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Last year, Dell added to its Alienware laptop family and simultaneously expanded the definition of ultra-portables with the tiny-beefcake M11x. This year's new addition, the flagship M18x, now expands the other end of the spectrum.
Labelling this colossus a desktop replacement tells only half the story. At 436 x 322 x 53mm and with a starting weight of 5.41kg, the M18x is only four legs short of replacing your actual desk. Factor in a 1.54kg power adaptor and your back will spasm just contemplating lugging this titan around LAN parties.
Happily, this isn't Miss World as having a huge body isn’t such a disadvantage here. Indeed, the M18x is a head-turner, with its pedigree rhomboid chassis and imposing Pontiac Firebird-style front slope and grilles striking a deft balance between geek and chic.
This Alienware machine’s mishmash of materials initially appears discordant, but their functionality highlights fastidious attention to detail. The anodised aluminium of the lid and sides (available in Nebula Red or Space Black) are extremely tough. Short of standing on the case, there's no flex whatsoever. The M18x is scratch and smudge resistant too. As is the large soft touch rubber wrist area, which provides excellent grip. Talking of grip, the half-octagon texturised-rubber panel at the cover's rear is dead handy when carrying this monster underarm.
The design excellence extends to the keyboard. The large 99 x 56mm trackpad is the smoothest, most responsive and precise I’ve ever used. White-bordered 18 x 18mm keys make for comfortable typing, with good stroke distance and low noise. There's even a column of programmable macro keys on the left, ideally placed for MMO-players in proximity to WASD. Providing the finishing flourish, Alienware's signature AlienFX illumination offers customisable back-lighting from a palette of 20 colours to four keyboard zones, the macro keys, trackpad and grilles.
Port placement further exemplifies the meticulous attention to detail, with all the heavy cabling kept to the rear. Running along the left, from front to back, are two headphone, one mic and an S/PDIF sockets, plus two USB 3.0 ports, MiniDisplay, VGA, Gigabit Ethernet and a Kensington Lock.
The BF3 test did raise one major annoyance, though. While AMD and Nvidia have improved mobile driver roll-outs in recent years, Dell remains notoriously slow. Both drivers are customised to support hot key and power management functions, and suspend/resume behaviour, so you're tied into Dell’s updates. A critical element of PC gaming, it doesn't augur well that, at time of writing, after six weeks and eight weeks respectively, AMD and Nvidia's latest drivers were unavailable on Alienware's flagship laptop.
Then there's the issue of the battery like dell 1G222 battery , dell BAT3151L8 battery , dell Latitude X300 battery , dell W0465 battery , dell Inspiron 2000 battery , dell Latitude LS battery , dell 2834T battery , dell 4834T battery , dell Inspiron 1520 battery , dell Inspiron 1521 battery , Dell Inspiron 1720 battery . The M18x lasted 1 hour 17 minutes on a looping PCMark Vantage test with everything on, and 1 hour 58 minutes when switched to integrated graphics – which, incidentally, requires a reboot every time on both AMD and Nvidia configurations.
Those durations are understandable, of course. Combined, the CPU, dual GPUs and fans pull around 250W from the 96W/hr 12-Cell Li-ion battery, so you'll only get around 20 minutes of gaming. But even that's not an option here as Dell instead automatically underclocks the GPUs with battery use.
Frame rates drop off a cliff, and games need scaling back to low settings to achieve anywhere near the comfortable 30FPS mark – hardly worth it for the extra 20 or so minutes underclocking provides. It might seem harsh to complain. But it's an important point when you can pick up a more powerful desktop for around £500 less. At 5.4Kgs, the M18x's already slim advantage of mobility is further eroded by the constant need to plug it in.
The M18x lives up to expectations. It feels lovingly crafted around gamers' needs, combining superlative design, build quality, aesthetics and scalable power. But it comes at a cost. The review model's price compares reasonably well to other gaming laptops, but component upgrades incur a luxury brand tax, with the top spec costing close to £5k. The real issue, however, is one of positioning. The extra size, weight and power consumption required by the dual graphics cards pushes it into competition with much cheaper desktops. For all it's gaming power, that's one contest the M18x can't win.