namedtuples are tuples, meaning they are stored efficiently, and are constant (thus can also be used as dictionary keys). Unlike regular tuples, they can be accessed like a class/dictionary for readability, but requiring much less allocations (compared to dict/class), so much faster. Also, as they are tuples, you have well defined methods (printing, comparison, hash value, ) you'd have to implement yourself for dict/class.

If you like writing in functional style, namedtuples are much more natural than dict or classes, and more efficient to boot.