Dell Latitude D820
Notebook Reviews > Dell Latitude > D820

The Dell Latitude D820 is a sleeker, lighter and noticeably more portable upgrade to its predecessor the D810; Along with the newer performance components, this makes the D820 a very solid choice as a business desktop-replacement notebook.

The D820's magnesium alloy body protects it from flexing and the wear & tear of travel and use. This also gives it a very solid feel in the hands of the user increasing confidence in its durability. One area where this is abundantly clear is the screen hinges, they offer such a firm feel that it's almost necessary to hold the bottom half (the keyboard part) down when opening the lid. Another durability feature worth mentioning is the StrikeZone protection for the hard drive which acts as shock proofing to the disk drive (and your data) in case the notebook is dropped.

As a business notebook, don't expect much media related features in the D820. There are no dedicated media control buttons and you only get average stereo speakers (one on each side of the keyboard). The screen as well is geared more towards the target business users and thus is not of the glossy type found in almost all consumer notebooks. Glossy screens offer higher contrast, better brightness and richer colors to facilitate a better gaming and DVD viewing experience. But business users don't really care about games or movies and matte screens, like the one the D820 has, offer better visibility in brightly lit environments and consume less power allowing for a longer battery life.

Talking about gaming, it is worth noting that the included nVidia Quadro graphics card will probably not be able to handle most of the latest graphics intensive 3D games. Then again that's not what it was designed for, as a business model it handles everyday operations along with CAD applications very nicely and it is Vista-ready as well.

Another important area for the business user is wireless connectivity and the Latitude D820 shines in this area. The included Dell/Broadcom WiFi card performs admirably and best of all is Dell's WiFi-Catcher feature; with this on, you can see if there is wireless coverage where you are, without even needing to boot up the notebook. You can even set it to only show unencrypted networks to save you the hassle of booting up only to find out that you can't connect to the network that it had picked up.

Overall, the D820 is a very sturdy and quite portable business notebook from Dell. And it's a bargain at its price range. Not to mention the high performance component s such as the Core Due processor or the 1GB of DDR2 RAM. The Latitude D820 will surely not disappoint any business or academic user at all.