Three flavors of the Dell Inspiron 1525

Dan Ackerman, Senior Editor July 21, 2008

If there's one laptop that stands as a textbook example of a mainstream, middle-of-the-road system, it's a basic 15-inch model from Dell. The latest version is the Inspiron 1525, which is a surprisingly well-designed but inexpensive system, and a big improvement over previous 15-inch mainstream Dells, which could be kind of boxy and bulky. The current 1525 is thinner than Dell's 14-inch mainstream model, and has high-end features, such as touch-sensitive media buttons and an HDMI output, even on the cheapest configurations.

We've looked at three different configurations of the Inspiron 1525 this year, and even though they're virtually identical visually, they're pretty different when it comes to performance and value.

We first tested a configurable 1525, available directly from Dell. At about $1,000, it had a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 CPU and 2GB of RAM--not bad for back in February of '08, and we gave it credit for the flexibility of Dell's online configurator (note that the configuration options have obviously changed since February).

More recently, as part of our Back to School retail laptop roundup, we looked at two fixed-configuration versions of the Inspiron 1525--the kind that you'd find on the shelves of a big box electronics store. The $729 1525-122B has a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 CPU and 3GB of RAM, making for a decent mid-priced laptop. We didn't expect much from the cheaper $649 1525-121B model, which has a dated 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T2390 CPU, but we were pleasantly surprised to find better battery life and only a minimal performance drop in this cheaper version.

We still suggest going online and custom-configuring your laptop to make sure you're only paying for what you want, but these retail models give us a good idea of what to expect at different price points.