Dell announced on Tuesday its Latitude 7285
laptop, which the company says is the world's
first laptop that can charge wirelessly.
To work, you'd need the Latitude 7825's
wireless charging keyboard, as well as the
wireless charging mat, which are both sold
separately in a combo for $550 on top of the
Latitude 7825's base $1,200 price tag.
It's an identical concept to wireless charging
smartphones, where you place a smartphone
onto a wireless charging mat or dock. With that
in mind, the benefits of a wirelessly charging
laptops aren't hugely significant, and it's more
of a convenience at this stage. You still need to
charge the laptop wherever the wireless
charging mat is located.
Wireless charging also means you don't need to
fumble around for a charging cable, and you
can keep the charging cable out of sight. The
wireless charging mat, however, would still
need to be connected via cable to a power
outlet.
Dell says that the wireless charging mat isn't
designed to be used on a metal surface, as the
wireless charging technology it uses involves
magnetism. If you want to use the wireless
charging mat on a metal surface, you'd have to
place it two inches up on a non-metallic stand.
Apart from its wireless charging feature, Dell's
new Latitude 7285 is a 2-in-1 detachable laptop
similar to Microsoft's Surface Pro laptops.
Unfortunately, like the Microsoft Surface Pro,
you'd have to buy even the basic, non-wireless
charging keyboard separately for $250. It comes
with a 12-inch display, a Core i5 processor, 8GB
of RAM, and 12GB of fast SSD storage.
Dell's wirelessly charging Latitude 7825 isn't
quite the wireless future we're waiting for, but
it's certainly a step in that direction.
