Dell Latitude D430 Review

Business notebooks are supposed to be the top-of-the-line laptops, with the highest build quality and top notch support. My last two notebooks were both high-quality business notebooks, and I have come to expect the best in my notebooks.

With ultraportable machines, there is an even higher emphasis and these laptops must be built as solid as possible. They get carried around more, used more, knocked around more, and have to be built for road warriors. Does the D430 deliver?

Undoubtedly. The D430 may possibly be the most solid notebook I have ever held in my hands despite its feather-light weight. The entire chassis is constructed of magnesium alloy, but some of the laptop's black exterior "plating" I believe is still made of a very solid plastic material. Other parts of the notebook, like the base of the chassis or the inside frame of the LCD screen are solid metal alloy. The notebook chassis is extremely well built and cannot be twisted or pushed around at all. The palm rests are the only part of the base that flexes, but I believe that is because only the battery is found underneath that location. When pushing in and prodding around the rest of the notebook base, it became very clear to me the D430 is very well packed inside and has a very strong frame to support/protect the entire chassis.

When closed, the laptop seems virtually indestructible.

The screen construction is also impressive, but not as much as the chassis' construction. As with most laptop screens, the display can be twisted a little bit ... but not nearly as much as other laptops I have encountered. The bezel has one small weak spot at the inside vertical edges, and when pushing in on the LCD screen from up top I can produce some ripples on the screen. Is either a lot? Would it possibly be enough to damage the screen? No on both counts, but as with any notebook do not act out any of your dreams of dropping bricks directly onto the notebook. When in my backpack or another tight spot, I have not needed to worry about the screen protection. I have included a video illustrating the squeeze effect, but I am pressing VERY hard to produce the ripples.

Other parts of the notebook are sturdy as well. The hard drive on the D430 features hardware-based shock protection (I never saw evidence of a hardware and software based solution like the Fujitsu E8410, HP 8710p, or HP nc8430), and the keyboard/mousepad area has absolutely no flex so all those computer parts directly underneath your working area are perfectly safe.

Coming in at a meager 12" in size, the D430 is definitely a feather-of-a-notebook. When placed in my backpack, I really do not notice the extra weight and it is no trouble to take with me every day. The only bad thing about such a light laptop is that if you leave it behind somewhere, you are not going to notice a huge weight lifted off your shoulders. From experience, I've had to learn to check a little more carefully to make sure the laptop is not left behind.

Another feature that needs mentioning is the DVD drive, or lack thereof. The D430 managed to achieve its incredible thinness by ditching an internal DVD drive and going with an external Dell-specific-version-of-USB external USB DVD drive that can run off of the notebook's power mains to minimize the cable requirements. For users that do not need an optical drive very often, this will be perfectly fine. Users who need it more frequently may find themselves wondering if they'd want to carry around a second piece of equipment. I myself do not find it annoying to be missing a drive whatsoever, as I rarely need to use an optical drive during normal usage. I love having the option to shed some backpack weight and leave the DVD drive at home, but some may not.

As far as appearances go, this is a business notebook. Appropriately so, the D430 features a mostly black and gun-metal gray visual design. When compared to the design of the HP Compaq business notebooks, I would say that (1) the exterior of the Latitudes does not look as sharp but (2) the interior sections of the D430 look more professional and sharper.

The exterior of the D430 (aka the back of the LCD screen and the bottom of the notebook) appears to be almost 100 percent gun-metal gray, which is a design feature that we've seen in Latitudes for a long time. It's getting kind of old, but it still looks nice. But an update would be nicer. The interior of the D430 is really what looks nice and professional. The lines are sharper and the overall appearance is more visually appealing than what I have been using for the last year and a half. Edges are more of a rounded shape, unlike the HP's physically sharper and straight edges.

When closed, the D430 reminds you of a thin workbook or textbook. In fact, the dimensions of the D430 are fairly close to standard 8.5"x11" paper and I regularly carry my D430 inside of a stack of notes and books. For a college student, this is really nice as you can move around with all of that in your hands and not have a problem with any of it. Try moving a 17" notebook with a few paper notebooks on top and see how awkward it is, and then you'll understand why one can appreciate the size of the 12" D430.

There is no doubt in my mind that the D430's keyboard is amongst the best I've ever typed on. It may even be THE best I've ever used. There is a little more feedback in the key-presses than my 8710p or the nc8430, and Dell even managed to fit in a full-size keyboard in the 12" frame. The keyboard feels extremely firm, and there is no flex anywhere on the keyboard when using it.

The keyboard also has a slightly different layout than what I am used to, but I've learned and adjusted. The biggest difference is that the PageUp and PageDown buttons are located above the arrow keys in the lower right corner of the keyboard, but they are within easy reach of the pinky finger and I prefer to use them instead of scrolling now. The F1-F12 keys up top are a little too thin for my tastes though, as are the Esc, Home, End, Insert, and Delete keys that are found in the function button row. Dell could probably have made those 17 keys full size had their design department thought a little more creatively.

The pointer stick is also pleasantly surprising, and I've found it to be very responsive to my touch. Controlling the directional movement of the mouse is fairly fluid, and I've found it to be less clunky than the sticks found on the HP Compaq notebooks.

The dual mouse buttons are also quiet during operation, however the mousepad is not as nice as I would have liked. I do miss the middle (third) mouse button featured on the HP Compaq machines. However, I did recently discover that the Dell mouse drive interprets a left+right click as a middle click, so maybe I'll adjust. But I doubt it will ever be the same.

Running my fingers over the touchpad feels fine, and the mousepad is fairly responsive so movements are smooth. At first I had to adjust a little bit to the touch and operation of this trackpad, since I was moving from the HP laptops to the D430, but in the end I have found the trackpad to be very responsive and useful.

I find the switch to be more annoying than anything for me. I cannot benefit from it, and it gives a little too much between the "On" and "Check Networks" positions. Even more so, the button is hard to toggle to the "Off" position and yet too easy to turn it back "On." Overall, this button is a worthless feature for the laptop and the space should have been used to install a side USB port which would have been more useful.

In the last month or so, I've had to travel extensively with the laptop, and often without the benefit of a wall plug nearby. As previously mentioned, this is one of the large benefits of having a ULV processor and low powered parts. Even with the relatively puny 6-cell battery, the laptop still squeezes out an incredible battery life.

With the screen at the maximum brightness, wireless ON, in the presentation power mode (which keeps the processor down to 800MHz), and while performing moderately difficult tasks on the D430, the laptop managed to clock in at a battery life of about 2 hours and 16 minutes. Considering I was frequently using the computer, accessing data and playing music, etc, etc, that is a fairly good lifetime. Estimates indicated that under heavy load the laptop should still last over an hour at least, possibly more than 90 minutes.

With the screen at the minimum brightness, wireless ON, presentation mode, and leaving the computer at idle most of the time while occasionally typing this review and browsing the internet, the laptop managed to score an impressive 3 hours and 18 minutes.

During other tests, there were times that my estimated battery life was 4-5 hours, but I was never able to actually achieve that projected battery life. But the potential is apparently there.

One concern I am sure users will have is the power button on the side of the notebook. It could potentially be easy to hit when the laptop is in a backpack or luggage or briefcase. Everyone knows that an active laptop is such a small space could cause heat related failures, and Dell was aware of this as well. Fortunately, Dell programmed the BIOS of the laptop to NOT turn on if the laptop is closed. If you hit the power button and the D430 boots while shut, the POST sequence will recognize that the computer needs to shut down, which protects the laptop.

From left to right: WiFi toggle switch, power button.

From left to right: Ethernet, modem, 2x USB, VGA-out, 1x USB (also used for DVD drive connection), IEEE 1394 Firewire 400 port, and the AC power jack.

The Intel 3945 802.11a/b/g WiFi card works perfectly fine. I have no issues connecting to the networks I frequent, no disconnections, and few problems at all. The only problem is that when resuming from standby or hibernate, I sometimes have to ‘reboot' the WiFi card (via a repair option available by right clicking the WiFi task bar icon) to get it to connect again. But I do not think this is D430-specific, as I've seen this happen on many other laptops.

Another interesting feature about the WiFi card is a hardware switch that can toggle the card on and off, and a quick flick of the switch can make a popup list appear with all local networks shown. When turned off, the switch's light supposedly tells you if there is an unprotected network nearby, but since I only use encrypted networks I cannot yet test that feature. However, the switch does require a little bit too much of a nudge to toggle the on/off position of the switch.

I find the switch to be more annoying than anything for me. I cannot benefit from it, and it gives a little too much between the "On" and "Check Networks" positions. Even more so, the button is hard to toggle to the "Off" position and yet too easy to turn it back "On." Overall, this button is a worthless feature for the laptop and the space should have been used to install a side USB port which would have been more useful.

In the last month or so, I've had to travel extensively with the laptop, and often without the benefit of a wall plug nearby. As previously mentioned, this is one of the large benefits of having a ULV processor and low powered parts. Even with the relatively puny 6-cell battery, the laptop still squeezes out an incredible battery life.

With the screen at the maximum brightness, wireless ON, in the presentation power mode (which keeps the processor down to 800MHz), and while performing moderately difficult tasks on the D430, the laptop managed to clock in at a battery life of about 2 hours and 16 minutes. Considering I was frequently using the computer, accessing data and playing music, etc, etc, that is a fairly good lifetime. Estimates indicated that under heavy load the laptop should still last over an hour at least, possibly more than 90 minutes.

With the screen at the minimum brightness, wireless ON, presentation mode, and leaving the computer at idle most of the time while occasionally typing this review and browsing the internet, the laptop managed to score an impressive 3 hours and 18 minutes.

During other tests, there were times that my estimated battery life was 4-5 hours, but I was never able to actually achieve that projected battery life. But the potential is apparently there.

One concern I am sure users will have is the power button on the side of the notebook. It could potentially be easy to hit when the laptop is in a backpack or luggage or briefcase. Everyone knows that an active laptop is such a small space could cause heat related failures, and Dell was aware of this as well. Fortunately, Dell programmed the BIOS of the laptop to NOT turn on if the laptop is closed. If you hit the power button and the D430 boots while shut, the POST sequence will recognize that the computer needs to shut down, which protects the laptop.

As an ultraportable machine, the D430 features Intel's latest ULV (ultra low voltage) processors. They're designed from the ground up to run on a minimum amount of power, not output much heat, and performance is definitely a secondary concern to battery life. Even more interesting is the ULV series is one of the few Intel processors that still offer single-core processors that consume even less power.

The D430's U1400 is the latest single-core ULV from Intel and consumes about 5.5W, whereas the latest ULV dual-core U7600 consumes about 9W. More powerful processor means less battery life and more heat, and these two reasons are exactly why I choose the U1400 over the U7600 when purchasing this notebook. Ultraportable's main concern is overall battery life and just getting those ‘relatively simple' tasks done on the fly without needing to carry around a bulkier notebook. One does not need a lot of power for the general office tasks, which is what the D430 is marketed for.

Single-core processor? Is that not a pretty old (and almost obsolete) technology? For mainstream notebooks, yes. But the D430's single-core U1400 is definitely capable of performing to my satisfaction, and a single-core processor is a perfect solution for extending the battery life.

Before any benchmarks were done, a fresh copy of XP was installed and the system updated. It was always plugged in and set to the "Always ON" power profile.

PCMark05 is a synthetic benchmark that gives users a general idea of how powerful any processor is, and the D430 came in with a final score of 1454. A little more optimization could probably have yielded a slightly higher score, but one should expect to be within 100 points of this benchmark under most circumstances.

In addition to the raw PCMark score provided by the benchmark, the D430 has the following detailed ratings.

Overall, I would have to say that the Dell D430 has plenty of positive aspects to the notebook, but there are also a few flaws evident as well. Most laptops are not going to be perfect, and it is simply a matter of user preferences that determine what features of the notebook you love, and what flaws you cannot live with at all.

As an ultraportable machine though, the Dell D430 strikes a great balance between features, portability, and price. The amount of power inside of the laptop, even though it is a meager amount, is more than enough power to run 95% of your daily/average computing tasks. And for those who need more power, there are dual-core options available. Sure, the laptop admittedly has flaws like the horrid speaker and the slightly-below-average screen, but the D430 has too many good things going for it to turn it away as a potential system.

But notebooks in this category are largely evaluated on portability, longevity, and build quality. The Dell Latitude D430 definitely managed to excel in all three categories. This laptop is the best built I think I've ever owned, the battery life is respectable given the notebook's size, and the notebook's size itself is a huge boon to portability. I cannot stress enough how much easier a 12.1" system is on a student's backpack (or a business professional's briefcase), and how easy it is to just take the notebook around and be prepared for any situation.

Business professionals, college students, and even home users should seriously consider the Latitude D430 notebook, as it always delivers when you need it to most.

Pros

• Cheap when purchased used from Dell Outlet.

• Still a good value when purchased new from Dell.

• Excellent chassis sturdiness, above average LCD bezel sturdiness.

• Top notch keyboard, average touchpad.

• Incredibly tiny laptop that still packs a respectable punch.

• Sharp screen when viewed head on.

• Ambient light sensor actually works well.

• Low powered single core and dual core processors available, all of them being speedy enough for general usage.

• Respectable battery life, smart BIOS that prevent notebook from booting when closed.

Cons

• External DVD drive (for some this may be a pro though).

• Average to below-average viewing angles.

• HDD transfer speeds

• Worthless WiFi switch, could have been another USB port.

• Needs another USB port, only three on the system.

• Horrid speaker.