Hands-On With the Dell Latitude XT2
February 10th, 2009 by Joanna Stern
Just this morning Dell unveiled its Latitude XT2, an update to the XT, which was the first tablet to have multitouch capabilities. A few hours after the announcement we were able to spend some quality time with the new tablet.
The biggest changes to the tablet comes to its internal organs: it now packs a Centrino 2 platform and DDR3 memory (with a max of 5GB). The chassis (as you can see in the pictures below) is almost exactly the same as the first XT. The only noticeable differences we could see were that the lid now has the Dell logo in the corner (rather than in the center) and there are three shortcut buttons on the screen instead of four.
Dell has also brightened the 12.1 inch 1280 x 800 resolution display significantly by doubling the nits. In a side-by-side comparison with the orginal, the Dell XT2’s desktop was noticeably brighter.
But let’s be honest. The XT2’s standout feature is its capacitive touch screen which coupled with N-Trig’s DuoSense makes it multitouch capable. While the original XT had multitouch capabilities when you downloaded the drivers, the XT2 works right out of the box. All the typical two finger gestures work, including pinching to zoom, panning, two finger scrolling and a new rotate gesture which has been added to the platform.
We found navigating the capacitive screen with a single finger to be as smooth as butter. Light taps on the screen were responsive and navigating through Vista’s Start Menu with a finger was a breeze. The platform will be available with Windows 7 ($77.49) at a later date, but for now it will ship with Vista.
When it came to trying out the multitouch gestures things worked just as they did on the orginal XT. We were able to zoom in on pictures in Windows Photo Gallery with two fingers and the zoomed images rendered quickly. We had the same experience in Google Earth; we were able to zoom in on the state of California with two fingers and then pan to a city.
Two finger scrolling in Internet Explorer 7 worked though it was a bit fincky. Lightly dragging two fingers down the screen was responsive but placing a bit too much pressure would mistakenly select a link on the page. After a bit of practice, we were more nimble at navigating Web pages.
The newest gesture is the ability to rotate images with a pivot like motion. We got the hang of rotating pictures in Photo Gallery but we much preferred rotating the earth around in Google Earth. We felt pretty cool (like DJ cool) planting one finger in the center of the earth and dragging another on the side which allows you to keep spinning the earth like a record.
While we would say that the finger motions on the screen were more responsive than that of the HP Touchsmart Tx2, we still were left wanting some more applications that take advantage of the multitouch capablity. The included stylus also was very responsive and recognized our messy handwriting.
For its plus $2,000 price, we are looking forward to getting our final review unit of the Dell Latitude XT2 ($1,959.00) and putting it through our testing. In the meantime, check out the video of the XT2 in action.
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22 Responses to “Hands-On With the Dell Latitude XT2”
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February 10th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
I gotta tell you, those gestures aren’t impressing me. Maybe it will be more smooth with Windows 7, but right now, that is just crap. Especially for $2399 (It’s starting at $2399, so I wonder how expensive it will be to get the 1.4 Ghz with at least 3 GB of Ram.
February 10th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Wow! Why are people saying the multi touch is smooth? From the video, it looks painful to use!
February 10th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
The multi touch looks terrible. If I wanted to zoom in for detail on a picture and wait 30 seconds, I would just go back to using a PII 266 and Windows 95.
February 10th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
I MUST be missing something… The HP tablet that’s been out has a 2.1ghz AMD TL chipset, discrete graphics, etc. Ok so no multi-touch, and no ddr3, but I’d much rather have the processor when there’s no apparent real gain in battery life and at 1/4 the cost to boot. (HP tablet @600 bucks)
2300 bucks.. and all you can tell me in this article is ddr3, multitouch..? No stats, you made me look them up elsewhere.
Joanna, I know they let you have a sneak peak, but really multi touch looked painful and worse than my EeePC’s touchpad, which doesn’t make me worry about smearing my screen.
It is just ridiculous to see such a softball review of a product, with only features mentioned and not one caveat discussed.
You even had trouble in the video demo when you opened a link while trying to scroll this incredibly jerky, un-smooth screen and you blamed it on yourself! “Once you get used to it…” should be reserved for really good things like:
“It’s a flying car, it’s a bit difficult, but once you get used to it..”
not, here’s something we’ve seen before and expect a certain quality of, and it’s not, but once you get used to it.. if you do… you may like it.
Bad review of a horrible product.
February 10th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Good grief, Laptop Mag… have you guys ever heard of camera lighting? Get a spotlight in there so we can actually see what the heck is going on in the video! It’s like staring at silhouettes.
In terms of the laptop? WAY too expensive. Starting out at $2400 is a joke and they will sell virtually none of these.
February 10th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Ditto. Looks kinda laggy and non-responsive. Why would anybody buy this, especially when most applications don’t support touch?
February 10th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
First off, to the poster above, the HP tablet is not 600 dollars. It’s 1000 dollars. And the AMD cpu has approximately the same power as the Dell. And the Radeon HD3200 isn’t “discrete graphics” – it uses shared mem just like the Intel 4500, which is also actually about the same speed. The truth is, the only argument you have is price – is the multi-touch and better build quality of the Dell worth the extra 1400? Probably not.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:54 am
looks a lot like lenovos x200t except with multi touch. doesnt look much fun now, but it will be when more people start playing with it.
p.s. someone tell lenovos marketing what multi touch really means. show them one of these.
February 11th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Multitouch!? with two hands is better! just use the mouse in this case. You can reassign the scroll function to do other things.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Everyone seems so damm “picky”, for those of us who use Tablet PC’s for work, school, etc… It looks good to me. Yes, expensive, but Gateway Business unit (MPC) left a lot of loyal Gateway users “hanging in the wind”. Better to purchase from someone who will stand behind the 2,3, o4 4 year warranty. Dell looks pretty good for that. Taking notes in Calculas, Programming, and working is a must- otherwise no need to purchase a Tablet at all.
March 17th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Well… the video did look pretty embarrassing, considering how excited Dell is to be promoting the whole multi-touch feature… Needless to say, though, I did just order one and am looking forward to having another solid Dell product. Dell always has stood behind their products and have never really let me down. Has their quality gone downhill over the past 10 years? Sure, but how about every other PC manufacturer out there? Dell has maintained a lead above the competition that keeps me coming back…
March 30th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Joanna, great first look. With most things, experience will make the features smoother. As for several of the above posters, the multi touch features are pretty good. Again, is it worth the extra cash? In today’s economy, no. But that doesn’t make the feature itself bad.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:50 pm
I wish a 3 pound tablet, with 8 hours of battery, which is very fast, which doesn’t get hot, has multi-touch 13″ bright matte screen, under $1,000. If Apple does that i’d fuck a tree.
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:34 am
I was making final comparisons between the XT2, the HP 2730p, and the Lenovo X200 Tablet. I was actually leaning toward the XT2, even with the ridiculous price…………. until I saw this.
Terrible! Goodbye Dell.
April 5th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I don’t understand how everyone can be so picky. This tablet has gotten better reviews than the HP tablet, and it looks a lot better too. So, when you scroll on websites, it doesn’t work too well, so just use the mouse! It’s really not that hard. The dell tablet is actually a lot better than the others.
Have you seen videos of the others? Huh! They work much, much worse. The HP tablet is loud, and very slow, and it generates a lot of heat, too much heat for comfort.
Don’t be so picky, or you can just go build your own damned touch screen.
April 13th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Smooth as butter multi touch? The iPhone with it’s tiny processor and memory has a much smoother touch interface. Am I wrong? I wonder why a big computer can’t replicate such buttery goodness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze559mhbrD0
I mean seriously. This is movie theater butter going on here with the iPhone. I don’t own an iPhone, but I wish I could get some of it’s silky features elsewhere.
May 4th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Dell XT blows away the HP tablet. And the tablet is optimized for paperless applications… sign secure documents right on your computer?? forget about it this thing rocks! i use it in my real estate profession with a software from a company called Go Paperless (www.gopaperless.com). this is a killer computer!!!
July 6th, 2009 at 3:01 am
Just ordered one.
Using it for programming, school, and personal stuffs.
My very first reason not to choose HP is because HP has overheating and battery issues.
HP sucks at all time.
July 7th, 2009 at 7:31 am
Dell has missed the mark from Day one on the XT. I can’t imagine they have recouped any of the engineering costs it took to produce it.(and there probably weren’t a lot, based on the result) I find it hard to believe that there is much of a market for a $2500, underpowered, tablet.
As for build quality, from all reports I’ve read of actual users, it ranks pretty low. And one only has to get on the Dell outlet website to see the amazing amount, if one guesses how many they actually sold, of refurbished units are available, generally, not a good sign. So if you do want to try one out, pick up a $1000 unit from their outlet site instead.
I use a 3rd generation tablet from Gateway, the 140x, which sports a magnesium chassis, has been dropped from 5 feet onto a marble floor, and two years later is going strong. Ohh, and I caught one of the MANY sales that priced it at $799.00. As far as business class mobile computing goes, you can’t do much better than these, unfortunately, highly underated Gateways.
Dell is a local company, so I keep waiting for them to get a clue in the tablet pc market, and keep waiting.
I think who might actually get it right, is ASUS. When their T91 hits, we will see the tablet that dell should have produced, and could have given them access to a 20 million customer post-secondary student market that was ripe for the taking. Unfortunately, most students don’t have the ability to fork over $2500 for a laptop. Five hundred dollars, on the other hand, is much more workable for the average student.
September 6th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Hey everyone. I have a dell latitude xt 2 with RC Windows 7 and the latest Ntrig multitouch software.
I see that many of you are negative about this laptop. I’d only want to ask how many of you have actually tried one?
With my windows and the crappy multitouch software (which has “KNOWN ISSUES” as stated in the ntrig website) multitouch works incredibly well. Considering that this whole new technology and developing is just at its beginning there is nothing else to ask for.
I am using it for business, studying (mathematics), for games and basically everything else I need. When I go out I don’t carry the charger because I know the battery is practically endless – those 11 hours are indeed true. The Centrino platform just owns.
About the Iphone commentary… Well Iphone has multitouch just as Microwave has a display.
About the AMD processor commentary… lol AMD vs Intel… No words! I consider myself a gamer and WOW goes perfectly on this thing.
I believe the future is in the multitouch technology – it is better, faster, fun and more natural than using a mouse. Totally worth the price!
I’m just annoyed that so many people here are writing without having tried this beauty.
No hard feelings.
October 5th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Won’t speak about the multi-touch, I turned it off because it interfered with handwriting. The handwriting is a disaster, like writing on your arm. Get a Motion Computing unit instead if you want to do handwriting, they are worlds better.
January 16th, 2010 at 1:02 am
I’ve had my XT2 for a week now and I got to tell you I was ready to throw it in the trash. This is my third tablet that I’ve owned and was starting to miss my HP 2730p. You are correct, when you pull this thing out of the box the muti-touch sucks. I couldn’t even use OneNote with due to the terrible rendering of my writing and I had to turn off the multitouch to be able to browse the internet without constantly enlarging and shrinking the page.
But then, everything changed once I installed the newest drivers from N-Trig’s website…don’t go the Dells website to get the drivers…the end result was nothing but a miracle. This is now a great tablet…trust me…update the drivers from N-Trigs website…you will not be dissapointed.