Product Reviews

With your average gaming desktop PC boasting a heat output which would rival that of your average space heater, the very idea of cramming hot, powerful components into the tiny confines of a laptop seems faintly ridiculous. But, that's exactly what Alienware has been successfully doing for years with their range of gaming-focussed notebooks.

Its newest model, the Area-51 m15x, goes one step further by cramming an assortment of top-of-the-range components into a relatively portable 15.4in chassis.

Sitting next to the gigantic Asus G70s, which we previewed a couple of days ago, the m15x looks impossibly compact for such a highly specified machine.

At 3.57kg it's still pretty weighty, though, and no smaller than your average 15.4 inch laptop. But considering the high-performance components inside it's impressive that it's anything less than huge and intimidatingly heavy.

The looks will divide opinion though. The silver chassis looks neat enough, but the lighting is less so. Strip lights surround the trackpad and glow along the display's edge, and the alien head and Alienware logo all light up with colours of your choosing.

The novelty is that this 'AlienFX' lighting, is customisable, but it's easy to abuse: select uncomplimentary shades - the previous reviewer seems to have favoured pink and green as his or her particular favourite - and you can make the m15x look strikingly horrid.

The lights aren't just there for decorative effect. They can do useful things, too, like flash a different colour when your inbox receives a new email, or change hue when the battery has fully recharged.

And, while our review model didn't seem to have it installed, Alienware also offer a backlit keyboard option - a £29 extra - which also illuminates in a range of different colours.

It's also possible to change the colour of the row of touch sensitive buttons above the keyboard but here it's certainly a case of form over function.

We often found ourselves prodding away repeatedly waiting for them to respond - it's a relatively minor issue, but when you're spending nearly £2,000 on a laptop, you'd expect every aspect to feel slick and assured.

And while we appreciate the clean lines of the silvery chassis, and even began to warm to the initially risible array of multi-coloured lighting, the build quality isn't quite so reassuring. Sitting flat on a desk the m15x's lid has a bit of give in it, not excessively so, but it is still noticeably pliant.

Flip up that lid though, and the average build quality seems much less forgiveable. Grip the display with both hands and even gentle twists to and fro elicit show through on the display accompanied by a slightly unnerving creaking noise.

Grappling with the base produces a similarly audible creak too - it's a far cry from the impressively sturdy Dell XPS M1530.

But, despite our reservations, it's clear that the custom-designed chassis is pretty special in many regards.

When it comes to gaming, it's all about the specifications and the m15x's are enough to satisfy even the most power-hungry of users.

The Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme X9000 partners a 2.8GHz clockspeed with 6MB of L2 cache and, with 2GB of system memory in tow, it produced

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the highest benchmark score we've ever seen from a laptop - an undeniably impressive 1.48.

With the prodigious heat output of the X9000 processor and 8800M GTX graphics chipset it's a wonder the m15x's chassis doesn't melt at the first sign of trouble, but it remains amazingly cool under pressure.

Even extended sessions with Crysis - a game that still places unreasonable demands on most standard desktop PCs - proved little challenge for the m15x's supremely well-designed cooling system. It's not silent, by any means, but it can even cope with the extra heat produced by overclocking the already lightning-fast CPU.

And, if we can overlook the daunting asking price for a paragraph or two, its gaming credentials are far more convincing than the likes of Asus' pre-production G70s, or even our A-listed Dell's XPS M1730.

With just one Nvidia GeForce 8800M GTX to those laptops' twin 8700M GT chipsets, the m15x simply trounces them in our Crysis benchmarks. It was only once we cranked the resolution to 1,600 x 1,200 and High detail that the m15x dipped below an average frame rate of 20 frames per second, to finally end up with a stoic, albeit rather jerky, 16fps.

So far, there's little argument that Alienware have done nothing less than a frightfully impressive job of shoehorning obscenely powerful components into a sensibly sized, semi-portable chassis. It's an achievement, no doubt there, but it's one that's not without its issues.

Battery life, as you'd expect, suffers. Sitting idle the m15x lasted just shy of two hours, and it took about the same length of time to charge back up again. Heavy usage saw that dwindle to 1hr 19mins, which all but rules out gaming away from a mains socket.

Switch the m15x into stealth mode however, which disables the power-hungry 8800M GTX in favour of a more power efficient Intel GMA X3100 chipset, and light use stretches to a much more reasonable 3hrs 43mins. And with Alienware's decision to utilise Smart Bay technology, you can always replace the optical drive with an extra battery. If you're considering gaming on the move, it's an essential extra.

We would have raved about it by now, were it worth the adulation, but unfortunately the m15x's display falls short of the mark. Where Asus G70s and Dell's XPS M1730 utilise glossy displays, Alienware's m15x uses a matte panel with a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,200.

That makes for a huge amount of desktop space, but the panel's limited 15.4 inch diagonal means that everything is rather on the tiny side.

Image quality isn't stunning either, with limited brightness, slightly muted colours and a hint of graininess too. It's far from awful, but it doesn't show off the hardware's capabilities in the best light.

Quite aside from any quibbles with quality, for gaming purposes, even the might of Nvidia's 8800M GTX will struggle to play the likes of Crysis at the panel's native resolution. Alienware can also supply the m15x with a 1,440 x 900 panel, and for a saving of £180, it's a change we'd say was well worth making.

In its no expense spared incarnation, the Area-51 m15x is dauntingly expensive. But, the beauty of Alienware's range is that you can tailor any model to your tastes, and more importantly, your budget.

We did away with the high resolution display, downgraded the processor to the still eminently capable T8300 model and added an extra battery to end up with a much more reasonable cost of £1,616 including the VAT.

It's still a hell of a lot to pay for a laptop whose gaming performance is surpassed by a desktop PC of half the cost, and we're far from entirely convinced by the creaky build quality, or the desperately average display.

But if power, portability and gaming prowess are absolute necessities, no other 15.4in laptop can rival the Alienware Area-51 m15x for its blend of portability and sheer power.