Dell Alienware M14x Gaming Laptop Review

Dell Alienware M14x Gaming Laptop Review

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There's something about the allure of a gaming notebook. Even mainstream users, not necessarily hellbent on frame rates and decked-out designs, can relate to a powerful notebook with striking good looks. It's no wonder that products like Asus' G73 series of notebooks and Alienware's M series, have been some of the most viewed pages of our mobile computing section here at HotHardware.com. Similarly, Dell's recent announcement that they were expanding the Alienware M series line, to flesh out 14-inch and 18-inch versions, was met with a fair bit of buzz as well. The 14" model especially caught our eye, striking a nice size and weight compromise between the soon to arrive 18" behemoth and the rather svelte M11x we looked at not long ago.

The Alienware M14x with battery such as DELL PT6V8 Battery, DELL KR-08P6X6 Battery, DELL T7YJR Battery, DELL 312-0984 Battery, DELL DKK25 Battery, DELL Alienware M11X R1 Battery, DELL Alienware M11X Battery, DELL Alienware M14X R1 Battery, DELL Alienware M14X Battery, DELL Alienware P06T Battery, DELL Alienware M11X R3 Battery, DELL 8P6X6 Battery is a smaller-sized full-featured notebook and gaming machine that has a surprisingly tall order to fill. With its quad-core Intel processor and 144 CUDA-core NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M GPU, the M14x packs a bunch of horsepower in a relatively small footprint., which means thermal and battery capacity challenges of course as well. We fired up our usual run of BatteryEater Pro to stress test the system under a graphics and CPU workload but also added a much lower-powered test condition as well.

At the risk of looking like we're favoring the M14x here with a special test setup, we decided to give you an additional datapoint to consider in terms of battery life performance. First, if you look at the results from our lower uptime recorded in the BatteryEater stress test, you'll note that the M14x falls about mid-pack with these similarly configured machines -- about in line with the midrange machines and slightly ahead of the high-end configured systems (though MainGear's larger, heavier battery configuration allowed it to excel). Then, looking at the Reader and Web browsing test, where we run a script that scrolls through a text document while simultaneously hitting a web page in the background and refreshing every three minutes, you'll see that the variance is dramatic. Alienware claims the 8-cell battery on board the M14x will last up to 6 hrs and that's right about what we saw under this non-graphics intensive test condition.

Alienware designed the M14x with certain compromises that had to be accommodated. Obviously, this smaller form-factor of gaming notebook, in order to meet its thermal constraints, had to be configured with more midrange components. Performance-wise, what the system put forth was exactly what we expected.

The M14x handily powered past mainstream notebooks with solid multimedia-targeted hardware on board with discrete GPUs even. Under gaming conditions, it surged past these competitive platforms even more so. Under heavy-duty gaming conditions, however, and versus full-sized desktop replacement gaming notebooks, the M14x doesn't quite have the chops to keep up with the big boys, though this was to be expected. After all, this is a 14-inch, 6.5lb machine and very portable as a result. It's not a road warrior solution for business travelers, but then again, it's not going break your back like some of the other boat anchor machines we tested it against.

On the downside, we weren't fond of the rather audible fan whine emitted from the M14x while gaming, but we've heard similar acoustic challenges in just about any machine with a discrete GPU in this size and weight class. That's no excuse but at this point, it's sort of comes with the territory. The other aspect to consider here is price. Though you can find similarly configured notebooks at lower prices, what we found was you'd have to make compromises with a lower resolution display, lower grade build quality and other lower grade component as well, like smaller batteries etc. All told the M14x, though definitely designed for the high-end market, actually offers a reasonable return on investment when you consider the total package.

If you're the type that doesn't want to compromise much on gaming performance and style but need a notebook in a reasonably portable size and weight, the Dell Alienware M14x is for you. And we liked it so much we're giving it an Editor's Choice.