The Dell Latitude 9420 might just be the best business laptop for the non-price-sensitive

When Lenovo says ThinkPad, Dell says Latitude. These are among the best business laptops on the market today. Dell's Latitudes are not spectacular from the outside. The real treasure is on he inside. Like the sensor that unlocks the screen when you lean close enough (and locks it when you leave it at your desk). Or the Artificial Intelligence that tailors all the subtle settings to your behavior after learning the patterns of how you operate.

And of course the vPro platform for hardware as well as firmware, that is optimized for corporate use (read: easy to mass-manage devices remotely).

When you compare the Latitude 9420 to last year's Latitude 9410, the difference won't exactly strike you. But nuances like the vPro can be an important reason to upgrade, especially for businesses that are after top-notch security and performance.

This, of course, comes at a price not all businesses will be able (or willing) to afford.

Starting at $2,039 and includes this device is on the pricier end of the spectrum, even if with a base model featuring a Core i5-1135G7, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 14-inch 1920 x 1200 screen. Most businesses, of course, will pay a lower price thanks to a package deal.

The high-end 2-in-1 model priced at $2,926.75 includes a Core i7-1185G7, double the RAM, four times the storage, and a 2560 x 1600 touch display. Nuff said.

And if you really don't know what to do with all your money, you can pay $3,309 for another 16GB Ram and 1TB of storage.

The past year and a half have its impact: Latitude is optimized for working remotely. An interesting novelty is the SafeShutter - a physical camera cover that will cover the camera unless you launch a web conference application like Zoom or MS Teams. So if you are growing paranoid over your privacy, while still having back to back meetings online, this is a handy feature.

The camera is not too bad, either - and it supports Windows Hello, too.

The four speakers will do the job not only for online conferences but also when listening to music, or watching movies.

The mics (4 of them) are also pretty good in being selective: they will pick up your voice, while filtering out typing or background noise easily.

Another option will optimize the bandwidth use, when a video conferencing application is running. So as I said, it revolves around remote meetings. Especially when you add that the Latitude will automatically find (and use) the strongest wi-fi it can access.

The port selection is spectacular, too. Two USB-C ports, an HCMI 2.0, an SD4.0 memory card reader, a Type-A USB 3.2, and yes, a combination audio jack.

The trackpad, however, is ultra-sensitive, and it requires a little time to get used to. In the meantime, be prepared to click accidentally to all the wrong places in all the wrong times.

Dell says that its brand new 11th Gen vPro processors have 66 percent more CPU power than their 10th Gen counterparts did. The increased performance is all the more important, as it is combined with many user-friendly functions, like fast-charging, responsive performance, and instant wake.

So in a way, the Dell Latitude aims to be your business AND your personal device at the same time. And thinking about the environment we operate, chances are that it will be just that.

All the most general tasks are very well tackled with this Dell Laptop. You can video chat, you can multitask, you can switch between power options to keep the device extremely silent, when you need to.

And it can take a substantial workload.

However, the win you see in some of the benchmarks might not justify the extra you have to pay, when choosing the Latitude over consumer laptops. The most you'll pay for are the vPro, and other business features.

And if you are doing lab tests, you will also see the CPU heat up quite a bit. Which might not be a big deal in everyday use, but important to know if you really want to use it for performance-intensive tasks, like video editing, or training neural networks (none of which are projects the Latitude was built for, by the way).

And it also shows that when it comes to these computationally expensive things, cooling might be a limit to its performance.

Back to the user experience: the keyboard and touch screen are really easy to use (I mentioned the small thing with the trackpad earlier).

And while this is primarily a business laptop, you can't count it out when it comes to gaming, either.

It might not be the best and most effective choice if you have gaming in mind, but performance-wise you won't have too much to complain about.

Another thing we'll have to mention, especially for a business laptop optimized for working remotely is batter life.

There's no easy way of saying this, but the Latitude won't last for an entire 8-hour business day.

Of course it depends a lot on how you use it, but considering average business use, you can be thankful if it reaches 6 hours.

To last through your day, you'll have to switch on the Battery Saver profile as well as the Quiet cooling profile, which will then hurt performance.

These results are not exceptionally bad, but nowhere near as good as previous iterations of Dell's Latitude product line. Maybe those have raised the bar too high.

So if remote for you means working from home - you are safe. But if you are among the few, who still travel for work, and have to use your device extensively while away from a charger - that exercise extra caution.