Dell Latitude 14" 5401 2019, Core i7-9850H, 16GB, 512GB SSD, MX 150, Black

A solid CPU trapped in a laptop with a weak GPU and a mediocre screen. Buy it cheap for office work, skip it for anything else.

The i7-9850H is the star here. Six cores at 2.6GHz will chew through multitasking and office work without breaking a sweat. But that MX 150 discrete GPU is a letdown, it sits in the 14th percentile in our database, which means it's one of the weakest graphics options we've seen on a machine like this. Don't expect to do any real gaming or GPU-heavy work. The 512GB SSD and 16GB of RAM are fine, but they're both middle of the pack at best.

Stacked against a Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6, the Latitude 5401 feels dated. The ThinkPad offers better build quality, a superior screen, and more modern internals for not much more money. The Apple MacBook Pro M4 Pro is in a completely different league, but it's also a completely different price bracket. If you're cross-shopping this with an ASUS ROG Flow Z13 or HP OMEN Transcend 14, you're looking at the wrong machine entirely, those are gaming-focused and will crush the Latitude's MX 150 without trying.

Pricing is all over the place in Canada, with listings ranging from CAD 876 to CAD 987 across two vendors. At the lower end, you're getting a solid CPU and decent build for under CAD 900, which isn't terrible. But at the top of that range, you're flirting with territory where newer machines with better screens and GPUs start to look a lot more appealing. If you can snag it at the CAD 876 price, it's a reasonable deal. At CAD 987, walk away.

The Dell Latitude 5401 is a business laptop that's trying to punch above its weight class, and honestly, it lands a few solid hits. You get a 6-core i7-9850H and 16GB of RAM in a 1.53kg chassis, which is respectable for a 14-inch workhorse. But the MX 150 GPU is the elephant in the room, it's a weak spot that drags the whole package down for anything beyond spreadsheets and email.

If you need any kind of graphics performance, a decent screen, or a machine that'll last more than a couple years without issues, this isn't it. Go grab a Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 or a MacBook Air instead. The Latitude 5401 is for budget-conscious office workers who live in spreadsheets and don't care about anything else.

The Dell Latitude 5401 is a decent business laptop if you can get it cheap and you don't care about graphics or screen quality. The i7-9850H is a genuine workhorse, and the port selection is solid. But the weak GPU, mediocre display, and below-average reliability scores make this a tough sell at anything near full price. It's a budget buy for office drones, not a machine for creatives or anyone who wants to do more than basic productivity.