Back-to-school laptops: Dell Studio 1535 is tops for less than $1,000

We had a late arrival to our mainstream back-to-school laptop group, but it proved to be well worth the wait.

The Dell Studio 1535 is our pick among mainstream back-to-school laptops.

Of the nine retail laptops in the $800-$999 price range we've reviewed this summer, the Dell Studio 1535 was the last to hit CNET Labs. While it enjoyed the advantage of time--using a few extra weeks to get itself assembled with the latest components--the fact remains that it's the best mainstream laptop you'll find on big-box store shelves right now.

If you're heading off to college in a week or two and have budgeted $1,000 for a laptop that needs to get you from orientation to graduation, it's hard to argue against this member of Dell's new Studio line.

The Studio line sits between Dell's high-end XPS and mainstream Inspiron lines. It features the same tapered shape, rounded hinge, and slot-loading optical drive found on XPS laptops, but adds a bit more bulk and sells for prices that more closely resemble Dell's Inspiron models. This 15-inch model also features appreciated extras including an HDMI port and touch-sensitive media controls.

While every other Intel-based laptop in our mainstream group uses the 65nm Core 2 Duo T5750, the $979 Dell Studio S1535-125B boasts the 45nm Core 2 Duo T8100 processor, which is clocked slightly faster at 2.1GHz (vs. 2.0GHz), operates on a faster frontside bus (800MHz to 667MHz), and features more L2 cache (3MB vs. 2MB)--all of which helps performance. To wit, the Dell Studio made a clean sweep of CNET Labs' application benchmarks, while delivering a respectable, though not chart-topping, 3 hours of battery life.

Runner-up: HP Pavilion dv6985s for its cool copper accents and huge battery.

See more laptops in CNET's back-to-school gift guide.

[NCTARHEELS]

a low end macbook with education discount is $999

[mike10778]

Yeah, a 999 macbook with less RAM, a much smaller HDD, a lower processor, etc.....

[chronoex]

Make that a $999 Macbook with a processor of the same speed, better hardware architecture, and a vastly superior operating system environment.

[fl1ckmasterflex]

better hardware architecture? what ********. there is absolutely no difference between them. macbooks infact have hardware DRM so you cannot install osx on other computers.

[rnaoncfixd]

Macs don't need 4GB of Ram because the operating system doesn't tax it as much as Vistas does. By the way, that laptop has Vistas on it. Sure, you could downgrade, but then, the new software and everything that's coming out in the next couple of years will no longer be compatible with it.

Aside from making this a Mac vs. PC debate, I think that the Dell looks like a great laptop! Dell is a slightly reliable brand that could probably last you through college years, assuming your just taking a bachelors. If you're really into using Windows based systems, then I'd definitely agree with the reviewer.

I just bought a computer for college for my son this weekend. We looked at the Dell, and while it seemed a nice machine, the MacBook easily won the "which one would you prefer to use" contest.