Dell Inspiron 531 (Blu-ray)

Earlier this year, Dell introduced the Inspiron desktop line as a replacement for its venerable Dimension desktop brand. The latest version of the Inspiron 531 ($1,129 direct, $1,409 with 20-inch widescreen LCD monitor) comes with a new addition: a Blu-ray drive. Before you get too excited, it's a read-only unit, so it can't burn BD-R or BD-RE discs. This is a system strictly for people who want to enjoy Blu-ray media (mostly movies) on a midrange PC. The rest of the system isn't slouchy, but there are a couple of better choices out there, especially when you discount the impact of the Blu-ray drive.

The Inspiron 531(Blu-ray) looks just like the one I reviewed three months ago, with the same white painted metal case and silver face plate. The same spring-loaded doors hide the trays for the Blu-ray drive and the dummy panel below it. The drive is perfectly suited to displaying Blu-ray movies on a widescreen, HDCP-compliant monitor such as the 20-inch Dell SP2008WFP.The drive will also burn DVDs and CDs, so it isn't quite as hobbled as the DVD-ROMs that still appear as secondary drives in some systems.

The Inspiron 531 (Blu-ray)'s case and motherboard are the same as on the 531 I originally reviewed, with similar expansion opportunities. There's space for an additional hard drive, but you'll have to take existing RAM out to expand beyond the 2GB installed (four 512MB sticks). The system's PCI and PCIe slots are all full except for a single PCIe x1 slot, so it's a good thing the system can be considered "loaded" compared with a sub-$500 value PC. The system also came with a media-card reader with integrated Bluetooth radio. You can use Bluetooth to network your notebook with your desktop, connect your mobile phone, or use wireless keyboards and mice.

The 531 (Blu-ray) came with a largish (320GB) hard drive, which can probably store every piece of music you own (over 60,000 tracks), with space left over for things like downloaded videos, Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations. The Blu-ray drive can read only BDs, but there are a few hundred if not a few thousand Blu-ray movies to choose from at this point.

The 531 (Blu-ray) was a decent performer, but other systems in its price range were able to outpace it on some of the benchmark tests. The system took a decent 1 minute 26 seconds to complete the Windows Media Encoder test (faster quad-core systems can do the same task in under a minute). Likewise, the 531 (Blu-ray) completed the Photoshop test in 1:08. A minute is good for dual-core systems, but quad-core systems can go as low as 40 seconds.

The reason I rank the Inspiron 531 (Blu-ray) lower than the original 531 is that I just reviewed the Gateway DX440X, with a quad-core Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor, which goes for a similar $1,108 (without monitor). The DX440X has a larger (500GB) hard drive, a removable hard drive bay, and a NTSC/ATSC HDTV tuner. Since multimedia-oriented users will move up from a budget PC to one in the $1,200 range to gain added performance and features, the existence of the DX440X with quad core means that the Dell is suddenly overpriced. It's not that the Dell is a bad system, it's just that there's one with a better bang for the buck.

The Dell Inspiron 531 is a decent multimedia mainstream system with a lot going for it. The inclusion of a Blu-ray read-only drive shows the commitment that Dell is making to forward-looking technology. That said, there are other choices that deserve your attention, especially at this price point.

Editor's note: Please note that the Blu-ray option will not be available on dell.com until after November 1, 2007. Dell assures us that the Blu-ray read-only drive will be available for ordering at that time. The review unit we received is a pre-production model with the Blu-ray option installed.

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