Review: Dell Latitude 6430u Ultrabook

When did "business laptop" become a euphemism for a machine that's stripped down and overpriced? Are the corporations of the world so flush with cash that basic features and value are no longer concerns?

Dell's Latitude 6430u, an ultrabook designed for the business market, is a case study of what's going awry in the business computing space in 2013. But let's start with the good.

Dell has built this ultrabook with the best of intentions. It is corporate-friendly handsome and well-designed, with thoughtful features like soft-touch paint and your choice of input devices, touchpad or pointing stick. There are three USB 3.0 ports (one an eSATA combo port), HDMI, Ethernet and VGA ports, and an SD memory card slot.

The keyboard is spill-resistant, and for environments tougher than Starbucks, Dell says the laptop has passed 14 of the 29 military-standard 810G tests. As is the case with most corporate laptops, it's vPro-enabled for central management and security.

Sounds good so far, but let's talk about the tradeoffs.

The most noticeable one is that this machine lacks a touchscreen. In fact, the LCD is a total disaster – a mere 1366x768 pixels and extremely dim to the point where daylight filtering through a nearby window makes it difficult to see anything.

Though it's an ultrabook in name, the 6430u is hardly a featherweight. At 22mm thick (including feet) it is a touch too fat for Intel's ultrabook specifications, and at almost exactly four pounds of weight, it's decidedly hefty, too – in fact it's the heaviest 14-inch laptop without an internal optical drive that I've tested since at least March 2012.

And then there's the price. At $1,279, it's also the most expensive ultrabook I've tested in the Windows 8 era, despite lacking some key features.

For your investment you do get some additional, if modest, upgrades. The 1.8GHz Core i5 CPU is a tick faster than the usual 1.7GHz i5 installed on most Windows 8 laptops, and Dell upgrades the RAM to a full 8GB. I'm not sure what the typical business professional would need with that much RAM, but it does power the laptop to excellent benchmark scores on productivity apps. Graphics of course are a no-show here, though the video benchmarks could have been a lot worse. A 128GB SSD is included as well.

The somewhat odd-looking keyboard grew on me after spending some time with the machine. While it's technically an island-style design, the keys have the tapered edges of a traditional keyboard, so there's less room in between the islands (the straits?). If the key travel wasn't so short, it'd be a really nice touch-typing experience. The touchpad and pointing stick both seem perfectly workable.

Strangely, while performance was ultimately exceptional, it took some doing to get it there. My testing experience with the 6430u was marred by more than its fair share of hangs and crashes and other strange behavior. My first run of the PC Mark 7 benchmark (my standard first stop for performance testing) ended with results 30 percent below its eventual high point. Infrequent issues with apps lagging during launch and the laptop's relatively slow boot don't build confidence that its high marks will always be attainable.

WIRED Exceptional performance (when it's firing on all cylinders). Looks good, at least in the boardroom. Five hours of battery life is solid for the category. External DVD burner just a $74 add-on.

TIRED No touchscreen on a Windows 8 ultrabook? What's the point? Erratic performance issues. Dismal screen quality and brightness. Obese. Wildly overpriced. Loud fan.

Updated February 4, 2013: The review has been updated to correct a statement about the absence of keyboard backlighting and to fix a typo on mention of the USB ports. The laptop does have a backlit keyboard, and it has USB 3.0 ports. These changes do not warrant an adjustment to the rating.