Conclusion
Conclusion
Before Alienware waded onto the scene, many believed gaming notebooks needed to be big, overweight bricks that were anything but portable. To this day most high performance notebooks come with oversized screens and laughable battery life so at face value Alienware’s small form factor gambit was ambitious to say the least. Nonetheless, gamers flocked to the diminutive M11x for its size, portability and relatively good performance while its competitors have so far failed to deliver anything comparable. The M14x meanwhile is an attempt to ride the M11x’s wave of popularity into a more upscale market. But did Alienware succeed where others have failed? Definitely.
The M14x is one of those products we never thought would be useful but it ended up fitting perfectly into almost every conceivable situation. Application and in-game performance placed it among the best we’ve tested while a relatively small footprint allows for a perfect fit into most laptop bags. Just remember that portable doesn’t mean a svelte frame and lightweight construction; this thing is built like a tank and weighs in at a size-defying 6.5 lbs so be prepared for a workout if you’re looking for on-the-go gaming potential.
From an everyday usage perspective, the M14x is as mild mannered as they come. It features a stellar keyboard design, an excellent display, plenty of connectivity options and for a notebook that sports such high end specs, battery life is quite decent. Alienware has made design choices which are in tune with the mobile gaming market’s expectations but the M14x also feels right at home performing more mundane tasks as well. Speaking of gaming, we should mention that the GT 555M gets a bit overwhelmed by the 1600 x 900 resolution but dialing back a few settings resulted in very reasonable framerates in every game we threw at it.
This is an Alienware laptop so we all knew that price was going to factor into this equation somewhere and let’s be honest: the M14x is far from inexpensive. However, one of Alienware’s strengths is their capability to offer an almost infinite number of customization options for every one of their products. The M14x’s starting price is just north of $1000 (even less during one of Dell’s frequent sales) which is a fairly good deal considering its high quality construction and class leading software package. Our test unit hit the $2000 mark but by forgoing the mostly unnecessary 3GB graphics card, Wireless HD, 8GB of memory and other frills it came with, you can still have a potent mobile gaming rig without spending an arm and a leg. But on the flip side of that coin, if money isn’t an issue then Alienware certainly has you covered as well.
We think the M14x’s speakers deserve special mention since they are bar none THE best we’ve ever heard on a notebook and boast audio quality that comes close to many inexpensive standalone 2.1 systems. Unfortunately, this is also where we encountered the only real issue with Alienware’s 14” wunderkind; when the system is pushed, the fan noise becomes extreme. Even though a BIOS update to A05 (which also netted significant performance increases) did tone things down a bit, using the M14x’s gaming abilities in public just isn’t an option.
Other than the relatively small fan speed hiccup, the M14x should serve as a case study in engineering excellence and forward thinking design. Alienware has crammed nearly all of the features power users could want into a portable, high quality notebook that can be customized to fit your heart’s (and wallet’s) content. We really couldn’t have asked for more.