Alienware M17x Review

[airplaneman]

Alright guys, I have decided to rewrite my review of the M17x now that I have been using it for a while. I will include the older stuff as well as some new stuff.

My Build

CPU: Intel C2D P8700 2.53GHz running at 3.0GHz
GPU: Single GTX 260M
Screen: WXGA (regret this) 1440x900 resolution
RAM: 4GB DDR3 1066MHz
HDD: 2x WD Scorpio Black 320GB, 7200rpm RAID 0

It came in at $2,411 CAD including taxes and shipping.

I placed my order for this system on June 12th and received it July 10th. Original EDD was the 15th but it came early..I’m not complaining .

IMO the specs I got are pretty sweet for a laptop, but that is no where close to the maximum specs you can put into this baby. Other options are a QX9300 quad core CPU, dual GTX 280M GPU’s with SLI, 2x256GB SSD in raid 1 or 0, 8GB DDR3 1333MHz ram, a high def 1900x1200 WUXGA screen and a Blue-ray reader/burner.
Some other neat features are the ability for BIOS over clocking: you can manually set the CPU and memory FSB to increase the speed of them, Binary GFX which allows the system to run on integrated graphics to save battery life (pretty much doubles the battery life) anda very detailed and customizable lighting system. Lots more features that I will get into later on in the review.

2. Externals

There is no question about it, this laptop is big. It measures 15.98"x12.65"x2.11" and weighs a minimum of 12.5 pounds, more if you add a second GPU and/or hard drive. It is made entirely out of anodized aluminum which makes it durable, and gives it a nice sleek look.





It comes in three colours: Nebula Red ($100 upgrade), Space Black or Lunar Silver. I chose the Space Black because I thought it looked the sleekest. There is a black chrome alien head on the lid that lights up with the lighting system (more on that later) and numerous ports and specialty buttons.

There are 4 USB ports (2 on each side), an HDMI port, displayport, VGA port, Ethernet jack, eSATA port that doubles as another USB port, a 1394 audio port as well as 5.1 surround sound capabilities and a 7 in one card reader.





The bottom has 3 vents (1 for the CPU, 2 for the GPU's) and a removable battery as well as the customizable nameplate. The battery cover has a button you can push that will display the battery life if the laptop is turned off so you don't have to turn the laptop on just to check battery life. It comes standard with a 9-cell Lithium-Ion battery that has a life of around 3.25-3.5 hours on the integrated 9400M GPU when you are doing basic things (browsing, emailing, instant messaging, etc. Note: the battery life is only increased by 6 minutes when you turn the system lighting off.



3. Under The Lid

This comes with a full keyboard as most 17" laptops do nowadays except this one has a few extra special buttons.

The F keys also serve as function keys which will do the following when pressed in addition to the FN key:

F1=suspend
F2=enable/disable battery when plugged in
F3=mute
F4=brightness up
F5=brightness down
F6=switch to external monitor if plugged in
F7=switch between integrated (9400M) graphics and discrete (GTX 260/280M) graphics
F8=nothing
F9=Turns the camera on or off
F10=Brings up the MSMC (Microsoft Mobility Center)
F11=AlienFX lighting on/off
F12=Touch pad on/off

In addition to these function keys, there are another set of touch controls in the top right. These include standard media controls (play,pause,next, previous) as well as an eject button for the slot-load dual layer DVD player/burner, volume up, volume down, wi-fi antenna on/off, Alienware command Center (More on that later) and stealth mode (Limits power usage to 65W, only usable when plugged into the wall outlet). The touch controls aren't the greatest, and they take a bit of getting used to but after some practice they are fairly user-friendly.



The screen Boarder is outlined in shiny fingerprint-magnet black and houses the 2MP web cam and stereo mic.

The laptop comes with whatever version of Vista you select pre-installed on it, you just have to configure it when you first turn the laptop on. It comes with a 30 day trial of McAffee virus protection, Power DVD (DVD burning program), YouCam (Webcam capture program) as well as any other optional programs you want installed on it. The coolest thing I think though is the Alienware Command Center.

The ACC is what controls all of the systems lighting, the power management settings (you can create profiles for what is turned on/off when it's on battery or plugged in, standard laptop stuff), the touch pad sensitivity options, facial recognition software settings. With the lighting controls you can set each object (4 sections of keyboard, touch pad, speakers, Alienware writing colour, power button/alien head and media controls) to it's own colour. Each of these can morph between colours, or flash at a given speed, there is a lot of versatility here. You can choose up to 19 different colours too.





Sorry for the bad quality, camera died so I had to use my phone. Just took these to show the versatility of the lighting program.







I have only played GRID on it so far but as expected, it runs smoothly at max resolution with 4x AA.

4. Binary GFX

The laptop comes with at least 2 GPU's no matter what you buy, you get the integrated 9400M and the one (or 2) extra ones you decide to purchase. The integrated graphics is used when you are running on battery power so it' doesn't kill your battery life, then when you plug in you have the option to switch to discrete graphics for gaming or whatever you want to do. In my opinion this was really smart because the battery life would be halved if it used the GTX 260M all of the time, and usually when you are on battery power you aren't gaming - you are watching movies/listening to music/surfing the web so all that power and battery life is going to waste.

As I said earlier, the battery life is about 3.25-3.5 hours depending on what you are doing while running on the 9400M. I let the laptop sit there for a few minutes at a completely idle state and saw the battery life jump up to 4 hours and 11 minutes. If you enable the discrete GPU (for me it's the GTX 260M) you will get a battery life of ~1.5 hours and possibly less if you have SLI enabled.

Touchpad/Keyboard

This has been a controversial issue since the start..some say the touchpad sucks, some say it's pretty good. I had some issues getting used to it at first but after a while it was relatively easy to use. After doing some research about the subject I uninstalled the Synaptics drivers for the touchpad and just used the standard windows ones..this made the touch pad a lot better and easier to use, and improved scrolling tremendously. I strongly recommend doing this as one of the first things you do when receiving your new system.

The keyboard itself has a very nice overall feel to it, and can be typed on fairly easily by someone with big hands (like me). It is so good in fact that I only have 2 main issues. The first is the fact that numlock is disabled by default, the second being that you have to rest your hand over the top right corner of the touch pad and if you have "tap to click" enabled, you might find yourself clicking when you don't mean to. I have already done this ~15 times while typing this review and it is a mild annoyance. There is a bit of keyboard flex around the WASD cluster.

Speakers
The 2 speakers are located on the front of the laptop and are some of the loudest laptop speakers I have ever used. There isn't much to say about them except that have have decent sound quality and as previously stated..can be quite loud.

Screen

I ordered the standard WXGA 1440x900 resolution screen, which so far was my only regret. I wish I had gotten the higher resolution screen since the image will be much crisper but it is something I can live with. There is a rather large amount of bleeding unfortunately (white glow coming from bottom of screen when background is pure black..such as on startup), but that is hardly noticeable when you are actually using the laptop.

5. Box Contents

I saved this for last because I figured it wouldn't be as interesting as the other stuff but I felt it still needed to be included. It comes with a recovery CD that will reset the laptop back to factory settings, a resource DVD with all the drivers and applications that came pre-installed and the operating system disk. Also provided is an Alienware mouse pad, nicely made owners manual, laptop sleeve, Alienhead sticker, an Alienware baseball hat and the low profile power brick.



Additional Photos

This is a standard tall boy can (473mL) of Full Throttle energy drink to give you some real-life object direct comparison..





Another shot of the keyboard..



Look at that sexy beast...



7. Conclusion

I personally think this is a pretty sick laptop, it has idle temps of 38-40 degrees so it won't burn your legs (it does make them feel warm though), it can run all modern games with decent settings, has tons up upgrade options and looks sick. Only downside is the size and the fact that its 12.5 pounds which is quite heavy for a laptop considering most 17" laptops are ~9 pounds.

There really is no limits with this machine, you can take it anywhere, upgrade the crap out of it, safely overclock it (I have gotten to 3.1GHz up from 2.53GHz on the P8700). I strongly recommend this if you are looking for a high-powered laptop or desktop replacement.

[MrButterBiscuits]

Wow actually a very thorough review! good job, and stop selling yourself short ... Very nice pictures, you actually have the same printer as me for school lol, just picked it up

[Scytus]

kewl review

[Quadzilla]

Great review + rep

I know a certain someone who is just drooling all over this review of yours but he shall remain nameless .


That is the first pic of the black chasis that actually made it look somewhat shiny vs matte that i have seen yet , great job again.

[nobodyshero]

wow airplane, I wasn't quite expecting a review of that caliber! Thank you for that...The pics are great too, the design looks better and better as more pics come out. +rep

[airplaneman]

Wow actually a very thorough review! good job, and stop selling yourself short ... Very nice pictures, you actually have the same printer as me for school lol, just picked it up

Haha, it's a pretty decent printer I thought. Cheap too, $150 CAD.

[The_Moo™]

i hate people with DSL

[airplaneman]

i hate people with DSL

*Cough* 1Mb/s *cough*

[Quadzilla]

What service do you have out in the sticks Moo ?. You managed to rack up 8000 posts in 8 months how bad can your connection be lol.

i just upgraded my Comcast to 16meg down and im not sure how much upload speed i got though

[nobodyshero]

What service do you have out in the sticks Moo ?. You managed to rack up 8000 posts in 8 months how bad can your connection be lol.

i just upgraded my Comcast to 16meg down and im not sure how much upload speed i got though

Party line internet, you know, how they do down in the South? Haha jk, I know it's not a good connection tho :/