Alienware M11x Review

Original author: Nilay Patel
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Alienware M11x

Since Alienware M11x was introduced at CES , we haven’t stopped scratching our hands as we wanted to get it - it has seemed to be one of the most interesting devices in the “thin and light” category for all the recent times. It is certainly compact, and inside fit ULV Core 2 Duo paired with the NVIDIA GT335M GPU. This fact makes him perhaps the smallest and most powerful laptop of those that are sold. However, power is never cheap - the price of the device will be from $ 799, and in our test configuration (1.3GHz SU7300 Core 2 Duo and 4GB RAM) from $ 949. It's expensive, but if you're an avid gamer, the price is justified. We tested this laptop - let's look together at whether it was possible to combine a relatively attractive appearance and performance in it.


Let's see and feel


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The M11x, of course, has its own share of wide bends - if you look briefly at it, it might seem that its front end is very similar to a Camaro car. In fact, it looks more like a square than you expect, with flat sides and sharp edges along the rest of the body. We almost got the effect from some kind of business device, however, the fact of having a backlight is embarrassing. I would like Alienware to use a slightly more pleasant matte finish on the keyboard and no glossy black paint. The very combination of such finishes and flat surfaces everywhere makes the laptop look cheaper than it looks.

On the sides you can find many different ports: on the left - VGA, USB, which is suitable for charging other devices, Ethernet, HDMI, DisplayPort, card reader, and  4a FireWire pin connector, and on the right there are ports for a microphone and headphones, 2 USB ports and a huge bald spot of shiny black plastic. Only the power port was handed back, and at the bottom of the laptop it was possible to find a sufficiently large fan, a battery meter and a small memory plate. The M11x is still difficult for such a small device, about two kilograms, which in principle is noticeable - it's like a 13- inch MacBook Pro.

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Keyboard, touchpad and screen


The keys on the keyboard are not rubber, but in return we get a fairly flat block of backlit buttons, located specifically for the convenience of gamers. It would be unfair if we ignore the completely crazy AlienFX LED backlight effects. You can adjust the backlight of the keyboard, Alienwareo logo, power button, speakers and even a status indicator so that they are the color you want, or make the backlight flow from one color to another, or even change colors constantly. This is completely unnecessary, and somehow incredibly funny - we spent half an hour adjusting the backlight from bright pink to blue before we settled on aggressively red and orange colors. This is certainly not news for those who have already dealt with Alienware products, but it turned out to be wild to see such a function in the device for $ 799.

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We probably would have lived without a special menu key and a small Shift on the right, if that meant that the arrows would be big, but the keyboard as a whole is nothing, and you can naturally use the classic WASD key combination during games. The touchpad is also normal - multitouch is certainly not here, but we always liked the textured touchpads - the controls were pleasant and accurate. I just wish that the keys were a little larger - more than once it turned out to get a finger not on the button, but past, into the plastic edge of the device’s body.

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We often annoyingly talk about bad displays in cheap laptops, but in the case of the M11x, despite the fact that this is an entry-level product in the company's lineup, we did not have to compromise on the issue of installing the display. 11.6 inchthe display (1366 × 768) with LED backlighting is bright, sharp and has a huge horizontal viewing angle. The vertical viewing angle is slightly smaller, but it’s easy to find the zone of best perception - praise Alienware for using a good matrix, instead of trying to lower the price by installing a low-quality display. We would only like it to not be so brilliant.

Performance, video and battery


Will there be enough horsepower in the 1.3GHz SU7300 Core 2 Duo and the plug-in NVIDIA GT335M GPU to make a good gaming machine out of the M11x? Let's take a look at the numbers: with the GT335M turned off, the M11x model shows itself as a completely ordinary ULV laptop with an integrated GMA GPU, and the PCMarkVantage3 score will be 2698, and 3DMark06 will be exactly 654. But if you turn on the GT335M, there is a real breakthrough, in this case the PCMarkVantage3 score grows to 3141 and the 3DMark06 score is up to 5593. This number is certainly lower than Alienware (“over 6,100”) stated, but nevertheless it is real; the Batman: Arkham Asylum game easily started at 25-28fps with an initial resolution (1366 × 768) and a peak at 42fps, while Portal went from 130-200fps, which, you see, is not bad. In addition, our employee Joe Kelly discovered that Crysis plays at native resolution and 2x anti-aliasing at maximum settings with 8fps, about 15fps at high settings and 20-30fps at medium. BioShock at maximum settings showed a peak at 120fps, although then it dropped to 55fps (during scenes where there is water or a lot of movement). Not that you would be in shock, but you certainly will not remain indifferent.

PCMarkVantage
3DMark06
Battery life
Alienware M11x (1.3GHz Core 2 Duo, GMA)26896544.5
Alienware M11x (1.3GHz Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA GT 335M)31415593N / a
Sony VAIO Z (2.53GHz Core i5, NVIDIA GT 330M)994961934:25
ASUS UL50Vf with NVIDIA Optimus (1.3GHz Core 2 Duo, integrated GMA)37248276:10 a.m.
ASUS UL50Vf with NVIDIA Optimus (1.3GHz Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA G210M)404934383:57
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge (1.3GHz Core 2 Duo, GMA)29559055:12
Acer Aspire 5738PG (2.55GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI Radeon 4570)40493098N / a

In addition to ULV performance, we get an ULV battery, which with a built-in GMA 4500MHD processor holds the charge like this: our video test lasted 4 and a half hours. There was no opportunity to test the battery when the GT335M was on (I did not want to wait another two to three hours), but in this mode the battery indicator decreased much faster. And remember - the battery is also integrated - gamers will not be able to just pull out the shrunken, insert a new one and continue playing.

Something else worth mentioning about the ability to switch graphics on this device: now NVIDIA hybrid Optimus technology is present in the ASUS UL50Vf laptop, and there it works as it should, and the M11x requires exiting some programs in order to switch the graphics mode. During this procedure, the laptop screen goes blank, all this seems unpleasant. This is certainly not the worst property in the world, but it's hard to know that such a solution in UL50Vf works in automatic mode. And we, of course, expect this to be fixed in the next version.

Generalization


Not to love the M11x after spending so much time with it is difficult. This machine combines the qualities of a netbook and a traditional laptop, keeps a balance between non-standard development paths, which leads to original compromises - the device encompasses the size of a netbook, while having a price like several ordinary laptops, and weight too. It has a slow processor, but a fast GPU that eats up the battery quite voraciously. The M11x is like a cross between a spaceship and a powerful car. Whether these specific features of the laptop will be affected or not depends, probably, on how much time you spend on resource-demanding games and how much time you are ready to spend on a device with a small screen. We are almost sure that if you decide to buy this machine, disappointment will not befall you,

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