The 10 Coolest New Dell Products Of 2021 (So Far)

From new Latitude laptops and webcams to PowerEdge servers and PowerStore, here are the ten hottest new Dell Technologies products that hit the market in 2021.

10 Hot Dell Products Launched In 2021

From new laptops and webcams to new lines of servers and storage products, Dell Technologies has launched a slew of new innovative solutions in 2021.

As the innovation engine roars at Dell, the Round Rock, Texas-based PC and infrastructure giant is reporting record revenue. In its first fiscal quarter 2022, which ended April 30, Dell generated $24.5 billion in revenue, representing a 12 percent year over year increase. Dell’s product innovation strategy is being led by the new remote workforce and transition towards selling its solutions in an as-a-service sales model.

CRN breaks down ten of the coolest Dell Technologies products of 2021 so far.

For more of the biggest startups, products and news stories of 2021 so far, click here.

Dell Latitude 9420 Laptop

Dell Technologies unveiled its new Latitude 9420 notebook in January, available both as a 2-in-1 or a clamshell model. The notebook includes a 14-inch display with FHD+ resolution (clamshell model) or QHD+ resolution (for the 2-in-1 model), as well as a 16:10 aspect ratio to offer a 5-percent larger viewing area and brightness of 500 nits.

Dell says the Latitude 9420 features the industry’s first automatic SafeShutter, 3D speakerphone and Intelligent Audio. With SafeShutter, the PC knows when to open and close for added privacy or take control with keyboard mute keys. Aimed at malicious hackers, these keys provide an extra layer of hardware security ensuring the mic is muted and SafeShutter is closed.

The Latitude 9420 clamshell version has a starting weight of 2.9 pounds and a thickness of just 0.55 of an inch.​ In terms of connectivity, the Latitude 9420 will offer optional support for high-speed 5G or LTE, along with WiFi 6.

Key collaboration features include a built-in speakerphone, dedicated mute and mic keys, and an enhanced webcam with capabilities for background blur and automatic light correction. Other features include ExpressSign-in 2.0 -- which leverages Intel Visual Sensing Technology to enable faster auto-wake and auto-lock -- and the AI-powered Dell Optimizer, which enhances app performance through learning the way that each individual user works.

The Dell Latitude 9420 has a starting price of around $2,000.

PowerEdge XE8545

One of Dell’s biggest launches in years is the new Dell EMC PowerEdge XE8545 server which uniquely combines AMD and Nvidia technology designed for accelerated workloads and ideal for machine learning, HPC and GPU virtualization.

Dell’s new 4U PowerEdge XE8545 server combines the maximum core counts of two 3rd generation AMD EPYC processors with four of the highest performing NVIDIA A100 GPUs. PowerEdge XE8545 offers up to 128 cores of Milan CPUs, four Nvidia A100 GPUs, and optimized performance of Nvidia‘s vGPU software in a dual socket, 4U rack server.

The PowerEdge XE8545 is one of the first servers on the market to have the new Nvidia NVLink baseboard with Nvidia’s A100 chips in it. The server is completely air cooled for greater efficiency and lower cost of operation.

The Dell EMC PowerEdge XE8545 servers are now globally available.

Dell PowerStore 500

Dell’s PowerStore storage system is worldwide storage leader’s new flagship midrange storage line. In April, Dell unveiled its newest member with the PowerStore 500, designed as a lower-priced all-flash storage array with enterprise performance and storage services for businesses of any size, including for use in remote or branch locations, edge environments, or larger IT deployments.

The storage array’s compact 2U form-factor stores up to 1.2 petabytes and is capable of handling demanding enterprise workloads, supporting up to 2.4 million SQL transactions per minute and 1,500 VDI desktops per appliance. Dell’s PowerStore 500 is a container-based, all-flash array addressing a full range of storage needs — from block and vVol data to multi-platform file storage – that can be the foundation of an edge computing environment. PowerStore’s adaptable design is idea for edge-based IoT data analytics and remote office applications where ease of deployment and advanced replication is required.

Dell’s PowerStore 500 includes data management and protection tools including PowerStore Manager, cloud-based storage analytics, and data reduction and data encryption capabilities, as well as 25Gb Ethernet and optional 32Gb FC with NMVe/FC to provide enterprise SAN connectivity. When its PowerStoreOS runs on a VM, administrators can access the hypervisor to deploy their own applications directly on the appliance, using the same VMware tools and methods they use with external hosts. Multiple PowerStore 500 appliances can be clustered.

Dell UltraSharp Webcam

Riding the video conferencing tidal wave spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic, Dell launched a new UltraSharp Webcam aimed to make video conferencing clearer than ever before.

The 4K High Dynamic Range (HDR) webcam has a large 4K Sony STARVIS CMOS sensor for Dell laptops along with a Dell ExpressSign-In facial recognition and the Dell Peripheral Manager. The magnetically attached webcam also features AI-powered auto framing that keeps people at the center of the picture no matter where they move as well as advanced customize settings. Designed for borderless displays, the webcam magnetically attaches to the mount and sits well on the monitor without blocking a single pixel. Customers can customize how much they want to show of themselves and their surroundings by adjusting field of view to 65-, 78- or 90-degrees.

Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell said his new UltraSharp Webcam was “born during the [pandemic] lockdown” and was inspired by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

The company also debuted a new series of monitors in 2021 aimed at improved video conferencing including the Dell UltraSharp 40 Curved WUHD Monitor that offers a 40-inch display with a 2500R curve and resolution that goes beyond 4K.

Apex Data Storage Services

In May, Dell launched its as-a-service portfolio Dell Apex with plans to eventually sell all of its products in a consumption-based sales motion.

Apex Data Storage Services is Dell’s first infrastructure as-a-service offering, providing a portfolio of scalable and elastic storage resources. Customers select the either block or file data services, their preferred performance tier, base capacity – which starts as low as 50 terabyte – and one- or three-year subscription terms. Businesses also select the deployment location whether it be in a data center, edge or colocation facility. Organizations pay only for what they use with single rate transparency and no overages. The turnkey infrastructure of Data Storage Services is owned and maintained by Dell.

Wrapping up Apex together is the Apex Console. The new self-service console is where customers and channel partners manage a business’s entire Apex lifecycle. The Apex console is used to identify and subscribe to Apex services that map to their needs while Dell matches the technology and services to deliver the desired outcomes. The console provides monitoring and management of Apex services to meet the changing needs of their business.

Apex Custom Solutions

Dell products on Apex also launched in 2021 include the unique Apex Custom Solutions which brings one of the industry’s largest infrastructure portfolios to customers as-a-service.

Apex Custom Solutions is the company’s most flexible as-a-service offering that allows customers to create their own on-demand as-a-service IT environment compared to the more turnkey Apex Data Storage Services.

Apex Custom Solutions includes two options: Apex Flex on Demand and Apex Data Center Utility. Apex Flex on Demand provides Dell servers, storage, data protection and hyperconverged infrastructure as-a-service. Businesses can select the exact product and services they want and scale usage up and down while paying for only what they us.

Apex Data Center Utility adds an additional level of flexibility through custom metering and manage services applied across the data center.

PowerEdge 750xa

Launched this year, Dell’s dual socket 2U Dell EMC PowerEdge R750xa is a top of the line server that delivers accelerator-optimized performance to help companies tackle their most data-intensive workloads. The PowerEdge R750xa is powered by up to two 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors and supports up to four double-wide GPUs and six single-wide GPUs.

The Dell EMC PowerEdge R750xa is purpose-built to boost acceleration performance, delivers GPU-dense performance for machine learning training, inferencing and AI with support for the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite exclusively available for VMware vSphere 7 Update 2.

The server is managed by Dell EMC OpenManage software to discover, monitor, manage, update and deploy the PowerEdge server. On the security front, the R750xa has built-in security at every phase of the lifecycle – from the silicon root of trust and secured component verification, to drift detection and BIOS recovery.

Dell PowerEdge XR11 and XR12

As the edge computing market is set to explode, Dell launched this year a pair of new servers Built to thrive in remote and harsh environments. Dell’s new XR11 and XR 12 servers are tailor-made for edge computing with the ruggedized servers including Intel’s new third-generation Xeon Scalable processors inside a hardened chassis and support for multiple accelerators for the growing demands of edge-based workloads.

Dell’s new short-depth edge computing servers are operational in extreme temperatures, dusty environments and are NEBS Level 3 compliant for communications.

The XR11 and XR12 PowerEdge servers have an extensive collection of sensors that automatically track thermal activity, which helps regulate temperature thereby reducing server noise and power consumption.

The servers have up to 8 DIMMs, PCI Express 4.0 enabled expansion slots that leverage Dell EMC’s management system OpenManage portfolio. The PowerEdge XR11 is a 1-socket 1U server, while the XR12 is a 1-socket, 2U server.

Dell PowerEdge C6525

This year, Dell launched its new PowerEdge C6525 which is a compute-dense server designed to boost data center performance to tackle a variety of high-performance computing workloads and applications. The PowerEdge C6525 comes with up to two, 2nd or 3rd Generation AMD EPYC processors per node configurations with up to 64 cores per processor and up to 280W.

Features include up to 512 processing cores in a 2U/4N dense server, which is the most available processing cores of any 2U Dell EMC PowerEdge server. The PowerEdge C6525 server has up to 3200MT/s memory speed to reduce latency and deliver faster response as well as optimized core count and memory for large datasets. The C6525 server is the engine behind Dell’s Minerva cluster and its other super computing platforms.

In terms of security, the PowerEdge C6525 has AMD Secure Memory Encryption (SME) and Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV), drift detection, and offers digitally signed firmware packages.

The New VxRail

Dell injected new PowerEdge servers and new processors from Intel and AMD inside its hyperconverged infrastructure VxRail line this year, making the HCI system faster than ever before.

Additionally, Dell introduced VxRail dynamic nodes, which are compute-only systems designed to help customers simplify operations, better manage storage resources and reduce costs by supporting more workloads and extending VxRail environments to include external storage options. VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) on VxRail, as a hybrid cloud infrastructure foundation, can be configured with dynamic nodes to use Dell’s PowerStore, PowerMax or Unity XT as primary storage. Customers can scale compute and storage independently to meet workload needs, extending VxRail’s operational model and tight VMware integration.

Dell also released new self-service tools for its VxRail HCI System Software. Customers will be able to validate, orchestrate and automate cluster deployment on their own time, ideal for enterprises with remote or distributed environments. These new software capabilities allow customers to better meet workload demands by dynamically redeploying or reallocating nodes within clusters.

With an eye towards the future, Dell also said this year that VxRail systems will be updated with future VMware technology — such as when new versions or releases of NSX-T and Tanzu are launched — in a single upgrade cycle.