Dell Latitude
Shares rank 18 of 63 laptops by recommenders
Durable business laptops with replaceable parts and good Linux support, cheap on the used market. Common caveat: weak battery life.
Durable business laptops with replaceable parts and good Linux support, cheap on the used market. Common caveat: weak battery life.
41 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 23
- criticize it
- 18
- approval share
- 56%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 10 years
Median of the 4 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 23 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Sturdy build that lasts years
“I have great luck with them. Our guys that work out in the field with the Latitude laptops beat the crap out of them and we have very few issues.”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?” “rigidly built body using magnesium/aluminum alloys, good input devices and IO”
Comment from 1 Apr 2026 in “My MacBook Keyboard Is Broken and It's Insanely Expensive to Fix” “I have a Dell Latitude from 2010 that is still goes strong”
Comment from 28 Mar 2026 in “People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account” - Comment from 29 May 2026 in “It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12”
- Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too”
- Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “First MacBook Neo Benchmarks Are In”
Good Linux support
“business-grade hardware has better Linux support”
Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too” “they've been excellent on Linux”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “XPS 16 Creator Edition Laptop” Cheap used units widely available
“it was easier to find a lenovo thinkpad, dell latitude, or fujitsu in good conditions”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees” “lots of i5-6300U based corporate laptops like latitude are on eBay etc for < 100$”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: Chromebook Leads for K-8 School In Need?” “there are a lot of decent ones for €250 on eBay”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Hetzner increased dedicated server prices 3-4x” Replaceable parts and swappable battery
“I remember having this old Dell Latitude, where you could easily swap out the battery pack with a button/tab thing on the back”
Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers” “Latitude were nice business laptops; coming with all the enterprise goodies, replaceable parts”
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “Shrinkflation Is Quietly Making All Gadgets Worse”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Weak battery life
“battery life really sucked (like, max 2 hours of light browsing)”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?” “battery and brightness aren't always what I'd like”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Apple Introduces MacBook Neo” Fan, thermal and power-off issues
“I had a fan break, a key fall out, and Bluetooth issues with some of them”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?” “Coil Whine, crazy power-off issues caused by C-States, poor thermals”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Framework Laptop 13 Pro: Major Upgrades and Linux Front and Center”
Other laptops people recommend
The four most recommended other laptops, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple MacBook Pro | 928 | 688 | 57% | 13 | 5 yrs248 owners | — |
| Apple MacBook Neo | 707 | 355 | 66% | 9 | 1 mo8 owners | — |
| MacBook Air | 633 | 209 | 75% | 12 | 5 yrs130 owners | Approved |
| Apple MacBook | 499 | 348 | 59% | 12 | 9 yrs77 owners | — |
| Dell LatitudeThis page | 23 | 18 | 56% | 9 | 10 yrs4 owners | — |
What people said
40 of the 43 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“they've been excellent on Linux”
“issue Dell Latitude, end of the barrel hardware Dell itself couldn't sell”
“Usual sleep/resume problems. No other problems”
“there are a lot of decent ones for €250 on eBay”
“it's certainly served me well for at least a full decade”
“the whole build quality, screen, touchpad and speakers are all so much better than the work Latitude”
“Latitude were nice business laptops; coming with all the enterprise goodies, replaceable parts”
“those have awful 250 nit screens out of the box, and they are nearly $1,200!”
“Coil Whine, crazy power-off issues caused by C-States, poor thermals”
“My old dell latitude with magnesium case had the same thing.”
“I remember having this old Dell Latitude, where you could easily swap out the battery pack with a button/tab thing on the back”
“I've used everything else without incident.”
“rigidly built body using magnesium/aluminum alloys, good input devices and IO”
“Weirdest part was it was 100% charged, so could have booted with 0 Watts of charger but decided not to boot with 20 Watts more.”
“I have a Dell Latitude from 2010 that is still goes strong”
“I really really don't understand why the f** they thought it was a good idea to do away with the Latitude and Precision lines”
“Still running as a server today.”
“battery and brightness aren't always what I'd like”
“the big brands like Dell Latitude and HP Elitebook are also dropping the ball”
“Older Dell Latitudes are not too bad either.”
“lots of i5-6300U based corporate laptops like latitude are on eBay etc for < 100$”
“it was easier to find a lenovo thinkpad, dell latitude, or fujitsu in good conditions”
“it's a plan replacing my Latitude with a T14”
“but Dell Latitudes were great”
“with decent build quality, cost-optimized more than a flagship workstation-class laptop”
“business-grade hardware has better Linux support”
“Literally laptops built to last.”
“touchpads without buttons (or even better, 3 buttons) are horrid things”
“I recall unimaginable pain and suffering due to wifi”
“I have great luck with them. Our guys that work out in the field with the Latitude laptops beat the crap out of them and we have very few issues.”
“I had a fan break, a key fall out, and Bluetooth issues with some of them”
“a plain, boring design with parts that have been trialed by the XPS/X1 suckers, so most of the bugs are ironed out”
“battery life really sucked (like, max 2 hours of light browsing)”
“They all look disgusting with half the paint gone.”
“at most they had one VGA or HDMI port”
“Any Dell Latitude (mid tier business line) would have supported 3 monitors”
“becomes extremely laggy and unstable when doing Teams meetings with multiple video streams”
“If Dell still has customer service like that, it's double thumbs up from me.”
“I adore my beater Dell Latitude for example.”
“On a Dell Latitude, it refused to charge my non-OEM battery replacement.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.