The Dell Inspiron 1525 looks anything, but boring. Twelve differently designed lids bring a welcome variety in the life with notebooks. Decent 'matte black', 'Flamingo pink' and colourful patterns, like the 'Chill', are available. So, you can be sure to find one which you like. The reviewed notebook in black and white 'Commotion' design attracted the attention of colleagues, friends, and passer-bys at once. They looked interested and thrilled.

Inside the Dell Inspiron 1525 is elegantly, and clearly designed. The continuous dark grey and silver plastic looks due to some small metal applications and seamlessly integrated speakers, located above the keyboard, more vivid. A nice feature: The multimedia bar welcomes the user with an elegant flare upon power-on.

Because of this, it does hardly get obvious that the Dell Inspiron 1525 does not belong to the thinnest notebooks available nowadays. After all the height of this 15.4-inch notebooks is 4.1 cm. Even the thinnest part was as high as 3.1 cm. In return, it weighs just 2.8 kg including battery, which is alright for a notebook of this category. The  mains adapter weighs 364 g.

The workmanship of this Dell notebook appeared to be good at once. Despite some smaller weaknesses regarding gaps and finish, the advantages of the flexural rigid case outweigh the disadvantages. Even if you apply much force the palm rest area does hardly yield. Creaking noises can, if at all, only be triggered near the optical drive. Regarding haptics the used materials are alright. They feel nice to the touch, and their rough surfaces especially at the palm rest area, gives firm support and is insensible to dirt and smaller scratches. That's exactly the way it should.

However, the display design is not that good. A transport hook is missing. The display is kept closed solely by its own weight and the tractive power of the two easily moving hinges - an arguable design. If we close the Dell Inspiron 1525, turn it upside down or onto one of its flanks, and hold it only at the base unit, there is immediately a gap of nearly two cm. So, dirt or even sharp objects can easily penetrate in between, if you transport this notebook. Although this does not look so good, Dell should rather use  a small transport hook with sliding switch again. Besides the missing transport hook, the workmanship and the haptics of the Dell Inspiron 1525 are in general good.

Regarding interface equipment this Dell notebook is even better than some multimedia laptops. Besides four USB ports, Firewire, and a good webcam inside the display frame, and a card reader, it scores especially points by its digital HDMI out. LCD- TVs and flat screens, the latter mostly only with a proper adapter, can be attached within seconds and ensure a high-quality picture. A small remote control even increases user-friendliness. Analogue VGA and S-Video out are also available. However, a  digital sound out is missing.

The Dell Inspiron 1525 connects to the Internet either via LAN or WLAN or via out-dated modem connection. Bluetooth and HSDPA are available as options - the latter is mostly only provided by expensive business notebooks.

The Dell Inspiron 1525 is based on the current Santa Rosa technology by Intel. Depending on the configuration, selected in the on-line shop of Dell, a direct shipper, the clock rate of the Core-2-Duo or Celeron processor by Intel is either higher or lower. The reviewed notebook was equipped with a Core 2 Duo T5500 with 1,66 GHz clock rate and two MByte L2-Cache. Supported by two GByte DDR2-RAM and a 160 GByte hard disk the performance of this bundle is more than sufficient  for smooth work. However, if you try to retouch pictures, e.g., with Photoshop, it could be more powerful. However, this does not belong to the typical fields of operation of starter notebooks.

The benchmark results of the Dell Inspiron 1525 are throughout typical for this notebook category. In the PCMark05 benchmark it reached good 3600 points, the Cinebench R10 result was 3069 points. Because of the integrated video solution by Intel, the 3DMark benchmarks weren't that good. The newest of this series of benchmarks resulted in 536 points, which proves that current demanding computer games are not the intended field of operation of the Intel GMA X3100. Nearly 10 fps in Doom 3 also support the moderate performance regarding up-to-date games.

The performance of the hard disk did not meet our expectations.  Although the built-in 160 GByte hard disk is not one of the newest, if performed better in other notebooks. The best transfer rate was after a number of runs only 33.3 MByte/s and the access time 25 ms. Inside other notebooks the access time of an identical hard disk was very good 16.0 ms, the transfer rate nearly 34 MByte/s under same conditions – strange.

Temperature

In general the temperature increase of the reviewed notebook did not cause any problems. Neither with office work nor under full load its surface temperature get uncomfortably hot. Even after two hours ran at full load the maximum temperature at the top side, measured in the middle of the keyboard was moderate, in more detail 36.4 degree Celsius. Under these extreme conditions the bottom side reaches a maximum of above 48 degree Celsius, exactly at the same location. Nevertheless, this is nothing to complain about, because it is clearly lower during standard office and multimedia work.

The 6 cells battery of the reviewed notebook has a power output of 56 Wh. Depending on the load this is sufficient for one and a half to about four and a half hours unplugged work. Besides the load also the brightness of the display has a big impact on the battery runtime.  Whilst the battery is emptied by WLAN operation with maximum brightness in nearly two and a half hours, with energy saving settings a runtime of clearly above three hours is possible. In practice, i.e., running Office applications and such, the battery had to be recharged after about three hours.  Dell also offers a 85 Wh battery, which should enhance the battery runtime, for a low surcharge.