What does Dell do if it wants to squeeze its way into a very particular niche of laptops, currently occupied by Lenovo ThinkPad T440s (I told you it was specific)? The Dell Latitude 14 E7450 would be the answer. Carrying Intel's latest 14nm Broadwell technology and competitive to Lenovo and HP's similar designs (which haven't even upgraded to the very popular Broadwell yet), this notebook is close to being on the scale of excellence. Especially because the rest of its specs are up to par as well.

The Dell Latitude E7450 has a light, sophisticated case made of magnesium and other metals. If you're really into something shiny and beautiful, this isn't for you. If you're into sturdy and high quality build, it is. At just 3.6 pounds and up to military grade standards, you could take this thing on many a trip. Its keyboard strays away from what Dell usually uses, conventional, to the slightly concave and more accurate chiclet design.

Its 14-inch display offers a “that's so last year” resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, or “2015” IPS resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. This Latitude could work well for multimedia, with 81% sRGB and 60% AdobeRGB are “more than acceptable for this type of notebook “ (Notebook Check). Gaming, not so much. But, gamers aren't really going after a Latitude.

This notebook runs Intel's 14nm Core i5-5300U Broadwell Core-M platform, a dual-core processor with a clock rate of 2.3 GHz, and HD Graphics 5500. Both of these are said to be significantly faster than their predecessors. It comes with 8GB DDR3L RAM, 128GB SSD (upgradable), and an 8GB USB stick to be used as a recovery drive for the preloaded Windows 8.1 Pro (Notebook Check).

The last little details include how this thing runs. The Latitude stays quiet, uses a restrained cooling system that does not exceed 40 degrees, even if using it on your lap; and stays within its TDP limit of 15 Watts even under maximum load. Its battery has a capacity of 54 Wh, when, comparing to Lenovo and HP, is about 4-6 hours above their averages.

This thing could be your primary computer. Heck, it should be after paying $1,600 to $1,900 for it. Dell does a good job of simply tweaking what needs to be tweaked, not completely redesigning something that isn't broken. As far as editors, they generally voted pro when it comes to design, build, display, performance, and battery.