Review: Alienware M11x - 11.6" Gaming laptop

[TheGreatSatan]

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Review: Alienware M11x - 11.6" Gaming laptop



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Today's review features the new Alienware M11x Gaming laptop, which was featured at CES 2010. The M11x is available at Alienware (http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/alienware-m11x?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn) starting at $799...more (http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/frontpage/?q=node/519)...

[x88x]

Good review for a pretty interesting laptop. If it weren't shrouded in that hideous Alienware...ness (imo hideous case, glossy screen, etc), I would say a great laptop.

The slowness you mention, I would bet money is a direct result of that HDD. TBH, a 5400RPM drive in a gaming laptop is more than a little missing the point. If you look at Alienware's configuration page, the only 5400RPM drive they even offer is the cheapest base configuration (which also starts at 2GB of RAM). Throw in a good 7200RPM HDD or even better, that new hybrid drive from Seagate, and you'll get a way faster experience.

For the DVD drive, there are definitely workarounds available, and with a small, mobile laptop like this I would think they would be preferable even if there was an internal ODD. Either CD/DVD emulation software or no-disc patches should work with the vast majority of games. Or you could use Steam for everything like I do.. :whistler:

Another point of interest is that you can now get the M11x with an i5 520UM ($150 more) or an i7 640UM ($300 more), an option that I don't think was available yet when you ordered yours.

Overall looks like a great little laptop though. 3 hours of battery life in heavy gaming is just amazing! Like I said earlier, if it weren't for the looks and the glossy screen, this would be a very tempting laptop if I were in the market.

[Beta-brain]

Good honest review, it still amazes me that so many screens and monitors are so reflective, why do they still make them like that, so much for consumer testing.

I assume the Window 7 OS is x64 as you have increased the RAM?

RAM is such a buzz word these days and many PC's especially laptops are advertised with loads of RAM but are running windows x32 operating systems which can only use a max of 4GB.

For such a high end gaming laptop I can't get my head around that there is no DVD drive, this is such a big omission but I guess the integrated battery must take up a lot of space and not leave enough room for a drive but for the price they could have provided a USB drive for installations.

Seems odd that it takes a while to do simple tasks, it's not got some kind of auto mode for the processor has it, my Asus mobo has an AI program with it that you use for overclocking, power saving, setting fan speeds etc, but if it's left in auto mode it's useless as it adjusts the system performance by CPU loading but it can make even simple tasks slow, I'm sure you would have found such settings but it's just an idea.

I checked the SU7300 spec and it has the "Enhanced Intel® Speedstep Technology" which switches both voltage and frequency in tandem between high and low levels in response to processor load, sounds a bit like the auto mode on the Asus program, maybe that's causing the slow down you can turn the speedstep off if it's on to see if it runs faster.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100308130827AA18AEG

The battery life is impressive when gaming that's the price you pay for no DVD drive i suppose, hell my old laptop will barely last an hour just surfing the net!

[NightrainSrt4]

I also own a R1 M11x. For the most part, I love it. I have had it a couple months now.

I don't have the issue you are having with the Alienware control center. I hit the button and mine is fully functional in under 3 seconds.

I haven't noticed the slowness you describe either. Everything runs quick and snappy for me. I run always at 1.7Ghz though, but even at 1.3 everything was responsive. My 3Ghz Q6600 gets ~30GFlops using IBT, and this cpu gets ~10GFlops. So a bit slower, but by no means feels slow, at least to me.

It is a fingerprint/oil magnet. I was looking at the anti-glare film they have for it before it was sold out. I have heard good things about it.

Major Problem: The keyboard rubs against the screen's glass and leaves marks in it. The hinge is too low on the back, so the lower part of the screen rubs while the top is a few mm's away from closing. I will keep an eye on it as it goes on, but seems to be a common problem and one that wasn't fixed in Rev2.

I don't miss the DVD drive one bit. Daemon tools lite keeps me just dandy. Any games not on steam I just use the no-CD for. I don't have an external either. If I really need one I just use the networked DVD from my server.

Lack of a Gigabit ethernet port is a bit of a downer, but dealable I suppose.

TF2 performance is lacking. Idk what it is but the ping on this rig fluctuates from 40 to 500 sometimes on wireless, even though FPS is fine. Just unplayable. Every other game is fine. Wired it's fine. So not sure there.

Aside from that it is great. I knew the sacrifice in performance I was making when I chose this over the Asus G73 i7/5870m I was debating. But the size and convenience FAR outweigh the performance loss for me.

[x88x]

Nightrain, what HDD do you have in yours?

[NightrainSrt4]

I have the standard 250GB hdd mine came with. It's a Hitachi HTS7250...

I have been looking at the new Seagate 500GB Hybrid Drive to replace it though.

[x88x]

Aha, I thought as much. ;) That extra 180RPM really does make a huge difference.

[TheGreatSatan]

My 3Ghz Q6600 gets ~30GFlops using IBT, and this cpu gets ~10GFlops. So a bit slower, but by no means feels slow, at least to me.

I wish it had a Q6600!:eek:

My hard drive is only 5400rpm, because I could not find a 750GB drive that was faster. I figure the specs on paper are pretty damn good and still will be in a couple of years when I sell it to upgrade.:whistler:

[NightrainSrt4]

That is still strange that the 5400RPM drive would have such a performance deficit. The 750GB is a newish drive so you'd think it would still be relatively speedy.

This little SU7300 isn't too shabby though. It far outpaces the 1.8GHz dual core in our Dell D620, and the 2Ghz dual core in my Macbook. At least overall system responsiveness and such feels faster, haven't empirically tested them against each other.

You can feel it in very cpu limited tasks though, but I don't often use any of those tbh. It is funny playing tf2 or bc2 though, as the FPS on low is almost identical to FPS on medium high/high, highlighting the cpu as the bottleneck. But, shrug, as a portable I'm very impressed.

If only the cpu wasn't soldered on, or I'd go out of my way to trade/sell some of my crap to get my hands on one of the new i7's. As it is, I'm not going to go trying to sell the R1 just to spend $1200 on an i7 version. At that price might have as well said screw portability and gotten the G73.

[NightrainSrt4]

TGS, as for your dilemma with the power brick, most all (if not all) of the newer Dell/Alienware use the same power brick/plug. I've been using our D620's brick as its the same specs, just 65W instead of the 45W brick that comes with the M11x. It doesn't get quite so hot.

The hottest I've seen the M11's brick get is when it is trying to charge the battery up while playing games. If you can avoid doing that, the brick shouldn't draw anywhere near as much power, and shouldn't get as hot.

[The boy 4rm oz]

Aha, I thought as much. ;) That extra 180RPM really does make a huge difference.

I have not found that to be the case for me. I have a Dell Studio 15" with 3GB of RAM, 320GB 5400rpm HDD, 2.4GHZ P8600 and 512MB ATI Radeon graphics card running windows 7 Ultimate 64bit and it can do even the most basic tasks lightning quick. Opens firefox in under 1 second, Word in less. To top it all off I only have 20GB HDD space left so even with my HDD nearly maxed out it is still snappy. I have tried a 7200rpm drive in my laptop and really didn't notice anything more then a slight degradation in battery life. I think your main issue sadly is the i3 processor, for gaming or even laptop use in general I personally wouldn't go under i5 unless I was looking at a netbook.

A 7200rpm drive may make a difference but I don't think it would be significantly more then then the 5400rpm drive. The Seagate Momentus (hybrid drive) would certainly speed things up, being faster than the WD Raptors and all.

It looks like a pretty good laptop though. I like the hybrid graphics feature and the fact that you can customize the keyboard colours, I actually had a play with one of these the other day, sadly the Australian price is $1,600 (costing $400 then my dell did 12 months ago). It's a real shame that it doesn't come with an optical drive.

[NightrainSrt4]

Here's a link to Dell's Antiglare film for the M11x. (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Security_and_Protection/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=A3637503) I hear it is supposed to work pretty well.

I haven't missed an optical drive yet, though I can see why others would want one. Inside there really isn't any room for one, mostly because the battery takes up about 1/3 of the available space in it. Between a networked dvd and virtual drives I'm pretty covered. That would a lot of people's needs I would think, unless they needed one on the go. But all I ever use it for is installs.

[TheGreatSatan]

That's why I built a cooler with one built-in

http://i406.photobucket.com/albums/pp143/TheGreatSatan/P1050583.jpg

[NightrainSrt4]

That works. Mine's on my networked server so I just plop the disk into that computer and it pops up in the M11's My Computer as if it was local.