Mobility, security, manageability and reliability have long been the cornerstones of Dell’s well-respected Latitude series. The 2017-version of the 14-inch model, which is now simply called Latitude 7480 – both the number 14 and the letter “E” have been dropped from the name – improves on the predecessor Dell Latitude 14 E7470 in several key areas, which will touch upon during the course of the review.

Dell’s business notebooks have always impressed us with their excellent build quality and great ergonomics, but it’s probably safe to say that the company has neglected looks in the past. With the latest two iterations, we are happy to report that this is changing as well. The new Latitude is sleeker than before and looks decidedly upscale while not neglecting the core values that made the series so great for business in the first place.

As part of the “Premium” 7000-line, the review laptop picks – in some ways at least – up where the “Mainstream” Latitude 5000-series leaves off. Our review notebook – which sells for $1850 – comes with 14-inch FHD IPS display, dual-core i7 CPU, 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB SSD and is therefore, at least as far as the hardware is concerned, strikingly similar to the mid-level Latitude 5480 we reviewed less than a month ago. The competition is thus similar as well and includes the higher-end business notebooks from Lenovo like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2017 or HP’s EliteBook 840 G4, among others.