By Mike McCarthy
It has been a few years since I’ve tested and reviewed a laptop. Technology has progressed a lot since then, and systems are dramatically more powerful than they were just four years ago — and GPUs have improved more than CPUs by most measures.
I recently had the opportunity to test out the Dell Precision 5480. This is Dell’s highest end small-form-factor laptop. It is a 14-inch system packed with a 14-core, 13900H CPU; 64GB of DDR5 memory; and an Nvidia RTX 3000 Ada generation GPU. There are lots of laptop options out there with a 13900H CPU, six hyperthreaded performance cores and eight efficiency cores (for a total of 20 processing threads), but not very many of those are in a small, 14-inch frame. And the RTX 3000 Ada is even harder to come by. With 4,608 CUDA cores, 8GB of GDDR6 memory and nearly 20 teraflops of processing power, the RTX 3000 GPU is the physical equivalent of the GeForce 4070 Mobile, but with professional-level drivers. This little laptop system packs a punch.
The Display
Now there is no getting around the fact that 14 inches is a very small screen. Personally, I like huge screens, so even an 18-inch laptop screen would seem small to me, but much of my time using any laptop is likely to be spent with it connected to a larger display, whether in the office or at home. For times when I am using it on the move, or at the kitchen table from time to time, this 2560×1600 WLED screen is a good resolution for its 14-inch size. It can be set to 100% scale by eagle-eyed users who covet screen real estate, but most people will have a good experience at 150%.
The Dell Precision 5480 is advertised as supporting 500 nits, which can be helpful when using it outdoors, but it is a glossy screen. Windows reports that the display supports HDR video streaming, but there is no “Use HDR” option for the UI. I am still trying to figure out the logic behind Microsoft’s support for HDR monitoring. The screen also supports blue light filtering at a hardware level to reduce eye strain, which should be better than Windows’ night light software solution. It is also a touch screen, which can be a useful feature on occasion.
The Internals
I am always interested in fitting the maximum amount of useful computing power into the smallest possible package. Back in the day, I remember testing the PNY Prevail Pro, which, at 15 inches, was the smallest VR-capable system. Beyond that, I still have my 13-inch Sony Z1 with a quad-core, 3GHz CPU and GeForce 330M and dual SSDs. Back in 2010, it could run Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 with full CUDA acceleration in a 3-pound package. (The Dell Precision 5480 is actually very similar to that one in terms of size and weight, but, of course, the Dell is far more powerful.)
Any system smaller than 15 inches with a discrete GPU is usually hard to come by, which is why my HP ZBook X2 with Quadro GPU and a 14-inch, 10-bit display was so unique. But that system is five years old, with no direct replacement available, so I was very excited to see that Dell was stepping up to the plate with a powerful 14-inch pro workstation in a 3.3-pound package and under ¾ of an inch thick. And with a 13th Gen Intel CPU supporting 20 threads, paired with a new Ada based RTX GPU with 20 teraflops, the Dell Precision 5480 is not lacking in power.
The machine has four Thunderbolt 4 ports, which are all power-delivery-capable, plus an analog audio jack and a MicroSD reader. It comes with a small USB-C device that offers a USB-A port and an HDMI 2.0 output. The keyboard seems solid, with half-size up and down arrows and a fingerprint-enabled power button in the upper right corner, which will be natural for Mac users.
In my initial demo unit, the touchpad had a sticking issue with the click mechanism, but it turned out to have just been a defect. Once replaced, the touchpad worked great. This process did highlight to me just how important a touchpad is on a small laptop, even as a mouse user. Anytime I am using the laptop on the go (which is the point of a small laptop), the touchpad is the main pointing device, so I use it far more than I originally recognized.
The system comes with a USB-C-based power supply, rated for 130 watts, as well as the previously mentioned adapter for HDMI and USB-A ports. It comes packaged in a molded cardboard container inside a folded cardboard packing box for good product protection — and more ecofriendly than the older Styrofoam-based packaging.
A small laptop offers flexibility. In the office, you can use it with a full set of peripherals. When at home, you can plug in your monit
or and accessories, and pick up exactly where you left off.
With virtual desktops, you can get a similar experience by working in the cloud on various systems at different locations, but that doesn’t allow you full access when you are in transit or when you are in places with limited internet access. The Dell Precision 5480 seems like an ideal system for anyone who needs editing power on the go and has monitors to plug in to in their primary work environments. (And they don’t need a larger laptop display on the unit itself.)
Battery Life
Admittedly, the configuration of this particular model should be expected to have the worst possible battery life (most powerful CPU and GPU available with a high-resolution-screen), but it’s not as bad as you’d think. I used this system when I attended the Adobe Max conference, and I did not bring the charger with me during the day. The only time I regretted that is when I accidentally left Adobe Photoshop running in the background for a few hours. Otherwise, I was able to do basic tasks all day long with no issue.
For non-work-related activities such as gaming, I typically got about two hours of usage when playing a 3D game before needing to plug it in. Dell has done a great job of saving power when it is not needed. Power-hungry, performance-based tasks will drain the battery… which is to be expected. But when just doing simple browser-based tasks, I was able to use it all day without issue.
Software
The unit comes with Windows 11 Pro installed. Even after 18 months, I still have not “adapted” to Microsoft’s newest OS, and I prefer Windows 10. But, based on my performance tests, the thread director in Windows 11, which is aware of the difference between the performance cores and the efficiency cores on Intel’s newest chips, does make a difference. (Windows 10 assigns hard tasks to the efficiency cores, and it takes longer to finish them, decreasing overall performance.)
One way around this is to disable the E-Cores in the BIOS and stick with Windows 10, but especially on a laptop, that negates much of the power efficiency of the newer designs. So you are pretty stuck with Windows 11 on these newer systems. But besides that, the Dell Precision 5480 comes with very little bloatware — just drivers and utilities for the various hardware devices and some Dell performance and configuration optimization tools.
The Graphics Processor
The RTX 3000 GPU is the physical equivalent of the GeForce 4070 Mobile, with 4608 CUDA cores, 8GB of GDDR6 memory and nearly 20 teraflops of processing power. It benchmarks with about 25% of the performance of my giant GeForce 4090 desktop card, which is to be expected based on the paper specs. This is actually fine in most cases since I rarely need to harness the full power of that GPU when doing regular editing tasks. And 20 teraflops is twice the performance of the top-end GeForce 2080/RTX 5000 from two generations ago, and it’s now available in a 14-inch laptop.
Key for professional use of a model this size, I also tested the Dell Precision 5480 with a number of external displays, up to and including the Dell UltraSharp UP3218K monitor, which was supported in its full 8K at 60fps resolution by using two USB-C-to-DisplayPort cables. The last HP mobile workstation I tested required a docking station for full support of that display, and my Razer is limited to 30fps unless I use an external GPU. It’s good to see that Dell fully supports its own display range on its own system, but I do recognize that’s really a function of the GPU and supported output ports. Nonetheless, you can use this system with an 8K monitor if you so desire.
Storage
The hard drive reports 4.5GB/s write and 4.8GB/s read in AJA System Test, which isn’t the fastest PCIe 4.0 speed but more than enough for 99% of power users. Dell offers SSDs in sizes from 256GB to 4TB with self-encrypting models at 512GB and 1TB for users with those requirements.
Performance
CPUs are much harder to compare on paper, which is why tools like Maxon’s Cinebench are so valuable. Blender also has a benchmarking tool for comparing system performance. And performance is always a relative measure since we are comparing a specific system (this one) to other potential options.
Usually, reviewers compare systems to others that are very similar, but in this case, I took a different approach for two reasons. First, I don’t have similar current options to compare to. Second, there is value in comparing what you are sacrificing when you scale down to a small laptop. Which tasks can you do effectively on a mobile system, and which can wait until you are in front of (or remoting into) a powerful desktop workstation?
The 13900H, with six performance cores and eight efficiency cores, has 20 threads available to the OS. My desktop with a 12700K CPU also has 20 threads, coming from eight performance cores and four efficiency cores. In most synthetic render tests, this little laptop has about 70% of the CPU processing power of my consumer desktop tower.
In real-world tests, exporting cinema-quality files out of Premiere, my tests were frustratingly inconsistent. This appears to result from a combination of both Intel’s new power-saving technology and Adobe’s software optimizations. I ran my entire suite of standard test exports multiple times and got widely varying results. I then reran them repeatedly on my 12700K-based desktop and also got less consistent results than I recall in the past. Most of the time, I test repeatedly with slightly different settings so that I don’t repeat the exact same test a number of times. This has really shifted my view on quantifying performance in Premiere.
The best tests would be a live-playback test and potentially a latency test to see how long it takes playback to begin after you press the space bar. But due to the playback optimizations within the program, this is no longer a good way to compare different systems. Puget Systems, which does work in benchmarking, detail the challenges of quantifying performance in Premiere in this great article that dives even deeper into the topic than I have. Regardless of those limitations, here are the raw numbers from my Media Encoder benchmarks for you to evaluate compared to my other systems.
Summing Up
Suffice it to say, this machine can edit and play back nearly any sequence due to Premiere’s optimizations, and it can export high-quality output files with decent performance. But for longer renders and Red source footage, it might be best to render on your desktop workstation. This is totally reasonable for a portable laptop — no one should expect a 14-inch notebook to replace server level hardware. But the Dell Precision 5480 can accomplish most editing tasks with ease.
Mike McCarthy is an online editor/workflow consultant with over 15 years of experience on feature films and commercials. He has been involved in pioneering new solutions for tapeless workflows, DSLR filmmaking and multi-screen and surround video experiences. Check out his site.