Alienware Area-51 m15x Review

Summary

Alienware Area-51 m15x is a 15.4 inch gaming laptop released recently by Alienware for high performance seeking mobile gamers. This desktop replacement is powered with features required for high end gaming all while maintaining a steady battery life. The notebook is equally good for normal usage. Some of the drawbacks of this laptop that were observed during review are as follows:

Review

Alienware Area-51 m15x is the latest high end gaming offering from the reliable gaming PC manufacturer Alienware. It’s a 15.4 inch desktop replacement with extreme features, targeted at the modern day gamers. The price starts from around $1800 and goes up to about $4500 for the highest end configurations.

Build and design of the Alienware m15x is worth talking about. The ultramodern looks showcase that a lot of thought and understanding of the target market has gone into this creation. The upper surface of the laptop is shiny metallic white whereas the bottom of the base is black in color and is made of metal alloy.

As expected with Alienware products the most appealing design feature is the lighting which is predominantly found in the Alienware name, touchpad, light pipe and keyboard among others.

There are two options for screen with an Area-51 m15x. They are

• WXGA+ (1440 X 900 pixels)
• WUXGA (1920 X 1200 pixels)

The WUXGA screen is an upgrade that boasts of impeccable picture quality with extremely detailed pictures. That’s the way avid gamers love their screen to be. The viewing angles are good without much distortion. The 1920 X 1200 pixels resolution for WUXGA is the best that you can get with a notebook. The high end resolution provides a lot of clarity and contributes to good user experience.

Video and audio are primary concerns of gamers while choosing a gaming laptop. Audio being one of the most important aspects of ones gaming needs its but natural that you would expect good quality audio from Alienware Area-51 m15x since it projects itself as a gaming laptop. Unfortunately there is nothing special in this laptop from the audio perspective. It’s the same dismal show as many others in the market. There are two inbuilt speakers available. Though the performance of the integrated speakers is not of the highest level, you can expect some very good audio by connecting external audio systems to the laptop. Sound quality via headphone is very good with m15x.

At the heart of an Alienware Area-51 m15x is the ultra powerful Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 2.8 GHz processor that provides the processing capability for those high end gaming needs. Combine it with a 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX graphics card and you have an invincible combination to take care of your processing needs.

Apart from the dedicated NVIDIA graphics card, there is an integrated Intel Graphics Card. There is provision provided to opt for the usage of any of the two available graphics cards. The integrated graphics card consumes less power as compared to that used by the dedicated NVIDIA graphics card.

Overheating has been a problem with gaming notebooks and was a significant drawback of the early m15x machines. The heat generated by the graphics processing unit was far beyond the cooling capacity of the fan. This LED to overheating. Thus the graphics unit under clocked to perform at lower levels to compensate for the heat generated. This in turn reduced the performance levels of the system. However this problem has been successfully tackled by certain changes in the BIOS.

Alienware m15x comes with two fans on each side. The fans do make noteworthy noise when they run at full speed. However the noise levels are well within the comfort zone at other instances.

You asked for a keyboard designed specially for the gamers and you got that with m15x. The keyboard has rubberized keys that have good travel and it feels comfortable while using them. The show stopper however is the backlit keyboard features. The keyboard is uniquely designed such that a light glows in the background each time you press a certain key on the board.

Thinking of some late night gaming sessions…Are You?

Alienware Area-51 m15x keyboard has one disadvantage though. It flexes towards the right side of the keyboard.

The touchpad accompanying the Area-51 m15x is large and functional. The design is pretty good, especially the background LED lighting at the border of the touchpad. Another good feature is that the touchpad can be toggled off and on by pressing +F12. Once you connect an external mouse the touchpad is automatically disabled.

Connectivity is easy with m15x. There is a wide array of ports which includes a HDMI port and a 9-inch firewire port.

Alienware Area-51 m15x comes up as a pleasant surprise with its battery life considering the fact that it is a high end gaming laptop. It gives power for two and half hours with a regular 6-Cell battery.

The gaming offering in the form of Area-51 m15x from Alienware is an amazing laptop with some great features. It’s a good buy for its features if cost is not the decider.