Dell Latitude 9510 2-in-1 Review – When Laptops Truly Mean Business

Unboxing the Dell Latitude 9510 2-in-1

Let’s kick off the Dell Latitude 9510 review with our unboxing. Inside the box for our review unit, we found the following items:

• Power cable
• 65W charging brick (USB-C)
• User guide
• Safety and Regulatory Information booklet
• The Dell Latitude 9510 laptop itself

Appearance

The Dell Latitude 9510 is a business laptop, which is why the design is more classy, business-oriented. You get a clean, metallic lid in silver with the Dell logo taking center stage. It’s a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but it’s not too bad. If you really hate it, you could always get a protective carrying case of sorts.

Open up the lid, which you can easily do so with one hand, and you’ll see the 15-inch Full HD IPS display, white backlit chiclet keyboard, two speaker grilles sandwiching the keyboard, a trackpad, and product stickers. All four bezels on the display are very thin, and the webcam is located on the top bezel.

On the left side, you will an HDMI port, two USB Type-C ports, and a microSD card reader. As for the right side, you will find a wedge lock slot, a combo audio jack, and a USB Type-A port. There’s nothing on the rear except for thin air vents and a view of the hinges.

Moving over to the bottom, you will find an air vent, two thin rubberized feet, some product details and product stickers. You can find nine exposed screws here, which will need to be removed if you want to check out the internal components.

Overall, the Dell Latitude 9510 is a clean, classy business laptop that can easily fit anyone. There’s nothing that makes it truly stand out in terms of design, but it’s certainly one of the more portable workhorses around.

Specifications

CPU	Intel Core i7-10810U @ 1.1 GHz (up to 4.9 GHz Boost), 6C/12T, 15W TDP, 14nm
RAM	16GB (2 x 8GB) 2133 MHz LPDDR3
GPU	Intel UHD Graphics
Storage	512GB Kioxia BG4 NVMe SSD
Software	Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Microsoft Office 365 Dell Optimizer Dell Power Manager Dell Digital Delivery Dell Command
Connectivity	Wireless Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz, 802.11ax Bluetooth 5.1 Wired 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port with PowerShare 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports with Thunderbolt 3 / Power Delivery / DisplayPort 1 x uSD 4.0 card slot 1 x uSIM slot (WWAN only) 1 x Wedge-shaped lock slot 1 x Contacted smart card reader (optional)
Display	15″ Full HD 16:9 (1920 x 1080) AG, IR CAM + P-Sensor/Mic, Touch SLP Narrow Bezel (400 Nits) 1 x HDMI 2.0
Webcam	IR Camera (User-Facing fixed focus) + Proximity Sensor (optional)
Audio	4 x Top firing speakers with smart amp 1 x 3.5mm combo audio jack 4 x Noise-cancelling microphones Waves MaxxAudio
Power	90W power adapter (USB-C) 88 WHr Li-Polymer battery Express Charge capable
Dimensions	340.2 x 215.8 x 13.99 mm
Weight	1.5 kg

Performance

Kicking things off with CrystalDiskMark, you can see that the 512GB NVMe SSD performed well. You get fast speeds with a good capacity. Some of you may disagree but keep in mind that this is a business laptop, so for this purpose, it’s plenty. In case you’re wondering, it’s using the Kioxia BG4 NVMe SSD.

In Cinebench R15, the Intel Core i7-10810U powering the Dell Latitude 9510 performed decently enough. It’s certainly interesting to see it beat the Intel Core i7-10710U but lose out to the i5-10210U here. While this laptop does use dual-channel RAM, it does use LPDDR3 clocking at 2133MHz instead of DDR4, which may be the reason why.

As for Cinebench R20, the Dell Latitude 9510 beats the MSI Prestige 14 A10RB, running an Intel Core i7-10710U, in single core but it loses out in multi core. It did beat out the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus in both areas by a good margin, which also uses the Intel Core i7-10710U. It’s pretty interesting to see the results here, but I do believe the difference is indeed due to the RAM configuration.

In Unigine SuperPosition’s 4K Optimized benchmark, the Dell Latitude 9510 had a very slow score. However, this is understandable as the benchmark is GPU-intensive, and you don’t have a discrete GPU here. You only have Intel UHD Graphics to rely on.

The same can be observed in 3DMark’s Time Spy benchmark, where it has a very low score due to the lack of a discrete GPU.

In PCMark, the Dell Latitude 9510 managed to perform well enough for a laptop of this kind. As you might be able to tell, this would be perfect for work, web browsing, and multimedia consumption. Anything more and it might be too much for it to handle, as seen by the Digital Content Creation score.

As for battery life, the Dell Latitude 9510 has the longest battery life among all the laptops that we’ve tested. It far surpasses the second longest battery we’ve seen by more than double the amount, lasting 21 hours and 56 minutes (1,316 minutes). This is made possible thanks to an efficient system coupled with a healthy 88Whr battery. It’s an amazing feat and it’s certainly going to be one that will be tough to beat.

User Experience

The Dell Latitude 9510 is an ultraportable productivity laptop designed for businesses. It’s powered by the Intel Core i7-10810U with two sticks of 8GB LPDDR3 RAM clocking in at 2133MHz, and a speedy 512GB Kioxia BG4 SSD. This laptop would be far more enticing if they included a discrete GPU, at least NVIDIA’s MX lineup, but given the nature of this laptop, it’s understandable why it wasn’t included.

This laptop uses a 15-inch Full HD IPS display with anti-reflective and anti-smudge coating. The colours are nice and punchy, while viewing angles are great. However, the screen is rather dim at max brightness. While you would easily be able to use this for office work, watching videos and surf the web, it might not be so great for colour-accurate work. It’s worth noting that this one has touchscreen support and has a 360° rotatable hinge.

As for ports, the Dell Latitude 9510 has a decent array of ports. You get two USB Type-C ports which support PD charging and DisplayPort, a USB Type-A port with PowerShare so you can charge USB devices even when the laptop is off, an HDMI port, a combo audio jack, a microSD card reader, and a wedge lock slot. I personally would have liked it if they managed to include at least one more USB Type-A port and a full-sized SD card reader but given the size, I’m actually fine with this. At least it has more than the Dell XPS 13.

The keyboard on the Dell Latitude 9510 is a joy to use. It’s a sturdy, backlit keyboard with short travel distance and a little bit of tactility. There’s also no flex on the keyboard, making it pretty comfortable to use, even more so than the MacBook Pro’s Magic Keyboard. The touchpad has a glass surface, making it easy to glide around with a uniformed clicking experience. I kinda wished it had a built-in fingerprint scanner included for added convenience.

As this is a Dell machine, it does come with a suite of Dell software that you can make use of. This includes Dell Power Manager, Dell Command, and Dell Digital Delivery. All of these are designed to make your life easier, such as serving as a hub to get important software and driver updates, battery maintenance, and more.

The most notable thing here is the new Dell Optimizer feature. Utilizing AI technology, it optimizes the laptop based on how you use it. This will result in improved performance for applications, extended battery life, and audio as it adapts accordingly with your environment. Using the software, you add specific software to be optimized, adjust power settings, manually adjust the audio settings, and more.

Given that it is a Dell machine, I figured it would come with the Dell Mobile Connect software so you can wirelessly link your smartphone to the laptop. Interestingly, it doesn’t have it pre-installed and it can’t be installed from the Microsoft Store. Perhaps there is an alternative way of obtaining it directly via Dell.

In the sound department, the speakers on the Dell Latitude 9510 are amazing. The top-firing speakers can get rather loud, it can pump out a surprisingly punchy bass, and it can have clear mids and highs. For built-in speakers, it’s one of the best out there. Oddly enough, it’s supposed to have Waves MaxxAudio but the software isn’t present anywhere. There is a chance it might have been integrated into Dell Optimizer’s audio function as it’s meant to fine-tune the audio experience here.

Dell Latitude 9510 Verdict

The Dell Latitude 9510 is a surprisingly great business laptop. It has good performance for its class, easy to bring around, excellent speakers, decent array of ports for its size, sturdy keyboard, versatile 360° hinge, touchscreen support, extremely lengthy battery life, and a useful software suite.

However, the brightness of the display could be improved, it doesn’t have a discrete GPU option, and no built-in fingerprint reader. At some points, I feel like this is what the Dell XPS 13 should have been but as this is catered to a business crowd, I can understand why. After all, the Dell Malaysia website lists it as RM10,841.91, which is a pretty hefty price tag.

At the end of our Dell Latitude 9510 review, I award this laptop with our coveted Gold Pokdeward.

Big thanks to Dell Malaysia for sending us this laptop for the purpose of this review.