Alienware M14x review

Just when you thought all laptops were looking the same these days, Alienware’s arresting M14x grabs the attention. It oozes brooding menace, finished all in soft-touch matte black and illuminated by its backlit keyboard and glowing chassis lights. Its sculpted figure owes as much to supercar design as to the average PC hardware.

It doesn’t only trade on its looks, either: at 2.87kg the M14x weighs more than some 17.3in desktop replacements. That will put a serious dent in plans to lug it around in a bag, but the heft also makes for a resoundingly sturdy chassis. There isn’t a hint of give in the base and all we could grapple out of the rest was a slight flex in the display’s hinge. It’s a monster.

That such design comes with a daunting price tag is hardly a surprise, but don’t write it off yet: the M14x is a class act. The quad-core Core i7 CPU powered it to an overall score of 0.81 in our Real World Benchmarks, and the 256GB Samsung SSD makes for a system that boots into Windows with impressive haste.

This isn’t the main focus, though. The M14x is designed with power-hungry gamers in mind, and they’ll be delighted to learn that the Alienware doesn’t disappoint. Thanks to an Nvidia GeForce GT 555M chipset, the M14x eased its way to 45fps in our Medium Crysis test at 1,600 x 900, leaving room to up a few settings while keeping things playable. It was only once we pushed up to a Full HD resolution and High detail that Crysis slowed to a juddery 21fps.

Despite all that power, the Alienware M14x also has stamina. Optimus graphics-switching technology allows Intel’s integrated graphics to take the helm during less frantic moments, so the M14x lasted a surprising 6hrs 17mins in our light-use battery test. With every CPU core running flat-out with our looping Cinebench test, and the Alienware’s display pushed to its maximum 290cd/m² brightness, the M14x lasts just 1hr 10mins.