Review: Alienware Area-51 m15x notebook PC

The battle between desktops and notebooks has shifted to gaming laptops too, with the majority of Alienware’s sales coming from the latter.

So you’d expect the company to have put a lot of effort into its latest notebook, the Area-51 m15x.

It’s a modest affair on paper, containing one, rather than two, 8800M GTX graphics cards and a 15.4in screen; most gaming laptops use bigger displays.

With these components, Alienware has kept the weight down to 3.6kg, excluding the power adapter.

In the flesh, the m15x is special. Alienware’s new AlienFX customised lighting pumps out a selection of 11 colours from the three Alienware logos, the blue-lit bezel, touch-sensitive controls, the touchpad and through the keyboard. You can set the lighting to transition from one colour to the next, or simply set colours to strobe.

There’s no laptop quite like it and there’s certainly no confusing it for a business notebook.

The screen has a top-notch 1,920x1,200 resolution and the brightest backlight we’ve seen, coming in at 156.6cd/m2. It has a similar black level to the Acer Aspire 8920G, but because it lacks a glossy finish, contrast feels subjectively poorer. On the upside, you don’t see your reflection in its screen.

Intel’s Core 2 Extreme X9000 graces the m15x with its 2.8GHz clock speed and 44W thermal design point (TDP) - 9W higher than regular Core 2 Duos, so energy efficiency isn’t its strong point. In fact, the m15x lasted just one hour and 30 minutes in our DVD playback test, despite a capable 5,200mAh battery being fitted.

Other components include 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 Ram, which is a step behind faster 800MHz Ram usually found on gaming laptops, and a speedy 7,200rpm 200GB hard drive.

The 8800M GTX graphics card pushed the m15x to 10,791 in 3Dmark06, while it mustered 19fps (frames per second) in our intense DirectX 10 game benchmark World in Conflict, with high settings enabled at its native resolution. We had to lower the settings to medium to make it playable, where it achieved an excellent 47fps.

You’ll want headphones when you’re playing games since the speakers, placed below the screen, are tinny for a gaming notebook. The keyboard may look good, but it’s sunk too deep into the chassis so the chassis curb becomes an uncomfortable problem. Call us eccentric, but we hate the DVD drive’s lack of an Eject button (you must use the Fn and F8 keystroke combination).

Furthermore, we have some minor grumbles about its construction. For starters, the right and left mouse clicks are made from one piece of plastic, which is uncomfortable the minute your fingers wander too close to the centre of the buttons.

Then there’s the seam between the top and bottom part of the chassis, which is too wide, and the two sides don’t fit together perfectly. A little online investigation revealed that m15x samples in the US have suffered from hairline cracks as a result of heat from the high-end components inside, but Alienware said UK models shouldn’t be affected.

An Alienware baseball cap, mousepad and a personalised metal plate, screwed to the bottom of the laptop with your name inscribed on it, complete the package.

This is a well-balanced and compact gaming machine. Our biggest reservation is whether the m15x’s bells and whistles justify such a big price tag. Dell’s 1710 gaming laptop comes with two 8800M GTX cards but costs a whisper less than the m15x.

If you must have the Alienware’s unique lighting system, though, then it’s not a bad buy.

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