The world of 14-inch laptops has largely collapsed under the collective weight of ultrabooks, which over the last year have come to dominate the midrange segment these jack-of-most-trades systems once ruled. But Alienware has apparently not gotten the memo about that. Its latest revamp of its gaming laptop of that size, the M14x R2 , doesn't pretend it's a perilously thin ultraportable with unbelievable battery life and almost instantaneous speed. It's content with being a gaming laptop for those who don't want to break their backs, their budgets, or their backpacks when lugging it around, and that's a goal it meets handily, if not consistently.
Design
Alienware is noted throughout the industry for the design of its systems, and the M14x certainly lives up to the company?s established aesthetic. It looks distinctive before you even open the lid, which is jet-black in color and emblazoned only with two angled ridges along the center and the traditional chrome alien head with accents that glow a ghostly white as soon as you hit the power switch.
When it's powered on, the laptop displays another one of its gamer-friendly features: blue backlighting, enhancing the visibility of all they keys on the keyboard and the multitouch touch pad when the system is being used in a darkened room. (If you don't like the blue, you can change it; see the "Features" section below.) The keys type well enough, and the rubberized touchpad offers a bit more friction than many others, so the chances are small that your fingers will slide where you don?t want them go. The touchpad?s plastic buttons are quiet and press well.
The glossy 14-inch display on the M14x is an attractive one, with a fairly high 1,600-by-900 resolution. This is enough for watching HD videos in 720p, but not 1080p. A webcam is positioned in the middle of the display?s top bezel. The speakers, powered by the Creative Sound Blaster Recon3Di chip, are located just above the keyboard and put out a good deal of clear sound.
Although the M14x is on the small side by gaming laptop standards, it's still fairly hefty. It measures about 1.5 by 13.3 by 10.2 inches (HWD) and weighs 6.5 pounds alone, or 8 pounds figuring in the included power adapter.
Features
You'd expect a laptop designed for gaming to be equipped with above-average hardware, and that's just what the M14x gives you. Its Intel Core i7-3610QM processor is a robust 2.3GHz quad-core chip capable of running as many as eight simultaneous threads by way of Intel?s Hyper-Threading technology. This is nicely complemented by 8GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 RAM; the M14x is capable of holding up to 32GB, but there are no slots free, you can?t add more without replacing what comes preinstalled. For graphics you have a 2GB Nvidia GT 650M discrete card, a decent addition for this price.
You get a one-two hit of storage with a sufficiently roomy 750GB hard drive with a 7,200rpm spin rate and a 32GB solid-state cache drive that helps up its speed to near-SSD levels. The optical drive is a standard-issue slot-loading dual-layer DVD burner. For access to still more removable storage, there?s a reader that lets you access data on MMC, SD, and MSD/PRO cards. Wireless connectivity comes by way of 802.11a/g/n dual-band Wi-Fi, and integrated Bluetooth.
On the left side of the laptop you?ll find three display outputs: VGA, HDMI, and Mini DisplayPort, in addition to a single USB 2.0 charger port, microphone, headphone, and headset jacks, and the aforementioned card reader. The Ethernet jack (which is armed with Killer speed-boost technology; see below) can be found on the laptop's right edge, along with the optical drive and two USB 3.0 ports?which, for the record, are colored black rather than the usual blue. The power adapter connects to the jack on the rear edge of the laptop.
Like most gaming laptops, the M14x R2 emerges from its box with its 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium operating system thoroughly free of bloatware. You will, however, find two icons on the desktop. The first is for the Alienware Command Center, which lets you change any of the system?s six lighting zones from the default blue to any color you want; instantly access the laptop's power settings; tweak the touchpad?s settings for tapping, sensitivity, and virtual scrolling; and configure custom system environments for specific games that you can launch with a single click. The second desktop icon brings up the Qualcomm Atheros Killer Network manager, which lets you view crucial PC performance data, adjust the way various applications access the Internet, and make allowances for some kinds of network traffic so your connection is optimized while you?re gaming online.
The M14x R2 is covered by a one-year parts-and-labor warranty.
Performance
Of course, practically no one buys an Alienware machine for its productivity prowess; gaming is typically the primary concern, and at the M14x also doesn?t disappoint?although it's not always the champ. The M14x R2 proved superior to the Monster machine at Crysis using DirectX 10 (DX10) at 1,024-by-768 resolution and Medium quality settings (91.1 frames per second, or fps, versus 85.7fps for the Monster), and Lost Planet 2 when played with DX9. DX11, however, was a different story. The Monster proved better at both our synthetic Futuremark 3DMark 11 tests, on both the Entry (3,964 versus 3,458) and Extreme (726 versus 716) presets, and in Lost Planet 2 with the more recent rendering enabled (28.5fps 26.8fps), showing that it's marginally better equipped for handling newer titles.
Battery life on the M14x R2, which comes equipped with a 63Wh battery, was good: 4 hours 40 minutes as measured by our MobileMark 2007 battery rundown test. This is notably longer than we saw with the Eurocomm Monster (3:30), if not quite as good as the 4:48 from the Lenovo Y480.
The Alienware M14x R2 is in a difficult place right now, if not necessarily a bad one. With the laptop market very much different now than it was even a year ago, it can in some ways seem anachronistic?but it remains a system well worth considering for its intended function of serious gaming. Its chief downside, however, is that its specific hardware is not as future-proofed as would be ideal. Being able to play DX9 games at top frame rates is nice, but superior DX11 skills are important for what comes down the pike tomorrow, and the Eurocom Monster 1.0 is slightly better equipped in that department. For that reason, that system retains its Editors' Choice status, if only by a hair. If you're happy playing games that use the older technology, or if your non-play life requires a bit of productivity on the side, the Alienware M14x R2 is a terrific option.
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