I love the folks at Alienware they have always been good to me but they make great, but faulty products. Over a year ago I reviewed their latest and greatest laptop the Area 51 m7500. I loved that laptop so much that I went out and purchased one. It was plagued with hardware issues for six months, swapped it out 3 times before the hard drive finally died destroying 10 years worth of data. So at last year I attended a Pre CES event where they were showcasing their latest laptop the Alienware m51x. The major draw of this machine: it would be built by Alienware. I was excited to review this machine, because on paper I really do love Alienware products they just needed to improve their manufacturing processes.
I was supposed to be one of the first people to get a review unit, but it took them awhile, I think I’m about the last now. The early reports of manufacturing issues gave me pause. Was I going to get burned again? I am glad to say that the Alienware m15x almost lives up to it’s full potential.
Let’s start with, this machine is a beast. It’s blazingly fast with the Intel Extreme X900 2.8 Dual Core, the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX, throw in 4 megs of ram and you have yourself a system capable of anything, even running Crysis and Call of Duty 4 in their full glory. Not only does it live up to its marketing as a gaming machine, it surpassed my expectations. The colors and detail just popped off the screen. What’s more, there was no stutter it ran smooth as a baby’s bottom.
I’ve pretty much given up on PC Gaming and the whole arms race as far as computing power. But on this machine it’s hard to miss the performance difference. Opening up my everyday MS Office apps literally took less than a couple of seconds. iTunes still took forever to launch. I also ran a visual test with Adobe CS and again, all the apps started up right away with no lag, and I was able to actually use Adobe’s “workflow,” to switch and open apps with no problems. The system passed my video render test and processed a 10 minute avi clip in about 15 minutes. On other machines, this clip takes about an hour. But it still took 5 hrs to transfer my 48 Gig iTunes music library from my external HD to the c: drive. Again, this is a hard drive/USB issue not related to the machine.
I ran the Vista system rating test and the laptop came up with 5s across the board. For comparison’s sake, my personal computer is a Dell Inspiron 1525 that has an Intel 2.4, 4 Gigs of ram and some cheap ATI Card. Its Vista rating is a pathetic 2.8. Which is ridiculous, but that’s another story. There are times when you can feel it run slow. Not so with the m15x. But then my Dell only cost me $800, while the Alienware m15x will set you back almost 5 bones in the nearly maxed out configuration that I reviewed. The system price starts at $1,500 but why buy an Alienware if you don’t go for it all?
The design of the machine is boring and plain as heck. It’s thick, solid silver/greyish (or is it light blue) and looks bulky and a little intimidating. However, it’s surprisingly light and easy to handle. It was comparable to my 17 inch m7500. It’s about 8 lbs, which isn’t bad considering all the power this machine contains. And really at $5k you probably won’t be taking this machine out of your house much.
Some of the other new design changes include a full lighted keyboard, which is fully customizable through the new Alienware console. You can customize everything from the keys to the track pad to the little multimedia bars and your Alienware head. It’s a cute addition but I don’t see the point of backlit keys. They drain your battery and unless you write in the dark a lot it’s kind of a waste, this one of the features that cost Alienware a lot of headaches at the beginning of the year. The battery life on this is ok, in my test it lasted about 1 ½ to 2 hrs, which is pretty standard for a laptop. But come on, with all the technical advances, we still have a laptop battery that barely last long enough for you to take it out of the case?
Ports, we got your stinking ports. The m15X has ports up the ying yang. We’re talking multiple USB, HDMI, Digital Audio in/out, Firewire, Memory Card Reader, Audio and Video Out. It of course has a built in webcam and audio. One of the unique design choices is the inclusion of their new Smart Bay system. Smart Bay is Alienware’s way of letting you Hot swap components like; additional hard drives, blu-ray players, etc.
I love the idea of this, but in execution it got annoying real quick. I had an 320 gig extra Hard Drive and a Blu-ray player as well, and every time I wanted to use the machine or on the rare occasions I took it out of the house I had to decide which was more important having the extra HD or the Blu-ray player. The components are not particularly light weight or small.
This brings me to my other complaint about the system – The Blu-ray drive didn’t work. The laptop has Cyberlink’s WinDVD pre-installed on it to run the Blu-ray movies and it didn’t work. I tried updating drivers, different Blu-ray movies and it just wouldn’t play. Alienware’s tech support called but I never got around to talking with them. And I was really annoyed, again this is a $5,000 computer, call me crazy but I expect everything to work perfectly out of the box.
The Alienware m15x is a nice machine, if you have the money. But then again you don’t have to get it fully maxed out – especially if you stay away from the crappy Blu-ray drive. They have base configurations that start at $1,500. For that price I would seriously consider getting one.
Final Grade B
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 7.28.08