Dan Warne03 February 2010, 1:16 PM
Dell has released what it says is the most powerful gaming laptop in the universe in a sub-2KG, 11" form factor. Do the specs stack up?
The Alienware M11x provides a rare combination of attributes in a notebook: small size, light weight and powerful graphics performance. Normally, to get good graphics performance in a gaming notebook you have to go for a 17" beast which has hefty internal cooling systems.
The Nvidia GeForce GT 335M found in the M11x isn't a high end, desktop-grade graphics chip, but it is in the upper end of what would be considered 'mid-range', and Dell says it can get a score of over 6,100 in the gaming-oriented 3DMark 06 benchmark.
What's also impressive is the price. Gaming notebooks are usually in the top-end of pricing, often costing well over $3,000 for a full-spec machine. The M11x costs $1599 and has decent specs -- a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium and a red-backlit "AlienFX" keyboard (pictured below), 1.3MP webcam and 11.6" LED-backlit LCD display with a 1366x768 resolution -- very good for the panel size. There's also inbuilt 5.1 sound -- it's hard to imagine how a notebook could provide the ".1" (subwoofer) but we'll reserve judgment on that until we have one of the machines in our labs.
The notebook comes with an 8-cell battery that Dell says will deliver 8.5 hours of usage (though, as always, notebook manufacturers' battery life claims need to be taken with a big grain of salt.)
Bumping RAM from 4GB to 8GB is a $939.40 additional cost option.
You can also get optional inbuilt 3G/HSPA mobile broadband in the notebook, but the Dell webpage on it doesn't currently list the price for this (we've let them know.)
The biggest let-down with the machine is the processor, which is only an ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo 1.3GHz. This CPU, the Core 2 Duo SU7300, only has an 800MHz frontside bus for communication with system memory, and a 3M cache which holds recently executed instructions on the processor so they don't have to be recomputed if repeated a short time later.
It's really not a very fast processor -- compared to other processors it sits somewhere near an Intel Pentium Dual-Core running at about 1.4GHz, and it's a lot slower than one of Intel's new Core i5 CPUs running at a mere 1GHz.
On Dell's own blog post about "a brief history of the Alienware M11x", a user points out that the rather underpowered CPU could have been swapped for one of Intel's new Core i7 640UM or 620UM CPUs without increasing heat output.
Despite the fact that the CPU is lacking in grunt, Dell maintains that this is a great gaming notebook, and the 3DMark 06 benchmark score of 6,100 is proof that it has got the system components balanced right.
On the connectivity front, Dell's decision to go with HDMI and VGA ports is a bit strange. Sticking with VGA ports makes sense on a corporate laptop that might be connected to a projector, but few gamers these days would be connecting to a monitor without DVI. However, monitors with HDMI connectors are still relatively rare. It's handy for connecting the notebook to a big-screen TV though, and a DVI monitor is only an HDMI-to-DVI converter away.
Finally, the M11x is not too badly priced compared to the USA. Although the base model M11x only costs $US799 in the US, it has much lower specs than in Australia (only 2GB RAM, a Pentium processor, and 160GB HDD). If you spec the US machine up to the Australian standard, it would cost $US1205.30 (including delivery and sales tax for someone living in California). This directly converts to $AUD1360.94. So the $1599 Australian selling price is not too bad. It's a literal $238.06 more, which equates to about a 17% markup -- far less than most electronics makers charge in Australia. Hurrah to Dell on that front.