Dell Latitude 10 Enhanced Security Hands-On: Built-in Fingerprint, Smart Card Readers

Further adding to its business creds, Dell today announced a new version of its Latitude 10 with a built-in fingerprint reader and SmartCard reader–the first for any Windows 8 tablet. Designed for healthcare, financial services, and government agencies, the Latitude 10 Enhanced Security offers other safeguards for enterprise customers as well.  Here are our impressions of this new variant of Dell’s Windows 8 tablet.

As a result of adding a fingerprint and SmartCard reader, the back of the Latitude 10 Enhanced Security bumps out a bit more than the regular version–an eighth of an inch at most–but doesn’t ruin the overall aesthetic. The tablet, which has a Gorilla Glass display and a magnesium alloy frame, felt just as sturdy in our hands, and didn’t seem any heavier than the original. We also like that Dell kept the same soft-touch coating, which makes the Latitude 10 even easier to grip.

Like the Dell Latitude 10 we reviewed, this Enhanced Security version also features a dual-core 1.5-GHz Intel Atom Z2760 processor, 2GB of RAM, and 32 or 64GB of storage. The battery can also be swapped out for a 4-cell battery, which, in our tests, boosted the Latitude 10′s runtime to 17 hours and 40 minutes.

Other security features include Full Drive Encryption from Bitlocker, TPM 1.2, Computrace, and Dell Data Protection. Dell says that the security measures in this Latitude 10 make it compliant with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the Federal information Processing Standard (FIPS). 

The Enhanced Security version costs $779, which is $200 more than the Latitude 10 essentials 64GB version that does not include the fingerprint and SmartCard reader.

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