Dell Alienware M18x

Alienware M18x

My hobby is testing gadgets, laptops, tablets etc. I got the chance to use this awesome Laptop for a few days.

Configuration of my laptop

Processor: 2.5GHz Intel Core i7 2920XM
RAM: 16GB 1600MHz DDR3
Hard drive: 750GB 7,200rpm (x2)
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 580M (x2, SLI)
Total graphics memory: 2 GB
Screen size: 18.4 inch

Performance

This laptop comes with the windows home premium 64 bit edition. With the new second generation Intel Core i7 Xtreme edition processor that is over clocked at 4GHz this is an unbeatable laptop, probably one of the fastest in the world.

For those of us who does not know the exact meaning of overclocking: To run something like processor or GPU at speeds that exceeds the speed it has been certified by the manufacturer.

I found this Laptop extremely fast, probably the fastest Laptop that I have ever put my hands on. This laptop has been built for gamers, so I decided to test this Laptop with Modern warfare 3 and I was shocked to see its performance. I never thought that games could run so smoothly on laptops, The graphics seemed flawless and it took only about 16 seconds to load the game. Multitasking is also very smooth. I could swipe between the game and a blue ray video (that I ran from the hard disk) very smoothly.

Design

I don't think that any laptop in the world till now that looks better than this one. The upper lid is made up of anodized aluminum that has the shiny alienware logo and the front side includes vents and grilles with backlit. One of the best features of this laptop is that you can change the backlit colours of the alienware logo, keyboard, the border of the touchpad and the front vents individually. What I hate about the design is that the laptop is very thick measuring about 2.1 inch.

Keyboard

The buttons of this keyboard makes less noise. As I said earlier the keyboard comes with backlit which i found very helpful for typing in the dark. The keyboard is very spacious but the big problem that I faced is that the keys do not have spaces between them which makes typing a bit uncomfortable. At the top right corners of the keyboard are the buttons for volume, wireless, media, and the AlienFX Tutorial Grabber.

Touch pad

The keypad seems a bit to small. The touch pad is very accurate and responsive and supports multi touch gestures. Two finger scrolling and three finger flicker in the photo gallery seemed flawless. The strange thing is that the touch pad is placed in the bottom left corner instead of the normal bottom middle corners.

Display

The display of this laptop is really amazing as the image looks very crisp, sharp and detailed. The display is very bright and the colours seems realistic The 18.4 inch screen supports full HD 1080p videos and a has a resolution of 1920X1080. The screen is glossy so it reflects which makes it tough to use under sunlight.

Edit: The viewing angles are quite good. Image looks perfect even when I move about 45 degrees from the centre. However when I move further than 45 degrees the the colour of the image fades and seems to wash away.

Speaker

i think that the speakers of this laptop is perfect for playing games. The sound of this laptop probably the loudest of the laptops that I have used. The sound quality also quite good but I noticed that it has very low bass when listening to songs.

Connectivity and webcam

This laptop includes two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI 1.3 input, an eSATA/USB combo (with PowerShare), a slot-loading Blu-ray player, a 9-in-1 card reader, and an ExpressCard/54 slot at the right side and two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI 1.4 out, VGA, Gigabit Ethernet, a mini DisplayPort, two headphone jacks, a microphone jack, a S/PDIF optical out, and a Kensington Lock slot. It's not so easy to find a laptop with so many ports.

This laptop also includes 3.0 megapixel camera which can take videos up to 2048x1536p. The images looks sharp and detailed but the colour is not very accurate.

buying guide

This is a laptop that has been designed for gamers. So if you are willing to play hard core games on your Laptop then this laptop is worth its price. But if you just want to play online games and watch movies or just want to work on spreadsheets I strongly recommend that you buy a laptop with second generation Core i5 or core i3.