The M17x is Alienware’s flagship video games notebook. It has a stealthy design, aluminum chassis, along with a customizable lighting system. Our review unit comes complete to the gills with dual Nvidia graphics cards, an Intel Extreme processor, and 8GB of RAM. Does the M17x meet Alienware’s claim of being the fastest gaming notebook on the market? Read our notebook review to determine.

Design
That has a brand-new look and several of the highest-end tech obtainable in a laptop, we’re semi-surprised that Alienware has kept the M17x name for its newest 17-inch laptop (although it loses the X-Files-esque “Area-51″ moniker). While the system starts at the reasonable $1,799, you should configure something closer to our $4,849 review unit to actually get the advantage of Alienware’s years of experience making high-end gaming PCs.We appreciate the evolved design of the new M17x, which does away with a number of the dorm-like qualities of past Alienware systems, creating a (slightly) more sophisticated-looking package. The somewhat goofy custom lighting system remains, but the automotive-inspired front-end grille and edge-to-edge glass on the display offset that.The previous M17x produced few levels in the right direction, de-emphasizing the brand’s iconic glowing alien head design and offering a smart matte black finish.This latest version continues the march toward modern minimalist design, with fewer distracting flourishes on the keyboard tray, along with a slick edge-to-edge glass overlay on the display. The front edge has also gotten a change, having an angled automotive-inspired grille that can help the appearance from being too slablike. The anodized aluminum case feels heavy and substantial–but includes you simply will not be taking it on a lot of trips outside the house (unless you like carrying almost 15 pounds of computer equipment).

Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard is in fact untouched since the last generation of the M17x; but, there’s nothing that needed changing. The keys are large, have a nice feel, and are generally very responsive. There is a small amount of flex in the keyboard, but Alienware told us that production models could have more support.While the previous M17x were honeycomb pattern on its touchpad, the newest iteration is smooth, but is a spacious 3.9 x 2.2 inches. The surface offered virtually no resistance as our fingers glided across it, the industry good thing. Powered by Synaptics, the touchpad is usually effective at multitouch gestures, though Alienware turns them off automagically.

Display and Audio
The 17.1-inch wide-screen LCD display comes with a 1,920×1,200 native resolution, that is what we’d expect originating from a high-end 17-inch laptop (less costly desktop replacements may have 1,440×900 displays). The screen looks crisp and bright, and the edge-to-edge glass overlay adds a seamless feel, but it is susceptible to glare from light sources. We also wouldn’t mind seeing Alienware embrace the trend toward 16:9 displays.

WirelessHD Streaming
The M17x incorporates a WirelessHD (WiHD) transmitter built-in, which streams data at as much as 4Gbps on the 60GHz spectrum, and contains a highly effective variety of as much as 30 feet. Unlike Intel’s WiDi technology, WirelessHD doesn’t have a latency and can stream protected content like Blu-rays movies to some compatible receiver (although WiDi 2.0 will support DRM having an upgrade).consumers who wanted this type of capability had to buy a device such as the ASUS WiCast EW2000 or HP Wireless TV Connect, which involved connecting a bulky transmitter to some notebook. These accessories use yet another technology called WHDI.the M17x came bundled with a Vizio XWH200 receiver. (Vizio sells a transmitter and receiver separately for $229). The triangular receiver, which appears like a big Toblerone bar, measures 7.4 x 2.5 x 1.3 inches. The front is a sleek glossy black, and the back, sides, and bottom are vented. The only connectors are an HDMI port and power on the back.The Vizio receiver worked as well as third-party WHDI devices; we used the HP Wireless TV Connect and the Asus WiCast EW2000 with the Alienware, and found that all three worked more or less the same; videos (both Blu-ray and from the harddisk) streamed smoothly, high was no lag whatsoever when getting referrals. Like those other two devices, though, we found out that if you try to experience a Blu-ray with the displays cloned, it will only be visible on one screen.

Ports and Webcam
The M17x comes with a wide array of ports especially when it comes to video out. HDMI is designed for connecting to HDTVs and Display Port to monitors that support it. All picture descriptions are left to right.Concerning os in this handset and software, Windows Vista 64-bit comes standard on the M17x; at the time of publishing, Alienware is offering free Windows 7 upgrade coupons. Alienware computers in the past have fallen totally free of junk software and that trend continues with the M17x.The notebook carries with it an automated recovery feature, Alien Respawn 2.0. Pressing F10 on startup initiates the procedure; it may back files and re-install the OS from there, or execute a complete wipe.

Performance
Compared, we had a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9300, in addition to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and dual Nvidia GeForce GTX280M graphics card, which moves the M17x to the top of our laptop performance list. One laptop we recently reviewed used a desktop PC 3.33GHz Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Quad Core processor, and was technically faster–but putting desktop parts inside a laptop chassis is an entirely different animal. The quad-core Extreme-edition CPU helped within our multitasking tests, but the real-world distinction between this and the non-Extreme Core 2 Quad Q9000 present in other high-end desktop replacements isn’t enough to think of it as a must-have upgrade .The real star here is the SLI configuration of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX280M. With a couple of these powerful GPUs working together, we were 168 frames per second at 1,920×1,200 in Unreal Tournament 3, thus, making this our gaming laptop performance leader by a wide margin. Anecdotally, we thrilled F.E.A.R. 2 at 19×12 and hang up almost all of the graphics options to medium or high to get a smooth,impressive experience. Needless to say, with hardly any high-profile PC games currently in development, there may stop many titles that deserve these types of high-end treatment (one exception may perhaps be Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins, one of the few buzz-worthy upcoming games that’s being developed for the PC and ported to consoles, in lieu of the other way around).

Battery life
The M17x incorporates a feature called Stealth Mode which turns off the high-performance GTX 280M graphics cards and switches to a integrated GeForce 9400M graphics card. This configuration reduces energy consumption and as a result, I’d been able to utilize the M17x for just two hours and fifteen minutes in Stealth Mode with the display at one-third brightness. This is a respectable number to get a gaming notebook. Our test unit has some power-hungry components such as two 7200RPM hard drives running in RAID 0 and the Intel QX9300 quad-core processor. That has a power-saving SSD (Alienware offers a couple 256GB SSDs) along with a dual-core processor, I’ve no doubt the M17x could go for not less than another half hour. Read the comparison with Alienware M11x.

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