Communication

Our Dell Latitude E6530 is well equipped and has all that you can think of. Even the entry-level model comes with Intel”s Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 WLAN module. It has three antennas and  can use both the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz wireless bandwidths. Our test showed above average signal strength. In all models of the Latitudes E6530 series you will also find a Gigabit Ethernet port. While our test unit has an HD webcam, Bluetooth 4.0 and a WWAN module, all three of these features come at a surcharge and are not available with certain models.

Security

The Dell Latitude E6530 has a wide array of security features. Trusted Platform module, Intel Anti Theft/Computrace service, Smart Card reader, fingerprint scanner, BIOS password option and the usual Windows password protection should be enough to cover most security requirements adequately. You can read more on notebook security in our FAQ article on security solutions.

Accessories

Dell”s Latitude E6530 comes without any extra accessories. Various MultiBay expansions for the optical drive slot, docking stations and additional batteries are available as options.

Maintenance

The bottom cover can be detached by removing a few screws and thus allows access to the main components. But things are not as easy and quick as with many other rival models. Even for the replacement of the RAM modules one must remove the whole cover. There are no individual panels. After detaching the maintenance cover, the fan can be reached and cleaned if necessary. One RAM slot is free and makes an upgrade possible. The hard drive is in a separate module that is held by two screws. Here, the removal of the bottom plate is not necessary. The optical drive is a modular one and can be interchanged with other drives or a MultiBay battery.

Warranty

The Dell Latitude E6530 comes as standard with a 3-year Next Business Day warranty. Except for the Pro Support option, there are currently no other warranty extensions available.

The hardware equipment provides a good standard, which should have enough performance reserves for most applications. Intel”s Core i5-3360M processor is used for both the computations and graphics. The integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 is not accompanied by a dedicated graphics card in our test model. Alternatively, the Dell Latitude E6530 can be equipped with the Nvidia Quadro NVS 5200 graphics card that features Nvidia Optimus. The other key components are Intel”s QM77 chipset, 4 GB of RAM and a conventional 500 GB hard drive. As is usual for Dell, the configuration options are extensive. In addition to the Nvidia Quadro NVS, the customer has a choice of different CPUs up to the Intel Core i7-3720QM quad-core processor, 8 GB of RAM and a 512 GB Solid State Drive. With all these options ticked, the price of the Latitude E6530 can reach 2400 Euros (~$3246) excl. VAT.

Our test model scored 2951 points in PC Mark 7 and 8320 points in PC Mark Vantage. The system performance is enough for many tasks, but could be considerably increased by removing two bottlenecks. One weak point is the system memory. In our test model only one 4 GB module was installed and dual-channel was not active. Because of this, the memory works at a lower speed and the graphics chip is also impaired. The latter uses the RAM as a shared memory and is thus dependant on its performance. The second weak point is the hard drive. A Solid State Drive has significantly better access times, read and write speeds and will have a positive effect on the daily tasks.

The conventional Seagate hard drive has a capacity of 500 GB and works at 7200 RPM. The maximum transfer rate is 112 MB/s and the average remains at 90 MB/s. These are rather good results for a conventional hard drive, but cannot really keep up with Solid State Drives. Further benchmark results can be found in our extensive comparison list of laptop hard drives.

Alternatively, the Dell Latitude can be configured with higher capacity hard drives or fast Solid State Drives. The optical drive can also be replaced with another storage device. The UMTS slot (full size miniPCIe) does not seem to support the mSATA standard. The Crucial M4 mSATA SSD could not be recognized and therefore cannot be used.

The Intel HD Graphics 4000 has sufficient power to quickly handle a wide range of tasks. Unfortunately, the graphics chip is less suitable for demanding 3D programs and can only meet the most basic of requirements. As we already mentioned, the graphics card is impaired by the slow system memory. The result of 3D Mark 11 was 619 points, 3D Mark Vantage - 3010 points and the Cinebench R10 OpenGL Shading score was 5454 points. Replacing the 4 GB module with two 2 GB ones increases the score to 701 points in 3D Mark 11, 3728 points in 3D Mark Vantage and 5863 points in Cinebench R10 OpenGL Shading. This is an increase of 8 to 20%.

The two speakers are located at the front of the notebook and are angled slightly towards the desk. They provide a rather high-heavy sound. The mids and the bass are very weak. The speakers tend to distort the sound at high volume levels. External speakers can be connected via the USB port or audio jack. The combo audio jack requires an adapter if the headset uses two separate in/out cables.

Power Consumption

The energy consumption of the Dell Latitude E6530 that we measured was between a minimum of 8.4 W and a maximum of 56.5 W. The realistic consumption, with activated wireless functionality and display brightness at almost 160 cd/m², was about 13 W. In relation to the hardware components, these values are on the expected level and are not any way unusually high. Crucial to the practical working time without a power supply is the battery capacity. Our test model is equipped with a 60 Wh one. Alternatively, Dell offers 5 different battery options. At the time of this review though, only the 97 Wh and 87 Wh batteries with 3-year warranty were available in Dell”s online shop. The small 40 Wh battery, the 30 Wh Modular Bay battery and the 97 Wh extended battery are not configurable in the online shop.