Overall, initial impressions of the Inspiron 1525 are almost entirely positive. Our sample has the Street design (above, on the left) probably the worst of the lot though a couple of them look pretty decent. Standard options are for either a matte black or glossy white finish, while you can also choose from pink, brown, red, green or yellow Microsatin finishes or a new selection of designs called Commotion, Street, Chill and Blossom. There’s also an even larger array of lid finishes to choose from. This is a very decent weight for a notebook of this size, while the quoted thickness of 25mm to 37mm, front to back, means it feels slim and elegant. Dell quotes a starting weight of 2.7kg with a four-cell battery, but we found it weighed exactly that with a standard six-cell battery. Indeed, the new XPS notebooks were very much the response to such criticisms and Dell seems to have taken the lessons learnt there and applied them to its replacement, the Inspiron 1525.Īn entry level 15.4in notebook, the 1525 shares a very similar wedge shaped base to that of the XPS M1530. Though it introduced some new elements, such as a range of colourful finishes, it was bulky and uninspiring in a time when notebooks were becoming slimmer and easier to handle. But let it not be said that Dell has had things all its own way, because there have been a few turkeys lodged in there too – the XPS M1730 springs to mind.Īnother underwhelming effort was the previous Inspiron laptop, the Inspiron 1520. Its new range of XPS notebooks, the M1330 and M1530 were both great machines, while its desktop offerings, like the XPS 420, haven’t been half bad either. There's a pretty obvious trade off to consider-slower performance and longer battery life versus faster performance and shorter battery life.Dell has been on something of a roll recently. The Inspiron 1525 ran for 3 hours and 10 minutes on our video playback battery drain test using the included six-cell battery, which is a nice improvement over the more expensive 1525, which lasted only 2 hours and 15 minutes on the same test-perhaps because of its more powerful CPU. For an extra $80, however, you can trade up to a faster T5750 CPU, 3GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive (plus a Webcam)-which seems like a reasonable set of upgrades for the price, although we saw minimal benefit in this price range from adding that third GB of RAM on our tests. The system finished first or second on CNET Labs' benchmarks among the five entry-level back-to-school laptops we tested this summer. The system is no speed demon, we ran into occasional sluggishness while multitasking-Web surfing, working on office documents, and playing media files-but it's still adequate for basic academic work. Unlike the Inspiron 1525-122B, this 1525 doesn't use a Core 2 Duo chip but an older Intel Pentium Dual-Core CPU. Adding an HDMI jack is a nice high-end touch, even if you never use it. There are plenty of USB jacks for all your accessories and even FireWire, which we're seeing less frequently, but no Bluetooth. This version lacks the 2.0-megapixel Webcam found on the $729 configuration of the 1525. The media controls are of the touch-sensitive variety we're partial to, and the Inspiron 1525 has helped make these the industry default, even for budget-minded laptops. Above the keyboard sits a row of media control buttons, which you won't find on the Sony VAIO NR430, a brand more commonly associated with multimedia endeavors than a jack-of-all-trades Inspiron. The keyboard is the same full-size model found on Dell's other Inspiron laptops, and it feels solid and responsive. Dell has managed to shave a little bulk off its previous 15-inch Inspiron model, and this version is even thinner than 14-inch Inspiron 1420, although its bigger footprint is not as well suited for lugging around campus all day.
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