Case
As befits a business Ultrabook that costs more than 1400 Euros (~00), Dell uses high-quality materials for the chassis: A tri-metal case made of magnesium and aluminum and, in the case of our review configuration with a touchscreen, a carbon fiber lid, create a sophisticated appearance. In addition, the lid and the palm rest have a soft-touch surface, so they are quite grippy and pleasant to touch. The touchscreen on the front is protected by Gorilla Glass 3.

Connectivity
Not a lot has changed compared to the predecessor Latitude 12 E7240 in terms of connectivity: The sides look very similar to the predecessor, but the hardware WLAN switch on the left side has been omitted. A SmartCard reader with NFC support which was previously available at an additional cost, is already included in our review unit

As a real business device, Dell's Ultrabook obviously has a docking port, but the same applies to the other manufacturers except for Asus. Small drawback: The Latitude 12 E5250 does not have a VGA port, but you get a mini-DisplayPort as well as an HDMI port. The latter is not available among the comparison devices.
Overall, the port variety is quite reasonable and if required, the missing VGA port can be supplied through the available docking station.

Communication
Are you worried that you get a small Ultrabook without an Ethernet port? This is not a problem, at least in the business segment: All comparison devices including the Latitude 12 E7250 are equipped with fast Gigabit LAN. You also get WLAN with support for all current standards up to the very fast 802.11ac as well as Bluetooth 4.0.

The WLAN reception is very good: At a distance of 10 meters (~33 ft) to the router and through three walls, we still had the full signal, and web pages opened quickly. Another three meters (~10 ft) and another wall, resulted in 4/5 bars and the performance was still very good.
A WWAN module is optionally available as well, so you can access the Internet on the road.