Dell Inspiron 1525 Laptop

Editors'Rating
7.8

Pros Boots quickly; has HDMI port, touch-sensitive media controls; vertical and horizontal scroll strips; provides access to media and presentations without booting Windows; lots of case design options

Cons Noisy optical drive; integrated graphics can't be upgraded; keyboard keys a bit shallow; glossy screen produces excessive glare

Editors' Take Though no friend to gamers, the Dell Inspiron 1525 offers mainstream users a good mix of style and portability.

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Key Specs
Processor: 2GHz Core 2 Duo T7250Memory: 2GB DDR2Storage: 120GB hard driveOptical Drives: Double-layer DVD±RWDisplay: 15.4-inch TFTGraphics: Integrated Intel GMA X3100Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium

Review
Reviewed by: Rick Broida Review Date: January 2008
The Inspiron 1525 improves on its predecessor, the popular Inspiron 1520, in almost every way. It shaves off a few ounces and inches, adds worthwhile new features, and puts more power under the hood, all while keeping the price below $1,000. Actually, the new Inspiron starts at just $499, but our review configuration pushed the price to $974. However you trick out this notebook, you're sure to be pleased by its travel-friendly dimensions, stylish design options, and nifty extras. Gamers, however, will definitely be disappointed with its sluggish integrated graphics.
As you might guess from its model number, the Inspiron 1525 doesn't represent an extreme makeover of the 1520—it's more like a nip and tuck. The wedge-shaped notebook looks virtually identical but boasts a slimmer design: It's 1.5 inches at its thickest edge, 1.1 inches at its thinnest, 14 inches wide, and 10.1 inches deep. The system weighs exactly 6 pounds with battery. Dell offers the highly configurable 1525 in a variety of stylish lid colors and patterns. The base model comes in Jet Black; you'll pay $25 extra for the magenta Blossom pattern featured on our review unit, or any of the nine other design choices. We think that's a worthwhile upgrade to stand out from the basic-black crowd.
Inside, the Inspiron greets you with a stunning silver finish. Though we found the keyboard just a tad shallow, we liked the extra-wide touch pad and its accompanying vertical and horizontal scroll strips. It's rare that a Web page these days requires horizontal scrolling, but it's still great for zipping across spreadsheets. We also liked the Inspiron's new touch-sensitive media control panel, which includes four playback buttons and three for volume (up, down, and mute). All the buttons light up blue when you touch them.
Dell's other design amenities include a pair of headphone jacks—great for sharing a movie or music with your seatmate—and a Wi-Fi network finder that works even when the notebook is off or hibernating. Just slide a switch on the side of the case, and an LED lights up to indicate the presence of a network.
The Inspiron sports four USB ports (two on each side of the case), a mini-FireWire port, and a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port for connecting the system to an HDMI-equipped monitor or TV. When we connected the notebook to a 46-inch HDTV, it automatically switched display modes and chose a suitable resolution. We did, however, notice that the notebook's optical drive was a bit noisy when watching DVDs.
Speaking of resolution, the standard 15.4-inch wide-screen LCD tops out at 1,280x800, but you can upgrade to a 1,440x900 display for $50 extra. If you stick with the standard resolution, you have a choice between glossy and antiglare screens. (The upgrade comes in glossy only.) We highly recommend the latter, as the glossy version (which we tested) produces a ton of glare. Dell also offers an integrated Webcam for $25 extra.
As for the rest of the hardware, it's mostly what you'd expect from a sub-$1,000 notebook: a 120GB hard drive, a double-layer DVD burner, an eight-format flash-card reader, and 2GB of DDR2 memory. The Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 processor does give the Inspiron a bit more pep than the T5000-series processors found in many similarly priced systems. The same goes for the integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100: It's a definite step up from the poky GMA 950, but don't expect the kind of performance you'd get from a discrete graphics subsystem. And unfortunately, this is one area where Dell offers no customization: You can't upgrade the graphics.
The Inspiron turned in solid, if unexceptional, benchmark scores, starting with an iTunes conversion time of 8 minutes and 12 seconds, and a Windows Media Encoder time of 5 minutes and 39 seconds. It managed a Futuremark 3DMark06 score of 546 at its native resolution, but we couldn't get the PCMark05 test to run, possibly because this was a preproduction system. The Inspiron's Cinebench 9.5 score of 606 was in line with other similarly equipped notebooks we've tested.
We put the Inspiron's battery to the test by setting Vista's performance level to maximum, cranking up the screen brightness, and then playing a DVD movie until the system quit. It lasted 1 hour and 58 minutes, which means you should get about 4 hours of real-world operation with battery-saving features enabled.
Though we normally don't clock boot speed, the Inspiron seemed to start faster than other notebooks we've tested. Sure enough, Vista was ready for action exactly 50 seconds after we pressed the power button. We timed a few other notebooks, including the Gateway P-6825 and Fujitsu LifeBook V1010, and all of them took at least 90 seconds to boot—some closer to 3 minutes. For even faster initial operation, look to Dell's Media Direct feature, which provides near-instant access to your photos, music, movies, contacts, and even presentations without having to boot Windows. All you do is press the Home button next to the power button, then wait a few seconds for Media Direct to start.
Though we'd gladly trade that feature for a faster graphics processor, we'll add it to the list of nice little perks that make the Inspiron 1525 a winning notebook.