Review Date : 5th Jan' 2008

The year of 2007 saw Dell making big noise with stylish yet powerful XPS models such as M1330. It's great to hear that a 15.4" model is now available that follows the same design-first philosophy, yet boasts of premium features that make this laptop a great choice for a portable entertainment and multimedia platform.

At a quarter less than 6 pounds, that's with the standard battery, XPS M1530 is towards the lighter end of laptops available with a 15.4" screen. The front of the notebook is slim, less than 1 inch thick, but the notebook overall is wedge-shaped going to almost 1.4 inches thick at the rear. Though it comes with a choice of 3 colors for the back of the lid, we would have appreciated more considering this model is meant for style and entertainment.

At a price of $1224, we were able to lock our XPS M1530 with a 1.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 160GB hard disk capacity, ample 2GB of RAM and a slot loading dual layer DVD writer. While that may sound quite standard, enhancing the hardware profile is NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS graphics card with up to 128MB of dedicated graphics memory and the fact that XPS M1530 has plenty of innovative design, style and usability features that make it stand out from the crowd.

If you've seen or used the XPS M1330 model, you'll find the keyboard of M1530 to be very similar. No big surprise since the XPS M1530 inherits many of the design features of the M1330 model anyway. Typing on this keyboard is an easy job, thanks to the right travel and cushion, as well there's no flex present.

The touchpad is responsive but it feels that Dell could have dedicated a little more space to it considering the total size of the notebook. The mouse buttons are well-spaced, just a little noisy when clicked. XPS M1530 also hosts media playback buttons housed just above the keyboard, which are touch sensitive with LED backlights. Not to forget that M1530, like other XPS models, also comes equipped with a media center remote control that occupies the ExpressCard slot at the right side of the notebook.

XPS M1530 features a 15.4" glossy screen with sharp colors, great contrast rations and wide viewing angles. Thanks to customer feedback and Dell listening to it, XPS M1530 now gives two more choices for screen resolutions, 1440x900 and 1680x1050, which are way more respectable than the 1280x800 resolution that 1530 was initially launched with. The higher resolutions not only give more screen real estate but are a must for anyone who's planning to go for the high definition drive.

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