Dell 7310

This refurbished Latitude is one of the lightest laptops we've tested, but its ancient CPU and stingy storage make it a tough sell at nearly $600. Buy it for the backpack-friendly design, not the performance.

We weren't expecting miracles from a four-year-old mobile chip, and we didn't get them. The i7-10610U sits in the bottom 14th percentile of all laptops we track, which is a polite way of saying it chokes on anything tougher than a dozen browser tabs. Multitasking with Slack, Zoom, and a few docs will spike CPU usage, and the integrated UHD Graphics are a dead end for anything beyond 2D games. On the plus side, 16GB of RAM keeps basic multitasking from feeling like a slideshow, and Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt are surprisingly modern touches for an old business box.

Against newer refurbs like a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 or even an M1 MacBook Air, the 7310 gets smoked. The M1 Air runs circles around it in speed and battery life, while a Carbon gives you the same portability with a much brighter screen and a CPU that doesn't wheeze. Even a modern budget laptop like the MSI Prestige 13 Evo offers a 12th-gen Core i5 and double the storage for not much more money. The Latitude's only edge is that it's still one of the absolute lightest 13-inch laptops we've ever weighed.

At $580, this Latitude is walking a thin line between "budget deal" and "overpriced hand-me-down." You're paying a premium for the compact build and Thunderbolt, but you're getting a CPU that's several generations behind and storage you'll outgrow in weeks. If it were $400, we'd call it a fair beater laptop. As it is, we'd rather see you hunt down a refurbished ThinkPad X1 Carbon with an 11th-gen chip for similar money.

The Dell Latitude 7310 is a shockingly light little laptop that feels half a decade older than it looks. On paper, it reads like a decent ultrabook—Core i7, 16GB RAM, touchscreen—but Intel's 10th-gen processor and a paltry 256GB SSD betray its business-refurb origins. At $580, it's not a complete scam, but you're buying portability on a budget, not performance. If you just need a Windows machine for email and Office and want something that disappears in your bag, it almost makes sense. Almost.

If you need any real horsepower—photo editing, coding with Docker, or having more than 15 Chrome tabs open—this isn't your laptop. Skip it and grab a refurbished M1 MacBook Air or an 11th-gen ThinkPad. Even a $400 Chromebook would feel snappier for web browsing.

We can't hate a laptop that weighs as little as a thick magazine and packs a real USB-A port, but the 7310's dated internals hold it back hard. For $580, you're better off scouring eBay for a newer refurb or spending a little extra on a MacBook Air. If you're dead set on a featherweight Windows machine and found one for under $500, it might earn a spot in your bag—just don't ask it to do anything more demanding than Word and Spotify.