Great for Basic Laptop!, July 12, 2014
This review is from: Dell Inspiron i3531-1200BK 15.6-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
My wife and I were looking for notebooks for our kids (9 and 11 yrs old). DELL had a sale for $200.00 for this model, and we could not pass up the opportunity. All in all, this is an excellent laptop for kids or very basic laptop for a family.
1. CHIP: Intel Celeron (dual core). This is a latest Celeron chip (N2830, Bay Trail - M) you will have. Being a dual core can handle most of the demands easily. Because it is a Bay Trail chip, it is quiet and not heavy on your resources. It is so quiet, you hardly hear the fan at all. So for your Web browsing, emails, YouTube viewing, MS Office, some gaming, and every day chores, this is a great basic laptop.
2. BUILD. The black matte finish is not fancy but functional. Simple but sturdy. The keyboard has no flex, and comes with chiclet keyboard that is well designed and generously spaced. The screen is bright and resolution is normal for this price range.
3. PRICE. Price differs from store to store, but if you get it in right time, you might get it for around $200.00. Even $250 is a good price. To give you a comparison: various Chromebooks are priced in this range but with less functions and memories. Additionally, you CANNOT install any Windows programs (such as, MS Office, etc), so while Chromebooks have their proper place, for those who need basic laptop for general use, this laptop might be a better fit in this price range.
4. OS. Windows 8.1 is far, far better than Windows 8.0. If you already have 8.0, then you should update/upgrade it to 8.1. I love using it, and my kids love the tiles. PLUS, I love 8.1's Family Safety feature. I can control how much my kids can be on the computer and what days. Additionally you can also filter what kind of web they are browsing. MS also sends you (the parent) weekly report on the kids use of the computer. Love this feature! Easy to set up and monitor.
1. No optical Drive (DVD/CD). But nowadays, this is not really needed anymore. But for those who need it, you might have to consider other models.
2. No Bluetooth. The box says, "Bluetooth" but this is misprint. This model does NOT have Bluetooth.
3. Only 2 USB (2.0) ports. I was hoping that it had another USB port.
Despite the cons, considering its price, this is an excellent entry laptop for kids and those who just want sturdy, dependable laptop for every day general use. Highly, highly recommended!
So far, so good., June 23, 2014
This review is from: Dell Inspiron i3531-1200BK 15.6-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
I've only had this laptop for 4 days, but I haven't had any problems so far! It's silent and doesn't get hot at all. Downloads are really fast, and I can play games with no lagging at all. This laptop doesn't come with a cd/dvd drive, but I just bought an external one and it works perfectly fine. This is such a quality laptop for the price! The keyboard is really nice, and even had a number pad, which isn't very common in affordable laptops. The only con I have is that when you click on the mouse pad, it's quite loud. Other than that, I'm extremely pleased.
It's a really good laptop for general non-high end gaming and great for everything else!, July 23, 2014
This review is from: Dell Inspiron i3531-1200BK 15.6-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
This laptop is pretty good for the price. I got it for $249 ($260ish after taxes). It's great for what it is! I see other reviews freaking out because there's not disk drive. Yes, it's stated right there there is none. Read better. Anyway, this has a decent amount of RAM. Windows 8.1 isn't nearly as bad as 8, if you install Start8 you can get your start bar back too. I also make it so the desktop shows and not the weird menu that 8 and 8.1 has. The graphics card isn't too bad for it being an integrated one. I can run the Sims 3 (all expansions too) with the graphics set to the lowest quality, no lag. Minecraft runs great, and so do games like Fallout 3 and NV if you turn the graphics all the way down. Processor speed is great too. For what I do with a computer/laptop this is the best for the prices. Webcam is decent too! I actually like the missing disk drive. I haven't used CD's in years. You can always get a USB CD/DVD drive or just make a bootable flash/usb stick like I normally do.
Currently the Best Laptop for the price., July 10, 2014
Dell Inspiron i3531-1200BK 15.6-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
Dell is providing the best laptop you can buy for the price you pay. I looked for an affordable laptop as and I found this Dell laptop. I am very pleased with it. It is not as good as the more expensive laptops, however for the price I consider it the best buy. The windows program is the same as on the other laptop I use but it operates different from what I am used to on the Dell (maybe that's because I deleted most of those extra apps). I would buy this laptop again and I would recommend anyone looking for an affordable laptop to use for work or school to buy this one. It does what you need it to. I use it for bible study, research, writing, facebook and watching various videos.
It's got the N2830 Baytrail Processor. Enough Said., June 27, 2014
Dell Inspiron i3531-1200BK 15.6-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
It's got the new N2830 Baytrail processor. It's cheap, it's fast enough, and most importantly (to me) it's fanless. The marketing didn't even mention this. I couldn't even find out whether it had a fan or not without reading another amazon review (thank you reviewer).
There are a couple similar windows laptops being released by competing brands also with the N2830 processor. Toshiba's version only has 2GB memory. The Asus version looks great, but it's only 3 cell instead of the 4 on this one, and it's not even out yet.
Asus also has a line of chromebooks that have this exact same processor, the C200, and C300s. These are smaller and more portable, but have small hard drives and Chrome OS, which can be hard to develop on.
I ran windows once, and got the licence using the magical jelly bean keyfinder, and then quickly erased it, disabled uefi and installed linux mint xfce. Everything is going good. I get around 7000 score on octane benchmark. This is a very good score for a fanless. Dell's Venue tablets score in the 4000s. Samsungs fanless chromebook 2 gets around 6000 i believe. Basically I'm not aware of any fanless computer getting comparable performance that didn't have this processor. That said, your basic intel i3 cpu with a fan will get at least double this score. So while it's good for fanless, you get at least double the performance and likely more if you have a better cpu with a fan. You will not be able to play any serious games. I couldn't even get a solid 60fps playing counter-strike 1.6. I could play super meat boy without lag at 60fps. Fez and Bastion I was getting around 30 fps on average and dipping below.
If fanless cpu's are important to you, you should note that intel is planning on releasing a cpu line named Broadwell during the winter which will also have fanless variants and should be much more powerful. So It may be better to wait for these.
One thing to note is that the design has very obviously been recycled. There's a panel over where a cd drive would have been, and there's no fan in the area that there would have been. It's as though as soon as Dell got their hands on the new Processor they just whipped this together. And that's okay. Because I care more about getting this processor faster than getting a design tailored to this laptops capabilities.
Keyboard is fine. Trackpad is nice and big and not sticky. Mouse clicks are brittle but loud. Layout is a little wonky. I prefer how ASUS laysout their keys with the page up and downs going down the side.
Make sure you only pay $250 for this laptop. The price is what makes this amazing. The default payment option when I bought this laptop on amazon was $300 dollars. Don't fall for it!. Better yet just buy it directly from Dell.
Dell Inspiron i3531-1200BK 15.6-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
Modern laptops are becoming more powerful all the time. More RAM and hard drive space along with faster CPUs make many of them true desktop replacement PCs, and there seems to be no end to the enhancements in sight.
But not everyone needs the fastest, most powerful laptop on the block. If you just need a laptop that does a good job at surfing the Internet, checking email, watching Youtube videos and making simple edits to photos, a good budget model should serve you quite well.
The Dell Inspiron i3531-1200BK is a 15.6 inch laptop that will do everything mentioned above, and more. While it won’t be setting any speed records, it’s plenty fast enough and powerful enough to do what the average Internet user needs for a budget laptop to do.
It comes with an Intel Celeron N2830 CPU, 4GB of RAM (expandable to 8GB), a 500 GB hard drive, 802.11bgn Wi-Fi support and a built-in webcam. Another nice feature is a numeric keypad which is something of a rarity among budget laptops. Add in the average 6.5 hour battery life and you can see that this is a pretty capable machine for the money!
Of course at just $250 there are bound to be a few tradeoffs to consider, and that’s certainly the case here. For example, there is no optical drive for installing software from disc, watching DVDs or listening to CDs. But few people do those things with laptops anymore anyway, and if you need to you can always plug in an inexpensive external USB optical drive.
The video quality provided by this laptop isn’t the sharpest around, but most users will find it quite adequate for watching Internet videos and such.
Overall, this is a good entry-level budget laptop. The price just can’t be beat, and unless you need a laptop for gaming or running resource-intensive software such as Adobe Photoshop, I think you’ll find it to be a very viable option for your basic Internet and general purpose computing needs.
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