So, it is essentially a smaller version of the M15X. Starting with the lid and screen frame, thankfully, they are the only two things with a glossy finish on the entire unit. This fan enables effective air circulation, by pulling in air from underneath, which is then expelled from the side-vent. Ergonomically, it matches up well with other Alienware notebooks.
The entire wrist rest and the textured touchpad have a matte finish, and the mouse buttons are quite comfortable to use. All the ports are at either side and the only thing at the rear is the DC power connector. In terms of build quality the chassis, hinges and the overall package is rock solid. Should you desperately need a DVD drive, Dell still offers an external one as an option. Such compromises are made even more palatable because they make possible the wonderfully conceived chassis.
To us it has the right amount of unique, eye-catching design flair without alienating more conservative users. This is particularly true of the black version we have, though a silver option is available. What really sets the M11x apart is the awesome AlienFX lighting system. This includes the keyboard, Alienware lettering below the screen, the alien heads above the keyboard and on the lid, and the two slots on the front edge of the machine. You can also turn off all lighting via a keyboard shortcut button.
This is somewhat unavoidable, though, considering the cooling required for the graphics card and the space needed for that battery. Here weight is far more important and though 1. Another more significant bugbear partly related to the design is the reflectiveness of the screen. Like many modern laptops the M11x has a clear plastic sheet across the screen.
This may look good, but even by modern standards the reflections it creates are exceedingly irksome. Anyone particularly intolerant of reflections will find it a difficult machine to live with. Mini-FireWire is present, as is the obligatory multi-format memory card slot. Intriguingly, just above the memory card slot is a SIM card slot. Other forms of wireless connectivity are well covered, with both Wireless-N Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on-hand.
Gigabit Ethernet is supported, too, should you need it. This is also a machine you can work on fairly comfortably. At the very least, two-finger scrolling would be useful. Its 1, x native resolution looks extremely sharp on such a small screen, while its colour and contrast are good by laptop standards. Unsurprisingly the speakers are very weak, a fact not helped by their relegation to random positions on the underside of the machine.
Gauging the performance of the Alienware M11x was always going to be an interesting process. In the end we chose to compare against itself, running all our tests in both dedicated orange and integrated graphics dark grey modes where possible, and against the Samsung R This is boosted by the extremely fast SSD, though, which generated a massive score in hard drive intensive tests — as can be seen in the full results page at the end of the review.
Not only did the M11x produce a decent To give us some further insight, we tried a few more games, including Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 and Just Cause 2. We were able to tilt the screen back as far as it would go--about 53 degrees past vertical--and still see everything on-screen clearly, but when it was perpendicular to the deck, images started to wash out. Horizontal viewing angles were strong, though.
While not on a par with larger gaming rigs, audio on the M11x was stellar for a system of this size. The chassis is large enough so that deeper bass sounds had enough room to resonate, and higher tones were crisp without becoming distorted; when gaming, booms from explosions rumbled while the rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire crackled. For such a small system, the M11x has a lot of connectivity options. On the right edge are two USB ports, two headphone jacks, and a microphone jack.
Rounding it off is a SIM Card slot and a 3-in-1 memory card reader. In a Skype video call, the M11x's 1. Alienware's Aliensense facial recognition software works well, too. When you first log into the computer, the webcam records your mug; each successive time you log in, it learns your facial features; by the second day of our using the M11x, it recognized our face and logged us into Windows in less than a second.
Click to enlarge While the M11x has a 1. On PCMark Vantage, which measures overall system performance, the M11x scored 3,, which is about points above the ultraportable average, and points above thin-and-lights.
The M11x's 7,rpm, GB hard drive was plenty fast, copying a 4. The M11x took for this task which, while good for thin-and-lights the IdeaPad U took , is more than half a minute longer than Intel Core i5 systems. It was a pleasant surprise to see such powerful graphics in such a small system.
The M11x's Nvidia GeForce GT M graphics notched a score of 6, in 3DMark06; not only does that blow away the thin-and-light average, but it's nearly double that of the mainstream category, too. While frame rates weren't as high as those achieved on larger gaming rigs, the M11x had more than enough muscle for the latest titles. With effects on ultra and resolution set to native, we averaged 74 frames per second in World of Warcraft. Likewise, in Far Cry 2 , which is more graphically demanding, we notched 44 fps at x , and 29 fps at native resolution.
When blasting our way through Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 , we were able to crank up the graphics and the resolution; frame rates stayed strong, between 29 and 44 fps. The screen was crisp and game details, from the folds of our fatigues to crumbling brick walls, rendered very well. Having switchable graphics means that users can eke out longer battery life when performing more mundane tasks, such as writing papers or surfing the web.
Of course, don't expect to do any gaming in this mode: after switching to the integrated graphics, we re-ran 3DMark06 and saw a score of just As nice as it is, some fraggers may find the M11x's
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