (alternative lightweight premium business laptops) will be available March 23, starting at $1,676.99

• Latitude 5340, 5440, 5540 (mainstream business laptops) will be available March 23, starting at $1,620.73

• Latitude Chromebook (ChromeOS-based business laptop) will be available March 23, price TBA

• Precision 3480, 3580, 3581 (mobile workstations) will be available March 23, starting at $1,439, $1,459, and $1,699 respectively

• Precision 5480, 5680 (step-up mobile workstations) will be available April 20 and May 18, respectively, price TBA

• Precision 7680, 7780 (premium mobile workstations) will be available March 23, starting at $2,529 and $2,829 respectively

• Precision 5860 Tower, 7960 Tower, 7960 Rack (workstation desktops and rack) will be available April 18, price TBA

• OptiPlex All-in-One (AIO desktop with built-in camera) will be available March 23, starting at $1,591

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• OptiPlex Micro (super-compact business desktop) will be available March 23, starting at $1,090

• OptiPlex Small Form Factor (SFF business tower desktop) will be available March 23, starting at $1,115

• OptiPlex Tower (standard business tower desktop) will be available March 23, starting at $1,215