When Google and Dell announced the new Latitude Chromebook Enterprise devices on Monday, specs and pricing details were a little light. As of today, however, we can get a good look at those details as Dell has begun selling an initial three configurations each of the Latitude 5300 and 5400 Chromebook Enterprise laptops, with the least expensive coming in at $1,298.99.
Keep in mind that over time these Chromebooks will available is many more configurations. And also remember that the devices aren’t intended for consumer purchases, which is why you may see some sticker shock: Enterprises have far fatter wallets and some of the options that increase pricing are for Dell / VMware services.
Starting with the clamshell Dell Latitude Chromebook 5400, here’s what you get with the current model at the above-mentioned price:
- 8th Generation Intel Core i5-8365U processor (with cooling fan)
- Intel UHD Graphics 620
- 14-inch 1920 x 1080 anti-glare non-touch display
- 8 GB of memory
- M.2 256GB PCIe NVMe storage and SD card reader
- 802.11ac Wi-Fi
- 2 USB 3.1 Gen 1 with PowerShare
- 1 USB Type-C 3.1 Gen 2 with Power Delivery & DisplayPort
- 1 HDMI port
- 1 USB 3.1 Gen 1
- 1 RJ-45
- Backlit keyboard
- Optional HD RGB Camera with Dell Privacy Shutter
- 68 WHr battery
- Weight: 3.24 pounds
As previously mentioned, there will be other configurations that will increase or decrease the total cost. For example, you can drop the display down to 1366 x 728 resolution and run the Chromebook on an Intel Celeron 4305U processor; I suspect that’s the model with the $699 starting price that Dell mentioned.
Or you can bump the price with an Intel Core i7-8665U chipset, add a touchscreen, increase RAM to 32 GB and boost storage up to 1 TB if you want. I’d guess that’s a Chromebook costing well above $2,500.
For the 2-in-1 Dell Latitude Chromebook 5300, you’ll get mostly the same specs but pay more for a few extras: The initial model on sale costs $1,479 but comes with a 13.3-inch touch display, includes the HD webcam and sheds a quarter-pound of weight.
Both models are LTE capable for wireless connectivity on the road, of course. Note that while there’s no mention of Bluetooth for either Chromebook, the Intel Wireless-AC 9560 chip does support Bluetooth 5.
As with the clamshell version, you can configure the 2-in-1 with a full range of options: 8th-gen Intel processors from Celeron to Core i7, have between 4 and 32 GB of memory and choose between 128 and 512 GB of NVMe storage.
Again, these are enterprise devices, so pricing is far higher than a consumer might expect to pay. And although there have been Chromebooks for business in the past, these appear to be the first ones designed for enterprise use. That’s partly because of some high-end configuration options not found on consumer devices and also due to the integrated endpoint device management services Dell is adding to the Chromebooks.
If nothing else, Dell and Google have created an offering where enterprises can’t consider these Chromebooks merely “toys”. These are very capable in terms of hardware. And if a large business has many employees working in web apps or developers / IT admins that can use Linux to get their work done, the new Dell Latitude Chromebook Enterprise line could be big business. We’ll have to watch and see.
3 Comments
Nice to see this foray into the enterprise arena. The hardware is the easiest part. Much like in the education market space, to grow in the enterprise market space, Google must work their butts off to provide a functionally complete replacement to PCs. That means not only G-suite but also a custom curated selection of Android apps plus Linux apps. The IT support cost savings are a given IF they improve the lives of end users. Longer term, businesses need to be able to make the user experience even better for traditional workhorse applications running from the server than from the local local drive (e.g. AutoCAD, Aspen Engineering Suite, professional graphics/video editing/development, etc.).
Thanks for reporting on these Kevin.
While clearly these models are clearly aimed at enterprise/business use, after all thats what Dells whole Latittude series is for, I think its important to keep in mind other uses. While I’ve been using a Latitude with Ubuntu for years to do Android development, pretty much the *entire* industry has been using Macbooks for this instead. Thats not just developers working at large companies, its all the way down to freelancers and hobbyists.
With full support for Android Studio on ChromeOS now, its clearly as a replacement for the *Macbook* for professional Android developers that this class of machine can be marketed to. Given the decent size and use of NVMe for the ssd’s and the availability of up 32GB, I would say that this is the first and only viable option for this market, though I’m hopng there will be more models soon, as even the i7 U-class CPUs are not really sufficient for this market and we need to seee modelswith H-class CPUs as shipped in the 15in Macbooks. 4k screen options would of course be nice too…
Spoke with a Sales rep. If you go on Dell.com they’re hard bundling the Chrome Enterprise License and 1yr of ProSupport (instead of 1yr HW only mail-in support the unit comes with). So just call a sales rep and you can knock a couple hundred off the base price by removing those if you’re a consumer/hobbyist who doesn’t need the Google license.