Alienware M15x Core i7 (2.0 GHz) Review

by Stefan Etienne on 03. Feb, 2010 6:49PM in Dell, Exclusive, Laptops, Reviews

With all of the buzz surrounding the M11x, the smaller sibling of the Alienware gaming notebook line, the M15x had to eventually come in and show which notebook can really perform. The Alienware M15x is all about power. And only power. It weighs a full 9 pounds with a 9-cell battery installed. And a side note for you all: you’ve probably read a thousand reviews of the M15x with a Core i7 processor, but have you ever read one with a 2.0 GHz Intel Core i7? Not many of those for sure. That’s why it’s the most powerful (and awesome looking) ever featured on LaptopMemo. Full review of course is after the jump.

Price as Reviewed: $3,099

Full Disclosure: This is a review unit sent in by Alienware for review

Specs

The M15x is more than a crowd pleaser. It’s a shocker. What’s under the hood is visible in the heat it creates, but even more so in the amount of fan noise it makes when it’s working hard. Powered by a 2.0 Ghz Intel Core i7 920XM (with 3.06Ghz Turboboost and 8MB cache) processor, Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, 15.6-inch HD 1920 x 1080 (1080p) screen, 4GB DDR3 RAm at 1333Mhz, a 500GB SATAII 7,200 RPM hard drive, BD-ROM drive, 9-cell battery, HD 5.1 Surround Sound, 2.0 MP camera for video conferencing, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. And don’t forget the crown jewel: an absurdly powerful 1GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 260M graphics card. Right off the bat the M15x floors all other laptops in mass, power, looks, and price (it’s too expensive).

Design

With its menacing looks, the M15x shows what power can look like as the Macbook Pro line shows what modernism is capable of. It’s astoundingly brilliant. This unit is in Cosmic Black, which is smoothly brushed on the outside with the inside being a matte finish in black along with the glossy touch-sensitive power strip. Case in point: the M15x looks good. A major bonus is the Alien FX lighting system, which colors the keyboard, media strip, logos and power button in almost any color you could possibly think of (almost). Of course, all of this comes with a major compromise: weight. Weighing in at 9 pounds, I don’t think you’ll want to carry it to work every morning. Hmm, which is probably why Alienware created the M11x to be your second gaming computer? You never know…

LED Display & Camera

1920 x 1080 pixels with LED technology, meaning true 1080p HD. What’s not to die for here? Every movement on the screen is crisp and clear, and movies as well as games felt at home. Now there is one bit of a problem here though: the protective plastic is placed at least a quarter-of-an-inch above the screen. This layer of plastic, while it makes the M15x look modern, creates extreme amounts of glare, and unlike the Macbook Pros, it doesn’t fade out when the brightness meter is set to high. Otherwise web browsing, typing documents, Photoshopping, or anything else for that matter appears exactly the way they should be: crystal clear. Viewing angles are also the same, mainly at night.

The built-in 2 megapixel camera is impressive. Afterwards, there’s not much to talk about the camera except: The camera is great and two, CyberLink’s YouCam software offers a bunch of effects that you can add to your face.

Performance

The M15x is built as a performer, and I know you want to see what it can do, so lets move on to the raw tests. Shall we?

Starting with games, Modern Warfare on the M15x played through at a steady 50 frames per second, with a resolution of 1600 x 900 and all settings set to high. Aces High, an online WW2 air combat simulator also performed well, with settings set to medium and an average of 59 FPS (it’s more demanding than Modern Warfare in fact); World of Warcraft and others should also run very well. On a benchmarking test in GeekBench the M15x scored 6468 (and only in 32-bit mode) which is higher than most; if not all entertainment laptops on the market. So essentially with that sort of score it has a sharp processing score. Whereas when “Stealth” mode is turned on, the score drops dramatically to a sloth-like 2340 points.

Keyboard, Touchpad, and Media Controls

Compared to the M17x, which has a numpad, the M15x has a very comfortable overall feel when it comes to typing. All the keys feel as if they are exactly where they should be, and have the perfect amount of cushion. They do make enough clicking sounds that would disturb anyone in a room or office, but not by that much. A nice plus of course is the Alien FX lighting controls, which are powered by LEDs, so don’t expect it to chomp down much battery life.

The touchpad (which doesn’t support multitouch, a shame) is very large and moderately responsive. I did have to correct the sensitivity settings for it to work properly though. Besides the small ridges etched into the touchpad (which provides grip), the left and right mouse buttons have a lot of click in them; that is to say that they make noise. As for their responsiveness to clicking, there is a deadzone in the middle of each button, which requires you to move your finger to the edge to get a response. Double-tapping is nearly ignored (despite the responsive settings set to high), so you’d be better off using the buttons.

Another nice move by Alienware (one included in lots of Windows PCs) is a touch-sensitive media strip. Here on the M15x you have the eject button, next chapter, previous chapter, play/pause,volume control, Wi-Fi on/off, Alienware Command Center, and the “Stealth” button (far right of the strip). What is the “Stealth” button you ask? Well, it’s a power-saving, performance draining killswitch to say the least. It downclocks the CPU and switches to an integrated NVIDIA 9400m GPU, thus saving battery life, as well as reducing heat and noise. Convenient.

Ports

Ports-wise the M15x could have been better with more USB ports. On the right you have your USB port, an E-SATA/USB combo port, 2 headset jacks, microphone port, a card slot that can be used for 3G wireless, and the Blu-Ray drive. On the right you’ll discover a Kenigston lock slot, DC power jack, VGA, modem, HDMI, another USB, Firewire, and an SD card slot. Well balanced, but with its size you could still fit in (one or two even) USB ports. As for the back, you have a giant 9-cell battery that barely sticks out (a plus considering most laptops do the opposite). Another plus is that the battery provides lift to the laptop, raising it from a table (or your burning legs) which gives you a more comfortable typing position, and more airflow to cool down that mighty Nvidia GTX 260m graphics card.

Battery Life!? With This Sort Of Power??

One question that pondered my mind (and probably yours) is that with all of these resources (the CPU, GPU, FX lighting, screen, etc.) that the battery would wave goodbye in a matter of minutes? Well, at Barnes & Noble without the DC charger I made a desperate attempt: to download a 1GB file before the batter dies out, on High Performance mode, and do an hour of web browsing. Here’s what I got:

Total Run Time with Wi-Fi turned on, High Performance, and screen set to low: Close to 2 hours.

Impressive? Very. Now just as a side note, I didn’t finish downloading the file, and the battery still wasn’t finished yet; so it probably could still do a couple of minutes of more usage.

Final Verdict:

Vulgar amounts of power, menacing looks, amazing sound quality, great FX lighting, and Windows 7 Ultimate makes the M15x one of the best Windows gaming laptops money can buy.

Pros: