Alienware M17x R4 Gaming Laptop

Introduction, Design & Features
Svelte, 0.7-inch-thin ultrabooks might be getting the majority of laptop attention these days. But for gamers that value high-powered hardware over light weight and super-slim profiles, large, heavy gaming laptops still hold plenty of appeal.

Design

If you've spent some quality time with an Alienware laptop in the last few years, the M17x R4's design will seem very familiar. This 2012 iteration of the laptop is available in two colors, "Stealth Black" or "Nebula Red." Both options feature a "soft-touch" finish that's very good at repelling fingerprints. Of course, the iconic Alienware alien-head logo sits on the exterior lid, as well as above the keyboard, where it also functions as the power button.

The laptop looks nice enough, and it feels very solid, for the most part. But in case you haven't had any in-person experience with high-end gaming laptops, know that this is a beast of a machine. In our test configuration, it weighed in at 9.6 pounds, not counting the roughly 2-pound external power brick. It's also 1.75 inches thick, or about 2.5 times thicker than the thinnest ultrabooks, as well as over 16 inches wide and about 12 inches deep. It's certainly more portable than a desktop gaming rig like Maingear's Potenza. But even compared to other desktop-replacement laptops that aren't this powerful, the M17x R4 is thick and heavy.

Like previous Alienware laptops (as well as much of the high-end gaming competition these days), the M17x R4 sports customizable lighting. From within the Alienware Command Center software interface, you can choose among 19 different backlight colors for four different zones on the keyboard. The software also governs lighting for six other areas on the laptop, including a ring around the touch pad and the media-control buttons that sit above the keyboard. The lights can be customized to change when the laptop enters different modes, when it's unplugged from the power connector, or even when you receive new e-mail.

  

From a subdued single color to a psychedelic mix, you can adjust the Alienware's lighting as you like.

  

We like to think we're not easily impressed by pretty lights and gimmicky features. (In the gaming-hardware world, we certainly see a lot of both.) But while the M17x R4's lights aren't exactly understated, the ways you can customize them are certainly alluring.

Getting past the light show to the port selection, what the M17x has to offer is impressive, even for a laptop this large.

  

Video, audio, and USB 3.0 ports decorate the R4's left side.

  

The left edge sports a Gigabit Ethernet port; VGA, HDMI, and mini-DisplayPort outputs for connecting to external screens; two USB 3.0 ports; and four audio jacks (for S/PDIF, mic, headphone, and headset).

  

An HDMI input, seen on only the best big-screen desktops, is on the right.

  

On the right edge sits a MultiMediaCard/SD/Memory Stick card reader, above a slot-loading Blu-ray player. (A DVD±RW drive comes standard in the $1,499 base configuration.) Also over on this side are two more USB 3.0 ports and an eSATA port.

The right edge is also home to an HDMI-in port. (Note: That's an input, not an output.) HDMI-in ports are more common (and highly appreciated) on all-in-one desktops, since they let you plug in a gaming console, cable box, or other device and use the screen essentially as you would an HDTV. Considering this is a desktop-replacement rig, we also appreciate the port being offered on a laptop this large. We're not sure we'd want to rely on the Alienware M17x R4 as our sole HDTV screen, by any means, but we could certainly see users in a dorm room or a bedroom hooking up an Xbox to the laptop's 1080p screen for gaming with friends in the room, or playing those tantalizing console titles that never make it to the PC.

On the front, a pair of lighted grille areas give the design some extra retro-future flair. They may look like air intakes, but the real intakes on the M17x R4 are actually on the laptop's underside.

  

Cooling intakes for the warp core (OK, they're cosmetic, but we can pretend).

  

Features

The M17x R4's 17-inch, 1080p (1,920x1,080) screen is bright and crisp, with good vertical and horizontal viewing angles. If you game in a sunlit room, or one with overhead lighting, however, you might have to make use of those off-center viewing angles by tilting the screen a few different ways to avoid the reflectivity on the screen's glossy surface. Also, while the screen cover protects the underlying LCD panel, it flexes like plastic. With many laptops sporting glass-covered screens for quite a bit less, we'd like to see some Corning Gorilla Glass covering the M17x R4's screen here, rather than plastic.

Those looking for a true 3D gaming experience should also note that you can opt for a 120Hz LCD panel from Alienware when configuring the system, along with an Nvidia 3D Vision glasses bundle. This 3D-enabling pairing costs an extra $250. Our review unit shipped with a standard 60Hz screen that doesn't work with 3D Vision.

As for the input devices, the M17x R4's keyboard is roomy, with a full-size number pad. Despite the keyboard's underlying lighting mechanism, we noted a good bit of up/down key travel, and the keys offer some satisfying resistance when pressed, without feeling too stiff. That being said, there was a fair bit of noticeable keyboard flex in our review unit. That was about the only area where the M17x R4 didn't feel like an extremely solid, well-built PC. But even with the flex, we certainly prefer this keyboard's feel and layout to those found on most thinner, smaller laptops.

  

The keyboard is roomy and pleasant to type on, though there is a fair amount of flex.

  

The touch pad works well overall, and it supports multi-touch gestures, though it ships with this feature disabled out of the box. You'll have to dig into your mouse settings to enable individual options such as pinch-to-zoom and two-finger scrolling. The mouse buttons are pleasingly separate from the touch pad itself and from each other, offering easy left- and right-clicks.

Configuration Options

The base configuration of the Alienware M17x on Dell's site [and likely above, in our "Priced from:" onscreen pricing engine —Ed.] is priced at $1,499. For that price, you get a quad-core Core i7-3610QM CPU, 6GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M graphics. (The processor is from Intel's current "Ivy Bridge" generation, with a base clock speed of 2.3GHz.)

Our $2,599 review unit stepped those specs up to a 2.6GHz Core i7-3720QM processor and 8GB of RAM. Plus, it added a 32GB solid-state memory cache to the 500GB hard drive for speedier boot times and faster loading of frequently accessed programs. Our test configuration also shipped with a GeForce GTX 680M graphics chip, currently Nvidia's mobile gaming flagship.

If gaming without compromise is important to you, we'd stick with the GTX 680M graphics. But if you aren't often editing HD video or performing other tasks that lean heavily on the CPU, you can probably step down to the lower-end CPU (which is still a current-generation quad Core i7, after all). With the Core i7-3610QM, you won't notice much performance difference in everyday use, while saving yourself $150.

Likewise, most users should be fine with the base model's 6GB of RAM, as most of today's games can't access more than 2GB and Windows itself runs fine on 4GB. Stepping down to less RAM will save you $75 off the model we tested.