Dell Technologies Inc. today expanded its lineup of business laptops with the Latitude 9510, a machine touted as the lightest in its category that also sports 5G support and built-in artificial intelligence features.

The gradual rollout of 5G worldwide is driving a major hardware shift in several corners of the tech ecosystem. Wireless carriers are rearchitecting their cell towers and backend infrastructure to take advantage of the standard, while consumer device makers such as Dell are upgrading their products with new chips so they can connect to those towers. When it launches in March 26, the Latitude 9510 will likely be among the first laptops on the market to support high-speed 5G connections.

The 15.6-inch Latitude 9510 comes in a mostly aluminum chassis that starts at 3.2 pounds depending on the model. It’s the world’s smallest and lightest commercial 15-inch personal computer, Dell claims. The screen offers a resolution of 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels, while the battery embedded beneath the keyboard enables up to 30 hours of use per charge depending on the configuration.

Dell has given users a fair number of options in how they configure the machine. The fully kitted-out version includes a Core i7 central processing  unit from Intel Corp.’s new 14-nanometer Comet Lake series, an integrated Intel UHD graphics chip, up to a terabyte of flash storage and a 16-gigabyte RAM pool.

Buyers can order their machine in one of two configurations: a standard clamshell model (pictured, left) or a two-in-one (right).

The laptop’s 5G support is facilitated by antenna embedded into the speakers. Dell said the antenna operate in the sub-6-gigahertz spectrum band, which enables networking speeds of 100 to 900 megabits per second. Future laptops from the company including any prospective 2021 successor to the Latitude 9510 might add support for the millimeter spectrum version of 5G, which is expected to enable even faster transfer rates as high as 3 gigabits per second.

Beyond the hardware upgrades, Dell has mixed in a number of AI features. The Latitude 9510 will ship with a machine learning tool dubbed Dell Optimizer. It identifies the user’s most frequently used applications and reallocates processing power accordingly so those programs load faster. Another new AI feature adjusts Windows settings automatically to conserve electricity when the battery is low.

The Latitude 9510 can be expected to make an appearance in Dell’s booth at the Consumer Electronics Show next week. It will most likely be accompanied by the XPS 13, a new high-end consumer laptop model the company also unveiled today. It features a compact 13.4-inch display, a 10-nanometer chip from Intel’s Ice Lake series and up to 32 gigabytes of RAM.

Image: Dell