Alienware M17x ~ MY BLOG

When you call something “the most powerful laptop in the universe,” you have a lot to live up to. And Dell’s flagship gaming system, the Alienware M17x ($4,649 as configured), mostly lives up to those claims. This anodized aluminum beast is loaded with the fastest hardware you can put in a notebook today, including two of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 280M graphics cards and a 2.53-GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX9300 CPU. It’s a semi-truck of a computer, and it’ll shred the latest 3D titles like a diamond-toothed chainsaw through a zombie skull, but is it worth nearly five grand?

Design

Measuring 16.0 x 12.6 x 2.1 inches and starting at 11.6 pounds (depending on your configuration), the M17x is the type of notebook that requires a hernia belt just to lift off a desk. But that just means there’s more to love. With a case made of anodized aluminum, this notebook looks and feels as tough as the Batmobile. Two speakers on the front of the computer have a sports car look, and each has a honeycomb grill that reminds us of the body armor in Crysis.

Our system had a matte Space Black finish, but it’s also available in Lunar Silver and Nebular Red. There aren’t any visible screws anywhere but on the customized name plate, which resides on the underbelly of the beast. Like a personal rave, Alienware managed to cram customizable lights in several places, including the Alienware logo below the 17-inch, 1920 x 1200-pixel resolution display, along the touchpad, under the keyboard, on the Alienware head-shaped power button, and even on the back of the lid.

Our biggest beef with the M17x’s industrial design is its lid. It feels like the hinge isn’t strong enough to last through thousands of openings and closings. When you flick it lightly, the lid bounces back and forth a bit—a testament to its weight. We would have preferred a much sturdier hinge that stretched the breadth of the computer’s underside to ensure lifelong sturdiness.

Keyboard and Trackpad

The M17x’s keyboard is massive and solid. The keys don’t have any flex to them, so it’s as if you’re typing on a legitimate desktop keyboard. As with Alienware’s previous desktop replacement systems, there’s a full number pad, too, which means you can store all of your macros in games such as World of Warcraft. As mentioned above, you can tweak the keyboard’s backlight colors, and Alienware even lets you adjust the keyboard by region. So, for example, you can have the far left of your keyboard glow blue, the middle-left glow red, the middle-right glow orange, and the far right glow green. It’s a really cool snow-cone-looking effect, but one many will probably pass up for fear of making their keyboard look like a clown’s wig.

Above the keyboard are soft-touch buttons for ejecting Blu-ray discs, full media controls for skip and play/pause, volume controls, a wireless launch button, and quick-launch buttons for the system’s AlienFusion control panel (one for controlling lights and another for its power-tweaking Stealth Mode).

The touchpad on the M17x is large and flush with the wrist rest, except for a small glowing border; its honeycomb texture allows for swift finger glides across the surface. The two touchpad buttons offered good feedback, but if you’re playing a first person shooter you’ll want to resort to a full gaming mouse for quicker button presses.

Ports and Webcam

The M17x has an assortment of ports, but some are awkwardly placed. On the left side of the unit are: HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, two USB 2.0, eSATA, DisplayPort, FireWire, and a Kensington lock slot. The right side has two additional USB 2.0 ports, an 8-in-1 memory card reader, and an ExpressCard/54 slot. The mic, line-in, and line-out jacks are placed on the back right side, which means that you’ll have to run your headphones around the computer; we prefer these to be on the front of the chassis. The charging port is conveniently placed on the back of the M17x.

The webcam was satisfactory for video chatting during our Skype tests, but we found the colors to be a little oversaturated, and were told that our face could be a bit brighter. There was a bit of motion blur during quick movements, like when we waved our hands around, but the quality was good overall.

Display and Speakers

The M17x has a large 17-inch display with a flushed glass plate that covers the entire surface. It sports a crisp, 1920 x 1200 high-definition resolution for both a killer movie watching and gaming experience. The high-gloss finish resulted in a fair amount of glare, so you’ll want to hold off on playing games or watching movies until you dim the lights.

The speakers on the M17x were some of the best we’ve heard on a notebook. They were loud and crisp, allowing us to clearly hear our commander’s voice belting out commands in Call of Duty: World at War, along with the click-clacking of footsteps around us. They’re also loud enough to fill a small room with music. When we streamed the New Country station from Slacker Radio, the audio didn’t distort at high volumes, and the guitars in Kenny Chesney’s “I’m Alive” sounded in balance with his voice.

We watched an episode of Heroes on the M17x and found that the playback was very good at the display’s full 1200p resolution. We did notice, however, that the Blu-ray looked a bit grainy, and there were a few hints of artifacts when we looked closely at the edges of a house against a blue sky. Sitting back in our chair, though, these were barely noticeable; an action scene of two of the main characters running from a police officer played back smoothly, voices stayed in sync, the audio was clear of any popping, and we didn’t experience any frame stuttering.