We have a big laptop purchase order for 2025. I’m responsible for choosing purchases, while saving money long term. Is the Latitude 3000 series worth it for some light users, or should we stick with 5000 series, to reduce issues? Yes, they will be traveling between home, office, clients.
Compared to the Latitude 5000 series, does the 3000 series have worse build quality, potentially causing more issues?
Our goal is for laptops to last 3-5 years, with minimal issues. The 5000 series has been doing a great job at that. My thought is if we need to take advantage of the warranty, more often with 3000 series, the initial cost savings would not be worth it. I would quickly need to deploy a new laptop, to anyone who’s laptop is down. Time is also money.
There’s loss of productivity when someone’s computer needs warranty repair. That does have an effect on the business’s bottom-line, but should be accepted as a cost of doing business.
Depending on your imaging process they might lose a few hours until back up and running at full speed. If you have no spares, then they could be down a day or two until you get on-site repair.
Multiply that by a computer fleet that fails 5% more than an alternative (for example), and it could add up to a number that’s suddenly not an acceptable cost of doing business.
I’ve never used a 3000-series from Dell, only the 5000’s. Love 'em.
I have a couple 3000 series Latitudes and here are a few things I notice vs the 5000 series.
They material they use for the chassis feels cheaper and a little rougher, they usually don’t have thunderbolt (so if using a dock, could be an issue), there usually isn’t a touch screen.
Overall, I haven’t had any issues with reliability.
I think overall, they aren’t that bad, I feel they are much better than any Inspiron model. The Vostro lineup wasn’t all that bad. but I am not sure if they even make them anymore.
If I were you, I would reach out to your sales rep and see if you can get any demo units to get in hand of all you are considering. I would want hands on with all available options. Even if you buy one of each, you can make an informed decision instead of taking the advice of strangers.
“How so, if something is in warranty, there are no costs.”
As the only IT, I am pulled away. Let’s say this person’s office is 250 miles away. There may be no spare computers in this remote office. In this case, time is money, as I’m pulled away for hours, to get them a working new computer. (But then they still can’t work well, due to personal preferences they changed, which impedes their workflow.) i.e. my laptop rang too loud and woke up my baby.
I understand time is money, perhaps I wasn’t clear.
Owning a lower model may mean more warranty devices, but the outcome of lost time is the same, even if one is more frequent than the other.
Hence me suggesting you talk to your Dell rep. If you are building machines in house then shipping them, this is also time and money, consider Intune and autopilot, this way Dell can do same day swap outs. If you agree this and work with them.
We practically live on 3000 series. They are fine for most applications. I only get them back from actual damage. Someone throws a wrench at a screen. Someone runs one over with a car or drops it down a couple flights of concrete stairs. They are reasonable as far as build quality is concerned. Not great, just reasonable. Which is what you should expect for the price. We have roughly 700 laptops in service at the moment.
I don’t understand the time is money part and not have extras in stock? If it’s THAT big of a deal then you should have the ability to same day ship an already ready to go device. We carry 5-10 in stock for early replacements or random destruction of a device. It being a 5000 series wasn’t going to save the device from getting rolled over by a car or a screw driver through a screen. I think one got destroyed from sitting outside in -20F temps for a few days. Doubt the model upgrade would have saved that one either.
We considered the following.
Downtime
We have some tolerance in most areas, but not all
Cost per unit
It’s fairly cheap
We also do not get accidental as the cost per unit was more than half of the laptop. Our losses are significantly below that over 5 years.
Does it meet the spec requirements
An i5 is totally fine for most use cases
16GB of RAM is more than enough, granted we purchase with 8GB and add 8GB. $150 per unit less this way. Takes an extra 5 minutes of setup time.
They all come with M.2 SSDs.
We also run on a 5 year replacement cycle.
I ask, does it make sense for you financially? How many do you have? How often do you have broken devices? How often do you need to ship someone a device now? What’s the cost gain/loss to have a few just sitting on a shelf waiting to be used next? Does your purchase cycle match up well with keeping a few for an extra quarter in case of bad times? Do you have the time and knowledge to do repairs in house as opposed to babysitting a Dell tech?
I would recommend the 5000 series as there are some issues with the 3000 series
the black rubber surface seems to become sticky faster (within 12 months for 3000 series, 3540 to be exact, 5 series seem to last 5 yrs and I am still using E7440 and no issues)
the hinges seem to break off very easily for the 3530 & 3540, we only ordered 20 of each and so far repaired almost 12 times…each taking 3 to 10 working days with at least 3 hours to 6 hours of photo-taking and lappy BIOS diagnostics back & forth with Dell support on watsapp.
Then we buy all Dell lappy mainly coz of the 5 yrs support and 5 yr completecover (Accidental coverage). But that is like insurance (life, car etc, where it is good to have but best not to be used).
We have around a dozen of the 3000 series. They are a little cheap feeling, but so far about a year and a half in, they have all been fine. No complaints from users either.