Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Made Even Better with Speakerphone

Unboxing the Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Box

Let’s kick off the Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 review with our unboxing. This appears to be the standard issue enterprise Dell laptop given the box. Inside the box for our review unit, we found the following items:

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Box content

Appearance

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Lid

The Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 is a business laptop, and it doesn’t appear to be much different compared to the other Latitude models in terms of design as it’s more 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.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Open up the lid

Open up the lid, which you can easily do so with one hand, and you’ll see the 15-inch Full HD InfinityEdge display, white backlit chiclet keyboard sandwiched between two speakers, a trackpad, and product stickers. In case you’re wondering, the power button is located on the top-left corner, on the keyboard itself. All four bezels on the display are very thin but the top and bottom bezels are just a bit thicker. The webcam is located on the top bezel.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Ports

On the left side, you can find an HDMI port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a microSD card reader. As for the right side, you can find a wedge lock slot, a combo audio jack, and a USB-A port. There’s nothing on the rear except for a small exhaust and a view of the hinges.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Bottom

Moving over to the bottom, you will three rows of air vents, two thin rubberized feet on the top and bottom, 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 9520 2-in-1 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 heavier ones among all the Latitude laptops we’ve tried. It’s not heavy by any means, at just 1.5kg, but the weight feels more spread out within a relatively compact chassis.

Specifications

Performance

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – CrystalDiskMark

Starting off our benchmark suite with CrystalDiskMark, it shows that the 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD in the Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 performs relatively fast. This would equate to fast loading speeds / boot up times, and the capacity is definitely more than adequate given it’s a business laptop.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Cinebench R20

On Cinebench R20, the single core performance is admirable but the multi core score does seem a little lackluster. I would expect it to be closer to the Intel Core i7-1165G7 but unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Unigine SuperPosition

Now taking into accounts its graphical capabilities, the Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 performed around the level that we expected, nearly breaking the 1,000 mark. After all, this is the 4K Optimized benchmark, which will require a powerful GPU to get a decent score.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – 3DMark Time Spy

A similar pattern can be seen in 3DMark’s Time Spy benchmark, albeit not as bad. It seems that even with just the Intel Iris Xe graphics, it can match up with another laptop running an Intel Core 1165G7 with a GeForce MX330 discrete GPU, and that says a lot.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – PCMark 10

As for PCMark 10, the Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 performs pretty well across all areas given the hardware. It’s no surprise that it’s rather low in the Digital Content Creation area but it’s to be expected as that would require more graphical power to score high. Overall, it’s shaping up to be a good machine for productivity.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Battery life

When it comes to battery life, this type of laptop usually excels in the area. In fact, the Latitude 9510 laptop still holds record here. For the Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 however, it managed to last an admirable 11 hours and 9 minutes (669 minutes) in the PCMark Modern Office endurance test. This means that you should be able to use it a full day without the need to charge it.

User Experience

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review

The Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 is one of the many ultraportable productivity laptops that serves as a solution for many businesses. It’s powered by the Intel Core i5-1145G7 with two sticks of 8GB LPDDR4X RAM clocking in at 4266MHz, and a speedy 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD. The Intel Iris Xe Graphics isn’t particularly strong but it still performs decently.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Display

This laptop uses a 15-inch Full HD display with touchscreen support and 360° rotatable hinge. You do get pretty nice colors with good viewing angles, so it’s more than enough for work. Just keep in mind that it’s not meant for colour-accurate work, but you can still make use of the laptop for that purpose if you connect it to a more proper external display.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Ports

As for ports, the Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 has a decent array of ports. You get two Thunderbolt 4 ports which supports a variety of uses including 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, it’s adequate.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Keyboard

The keyboard on the Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 is pretty comfortable to use. You get decent tactile feedback, white backlighting, and short travel distance with no flex. The power button can be found here on the top-right corner. I wished they included a fingerprint scanner for added convenience and security. The trackpad is there and it works fine but there’s nothing worth shouting out.

As it is part and parcel for a Dell machine, you get a full suite of Dell software that you can make use of such as Dell Power Manager and Dell Digital Delivery. Some software like Dell Mobile Connect, which wirelessly links to your smartphone, needs to be downloaded via the Windows Store but that means less bloatware for you. 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.

In the sound department, the speakers on the Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 are excellent. The top-firing speakers are loud, it can pump out a rather punchy bass, and it can have clear mids and highs. For built-in speakers, it’s one of the best out there. It should work especially great for conference calls but if you want something better, there is the optional Dell Speakerphone that you can get.

If you’d rather get a consumer-grade ultraportable laptop instead, check out our review of the Dell XPS 13 by clicking right here.

Dell Speakerphone MH3021P Add-On

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Speakerphone

At first glance, you might think this Dell Speakerphone MH3021P is merely a portable speaker but it’s actually more than just that. It’s also a USB-C hub with a built-in microphone and has Power Delivery support. In simpler terms, you get extra ports, better conference call quality, and still use one USB-C port, or in the case of this laptop, a Thunderbolt 4 port, to keep the machine healthily charged.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review – Speakerphone ports

With the use of a single USB-C port, you get two additional USB-A 3.1 ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, and dual microphones which make up its omni-directional mic setup. Furthermore, the USB-C cable is built in, and you get additional control keys for answering / ending calls, volume adjustments, and to mute / unmute.

As for how well the Dell Speakerphone MH3021P works, it really depends on use case. If you’re doing video conference calls with multiple people in the same room, it works great. You can definitely get multiple voices to be heard clearly without the need to raise their voices unnecessarily loud nor speaking too close to it. Depending on the room, you may need to adjust the sensitivity a bit.

Background noise is also kept at a minimum with audio coming from the speaker not being captured. However, it’s nowhere near podcast-level quality as a standalone condenser or dynamic microphone, but it would be difficult to achieve this without everyone having their own microphone. It’s meant for convenience and it can perform admirably well.

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Verdict

Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 Review

The Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 is an excellent business laptop, especially given what you’re getting. At RM 8,952.54 however, it is rather pricey and most people would expect at least and i7 with that price but not to worry, it still packs a punch. At the end of our Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 review, I award this business laptop with our coveted Gold Pokdeward.

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