Alienware Area-51 M15x Review

Alienware has officially declared about two new models of notebooks, Area-51 m15x and m17x, as “the most powerful notebooks from all existed”. The number of model name corresponds to the diagonal of display (15,4 and 17 inches), they are similar on many technical descriptions: both notebooks will be equipped with the Core 2 Duo Extreme processors, NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX video card, 667 MHz DDR2, writing Blu-ray-drive (in Area-51 m17x model or writing DVD-drive in m15).
Normally, a review like this would open with us mocking the name of the product. That’s because most laptops nowadays, especially in the popular gaming and subnotebook markets, have incredibly stupid names. They call themselves things which are far too easy to structure jokes around, like the MSI Wind, or they bombard you with numbers and dashes like the (deep breath) Rock Xtreme 770 X9000-8800. With this laptop though, that approach to an introduction just doesn’t work for two reasons
Since then little has changed on the notebook gaming front, as we are yet to see a product that can deliver an outstanding level of performance, or at least enough to match a moderately powerful gaming desktop PC. Then there is the issue of heat, which affects all notebook computers, but particularly those intended for gaming. And we have tested quite a few that suffer from stability issues for that reason. When Alienware introduced the Alienware Area-51 m15x we were obviously keen to check it out, while remaining skeptical at the same time
Design
Silver - and only silver, that’s the first thing you’ll notice with the Alienware Area-51 m15x. The case wasn’t something that impressed us much - and given Alienware’s reputation for edgy design (almost Giger-esque), we found the silver lid with obligatory blue-eyed alien head to be, well…boring. Having reviewed Alienware machines in the past, we were always fond of their blue exterior option. This new lid is a silver panel, with a seam starting from the bottom to two-thirds up the lid, where it’s broken by the ambiguous alien head. Granted, the texture and quality of the material used was spot on baby’s behind smooth, but also too plain for what were used to.
Flashy colors and custom paint jobs, once the sole domain of high-end gaming desktops, have been steadily creeping into notebook design for years. The Alienware Area-51 m15x takes this trend and puts a more futuristic and elegant spin on things, with its clean look and color-shifting LEDs. The notebook’s smart appearance is accompanied by the best mobile performance and hardware money can buy. Even better, it’s all squeezed into a relatively light