Home Technology Alienware’s new gaming laptops are thin powerhouses

Alienware’s new gaming laptops are thin powerhouses

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Alienware doesn’t want its laptops to be seen as replacement exercise equipment, as its new X15 and X17 laptops are its thinnest and lightest gaming devices yet.

The “lighter” specced X15 packs Intel’s 11th Gen Core i7-11800H eight-core processor, 16GB of RAM clocked at 3,200MHz, 256GB of upgradeable NVMe storage, and Nvidia’s RTX 3060 graphics chip. That is a lot of processing power that is capable of running just about every game imaginable, coupled with a with a 15.6-inch FHD display that boasts a 165Hz refresh rate, 3ms response time, and up to 300 nits of brightness with 100 percent sRGB colour gamut support.

Impressively, all this power comes in a case that is only 15.9mm thick and weighs only 2,2kg with these minimum specs, and the display can also be upgraded to a 400-nit QHD G-Sync panel with a 240Hz refresh rate and 2ms response time. It does come with an 87Wh battery, although the company doesn’t provide any numbers on how long it will last, especially at full gaming performance. Don’t expect it to be too much.

Understandably though, that sort of performance doesn’t come cheap with the base X15 setting you back $1999 before any upgrades are made.

If you have the money to spare, you might prefer the more powerful X17 which will start at $2099. That extra price though will give you similar specs, but in a bigger case with a 17.3-inch screen, which will allow you to upgrade the RAM further to 64GB, an Intel Core i9-11900HK processor, and RTX 3080 (16GB). It will come with the base specs of the X15 at the default price, including battery size, and will weigh a substantially chunky 3.1kg overall.

You can expect all the usual ports across both machines, such as USB-A 3.2 Gen 1m USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, Thunderbolt 4, a microSD card slot, and an HDMI 2.1 port. The X17 does come with an SB-A port, a Mini DisplayPort jack, and a 2.5G ethernet port as well.

Smaller machines tend to struggle the most with heat management, but Alienware claims that its Quad Fan will move a lot of air out of the many outflow spaces and keep the heat to a minimum to prevent the laptop from going nuclear during a round of Gears 5.

It’s great to see gaming laptops continue to get better and lighter, allowing people to use them as more conventional devices beyond gaming. There are no local release dates for these laptops just yet, but they are already available for pre-order in the US. If you have the money to burn through and are looking for a decent gaming laptop, these are certainly models to look into, although Asus and MSI also have some solid hardware on the horizon.

Last Updated: June 3, 2021

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