The Dell Inspiron 15 has undergone some substantial facelifts, consequently it looks a lot better than the older Inspiron 15. Gone is the drab, lacklustre style of the past - the new Inspiron 15 sports a a lot more polished, refined appear. You've five glossy display lid colours to choose from on Dell's website - black's notorious for attracting the most fingerprints; we recommend lighter colours.
Like the Dell Studio 15 Artist Edition,
the Inspiron 15 sports activities a dropped central hinge style, and a refreshingly cleaner palmrest. The new Dell Inspiron 15-1564 is better built than the previous one, and definitely much better looking than some other laptops in its cost range. The Inspiron 15's one of the lighter 15-inch laptops, weighing just 2.4kg.
A 1.3MP webcam is recessed about the Dell Inspiron 15's best screen bezel and it's good enough for on the internet video chats. The Inspiron 15's desktop sports activities a convenient dock at its best which is useful for launching your favorite IM client, browsing via photos, launching the webcam, working with productivity suites, etc, and also the dock is fully customizable.
The keyboard's best strip sports multifunction keys, most of which are for multimedia usage and they all work flawlessly. Typing about the Inspiron 15's keyboard is good and comfortable, no complaints at all. It's touchpad is smaller than the ideal size, but it is finely textured and really responsive - offers great tactile feedback. Dell has also bundled in a dedicated key (next to F12) to turn off the touchpad while typing at length - a nifty addition. But the touchpad doesn't support multiple gestures like on the Aspire 5740 laptop.
This version of the Dell Inspiron 15 sports activities Intel's latest Core processor - the Core i3-330M 2.13-GHz. Complementing the able Intel processor is 3GB of DDR3 RAM, 250GB hard drive, and onboard Intel GMA HD video adaptor. Not a potent hardware configuration, though an excellent one, nonetheless, for its target audience.
The Inspiron 15 also bundles in a 8x DVD writer, three USB ports, multicard reader, VGA-out, audio jack and an ethernet port along its chassis. Sadly, there's no Gigabit Ethernet (just 100Mbit LAN) or Wi-Fi 802.11n (only 802.11 b/g), but the Inspiron 15 incorporates Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity. The Dell Inspiron 15 also has an HDMI port to connect itself to an LCD TV or projector to play high-def content from the laptop.
Like AsusWebStorage seen on some Eee PCs, Dell gives extended 2GB of on the internet storage for one year with the Dell Inspiron 15. Additionally, the Dell Inspiron 15 comes with a six-cell battery pack, and 64-bit Windows 7 House Basic operating program. It doesn't promise to give everything, but overall a nice mixture of hardware components and features on the Dell Inspiron 15.
The Dell Inspiron 15's overall performance was nearly the same as the recently reviewed Acer Aspire 5740. A WorldBench 6 score of 87, PC Mark 05 score of 5119, and 3D Mark 06 score of 1325 is quite great for an entry-level all-purpose laptop. The fast combination of processor and system memory ensures you don't hit any bottlenecks whilst multitasking with regular, every-day programs and apps.
The six-cell battery on the Dell Inspiron 15 lasted 1 hour 15 minutes in our synthetic benchmarks at full display brightness and higher overall performance mode - slightly much better than the Acer Aspire 5740's performance. In real-world usage, we clocked a time of 2 hours 59 minutes whilst surfing the net over Wi-Fi and listening to music, which is great but not great.
The new Dell Inspiron 15 sports substantial improvements more than the older model, each in terms of look and feel and overall performance. It might not have each feature within the bag, but for a price tag of £398, we think it includes a pretty good blend of style and performance at an attractive cost point. Suggested for anyone who's shopping for an all-purpose house laptop on a tight budget.
