The latest quad-core processor turns up in frighteningly powerful gaming laptop
Powerful / Desirable / Solid build quality
Big / Heavy / High price
If, somehow, you’re smugly immune to the credit crunch and have found yourself with the best part of £2000 burning a hole in your pocket, then Alienware have something to tempt you.
Its latest gaming laptop, the M17, might sound like it’s named after a particularly dull Mancunian postcode, but in reality it promises enough gaming grunt to leave other laptops trailing in its wake.
All about size
Tease it from its jet-black packaging and the first thing that’ll strike you is the sheer size of the thing. With a 17in display and enough cooling to keep its twin graphics cards and a high-end processor cool under pressure, the M17’s chunky dimensions mean you won’t want to carry around on a regular basis.
And, if the sheer size of the thing isn’t enough to put you off, then the weight certainly will. Factor in the hefty brick of a power supply and the whole kaboodle weighs in at a whopping 5.5kg. Ouch.
Whether you drag, heave or manhandle the M17 around, though, it’s sure to please once you reach your destination.
That huge, matte black chassis conceals a 17in display with a full-HD resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, and dual ATI HD 3870 graphics chipsets buddy up in CrossFire mode for more gaming grunt than many desktop PCs can muster, and certainly enough to cope with the 2008's finest at decent settings.
Drum roll, please
And, in a first for any laptop, gaming or otherwise, our M17 boasted the latest Intel quad-core Q9100 processor. With four processor cores running at 2.26GHz and 4GB of DDR3 memory in tow, the M17 has more clout than you’d expect to find in a portable.
The only downside is the price premium – the Q9100 adds a breathtaking £648 to the price tag and, in many circumstances, won’t prove any faster than the 2.26GHz Intel P8400 dual-core which comes as standard.
Built to order
Thankfully, the beauty of Alienware laptops is that you can spec them to your budget. Backlit keyboards, built-in TV tuners, Blu-ray drives; if you’ve got the cash, Alienware will gladly help you spend it.
Our review unit cost a frankly dizzying £2159, and when you consider that’s only including a 160GB hard disk, there’s plenty of room to spend more if you’ve got cash to burn. If you haven’t, don’t let the staggering price tag put you off. Make a few sensible compromises – stick to a dual-core CPU, for example – and you can buy yourself a powerful M17 for little more than £1400.
Either way, as a powerful gaming machine the M17 really is very tempting indeed.