Inspiron 1520 review compared to HP dv4310us

So, you want to know what I have to say about the Inpiron 1520? First I'll relate how the purchase went, then my first impressions, then photos. If you have any questions, requests, suggestions by the end. Let me know!

Purchase:
Well, the purchase took me some time to decide on what I wanted, I finally went with the following:
Jet Black Inspiron 1520, Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, 2.0GHz, 800Mhz, 4M Cache
2GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
WXGA 1280x800 anti-glare screen
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
160G 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Wireless, bluetooth, built in sprint mobile broadband, integrated 2.0 mp webcam, 8x dvd burner, etc

The order was estimated to be completed on the 13th and delivered by the 20 of August, however I actually got it on the 30th of July, nearly 20 days early. With the coupon for $300 it ended up being justo ver $1500.

First Impressions:
Well, the thing was beautiful. It's a bit bulkier and more weighty than my HP Pavilion, but it's not bad. Everything is smooth and cleanly cut. It seems sturdy and has very little give to the screen and no give to the base. Much sturdier than the HP. The latch give when the top is closed is very minimal. It's like 1-2 mm of give. Not even enough space to fit a pen refill between. The system does get rather warm to hot when playing games like Oblivion. The vent on the left side outputs a LOT of hot air, so make sure you do NOT cover the fan on the bottom of the system.

Inputs: The keyboard is a joy to type on, though I will have to get use to some small differances in the layout. They key press is almost "clicky" as my uncle put it, which is a good thing. The touch pad is a bit smaller than I am use to, but so far it hasn't been an issue. The dual scroll bars on the right and bottom edge are nice and smooth, not indented. The buttons feel a little bit loose compared to the HP but it doesn't seem like it will be annoying other than just differant from what I am used to.

Display: The screen is nice. I can tell VERY minute differances due to the 6bit screen compared to the HPs 8bit screen. I repeat, the differance is very minute. The only exception would be if you intended to use this as a graphic editing station. For everyday use, gaming, typing, etc, it is fine and you will not notice anything. The anti-glare option seems to be pretty nice. I haven't noticed any kind of reflection in this thing. The HP viewing angle seems to surpass the dell, though only in the up and down angles. Side to side they are about even. The dell refresh rate is far superior to the hp. When moving the mouse on the hp I can see a slight ghosting, though very minor. I see none on the Dell.

Performance: Well, this thing isn't a desktop replacement, so you won't see it making any headlines, it will however run anything you have. It just might not do so at full settings. Oblivion is quite playable. Eve online ran at around 15 fps in space on my hp, which was somewhat playable, while it ran at 105 fps on the dell. Quite a differance in power. Vista, however, takes up a LOT of performance somehow. I'm not entirely sure how much because it is confusing. But just after loading up out of the box and everything setup, it maintains 620MB of ram just to idle!!! So yes, 2GB of ram IS a minimum for vista if you want to actually do anything.

Misc: I am having huge issues getting used to Vista, it is not like XP at all in interface methods. However, I did get it to connect to a router right out of the box and be directly on the internet. The hardware switch on the left side to disable/enable/detect all wireless services is nice. A quick switch move and you are airplane safe. I haven't tested the Sprint mobile broadband on the dell yet, but I've been using it for a month now on the HP via pcmcia slot and it is VERY nice. If you can afford it, I suggest you get it. In nearly all cities you have broadband anywhere you have sprint service and all other locations with sprint services you get ISDN. I've tested out the webcam a little, it's a bit choppy at any decent resolution, but it seems to be usable. Dell included a program for it that has some neat features such as time lapse, photo, video, motion sensing, etc. The speakers are undernearth the front panel. I thought that might be an issue, but they seem to work just fine and have decent sound to them. This is with just the default basic sound option in the purchase. I haven't tested the Dell media boot option too much, but took a look at it. It seems pretty decent and should make itself useful on trips where you want to conserve battery and just watch videos, bypassing the OS to do so.

Ok, so some pictures follow. I tried to upload in full 3-4MB format with high resolution, but imageshack resized them. In the RGB examples, the first time I loaded the page it did something weird on the dell and I assumed this was the dithering, but upon loading the page again, it looked fine... not sure what that weirdness was. Anyhow, look for yourselves.

 

The Inspiron screen looks fine... much brighter than the hp one.

Nice review, thank you!

 

once you get used to vista you will like it imo.. i know A LOT more now and i actually like it which most people dont say.. tons of new things hidden and in plain view to find.. but a lot of them are def to your advantage

 

this one comes with the recovery vista DVDs?

 

Nice, I'm getting the same screen, looks pretty fine to me.
Thanks for the review and esp the pics

 

Yes, it came with the restore disks.

 

The screen is great! While I'd like a small bit higher resolution, the anti-glare was worth it. I'm actually typing this while sitting passenger in a car with the sun shining on the screen and it's VERY readable. The anti-glare works very good. Also, it is quite a bright screen too. No dead/stuck pixels as far as I can tell so far.

 

So you were saying that the Dell screen is 6-bit and the HP is 8-bit? Are you completely sure about this? Because I have heard that most mainstream laptops ALL use 6-bit. Please correct this if it is wrong. Also, would the Dell be using 6-bit "with dithering" to achieve around 16 million colors? I got the 1680X1050 screen and I think it is absolutely gorgeous. I also believe my screen is an LGP (LG Phillips) model, which only sweetens the deal! ^_^ My only complaint is that the colors look a little bland. When I went into the Nvidia control panel to turn up the "digital vibrance", I realized that IT WASN'T ENABLED!!! Is there any way to enable this? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Digital vibrance wasn't available on mine either.
I don't know whether this is a limitation of the Dell drivers or whether you can't adjust digital vibrance with notebook video cards.
Anyone know?

 

I have a dell notebook and i use digital vibrance i say you go to laptop 2 go drivers site and get the 163.75 drivers they allow you to use the DV feature.
I can't imagine looking at a LCD w/o DV anymore =)

 

Driver limitation then.
Thanks for the info.

 

Hey, thanks! Weird Dell OEM stuff, eh? So you had best results with the 163.75 driver for the 8600M GT?

Oops. I realized that the 163.75 driver is for XP, so which would you suggest for using with 32-bit Vista? I would probably guess the 163.67.