Alienware Area-51 m15x review

Set phasers on stun - and wallet on empty

If some kind of crazy Dr Moreau-type scientist tried to crossbreed a Cyberman with one of those enormous 1kg slabs of Dairy Milk you get in the supermarkets at Christmas, the resulting abomination of nature would probably look something like the Area-51 m15x - but then we guess that's probably what the guys at Alienware had in mind.

Whether you actually like the design or not depends on how much you're into moulded grey plastic, Klingon forehead-style ridges, backlit spaceship control panel-aping keyboards and softly glowing alien motifs.

Looks-wise, then, we'll notch this one up to a matter of taste. Less debatable is the raw power that's sweltering away under the hood. The system combines one of the world's fastest mobile processors (an Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 2.8GHz) with one of the world's most powerful graphics chips (a 512MB Nvidia GeForce Go 8800M GTX).

The resulting oomph means that the m15x can make mincemeat of almost any game you care to toss at it, which is pretty cool.

Far less cool is the system's price. At nearly 2G, only the galaxy's richest gamers will be able to afford to go anywhere near Area-51. We'd be more charitable about the cost, perhaps, if the m15x had come with more storage space (160GB is a bare minimum these days), or a bigger screen, ok it's slightly more portable, but we miss proper high-def, or even a Blu-ray drive (that costs extra).

Instead, there's the obligatory WiFi and Alienware throws in a handful of added extras (including a 2-megapixel webcam), but they're not really enough to sweeten the deal.

Posted by Jonathan Parkyn on 2008-07-31

User Comments

By RichardCP

6|11|2008 10:55

Have you reviewed the Zepto Nox A15 yet? It can be specified with up to 8 Gig RAM and 320 Gig 7200 rpm hard drive. Intel core 2 up to 2.56Mhz - I think, from memory.
Cheers.

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