Alienware M15 Notebook Gaming - Review

The name Alienware for the purists of the glorious Master Race it is certainly evocative, in fact this Dell brand was one of the first, if not the first to conceive the PC as a tool not only for working and watching videos of a certain type on the network, but also to make it a real entertainment center. Dell's Alienware division has in fact always created mind-boggling PCs, both desktop and notebook, with top performance and hardware to make the gaming experience as rewarding as possible. Alienware has always focused on the revolution in the world of PC gaming, just think that in 2008 it was the first to present a curved monitor with an aspect ratio similar to 32: 9, capable of giving a unique immersion: certainly it remained a prototype because the production costs for the time were exorbitant, in addition to the fact that the monitor was too large, but the fact is that it was the first to bring this type of screen into the glorious Master Race. About twelve years ago owning an Alienware branded PC meant having the best the market could offer, all seasoned with a unique, completely customizable, colorful design (because we already had LEDs at the time) and above all having a very powerful PC in able to do everything, even to run Crysis, so to the fateful question: “Is Crysis running?”, you could proudly answer yes. Unfortunately, nowadays the name Alienware does not arouse the same feelings as twelve years ago, when PC gaming was niche and reserved for a few.

Now with the PC market expanding like wildfire, the countless companies that make hardware, gaming notebooks and peripherals, the Alienware name has lost that aura of magic it once had. All this long premise mixed with nostalgia, just to tell you that we have had the opportunity to test the new Alienware M15, gaming notebook equipped with eye tracking.

At first glance you immediately notice that we are in front of a laptop branded Alienware, due to the extremely refined design and that we will hardly see on any other notebook. Our Alienware M15 sample is the white version, extremely beautiful to look at. Being a gaming product and branded Alienware, of course there is no shortage of RGB LEDs. The notebook chassis is made of plastic, extremely robust and well-made, in fact during our tests we did not hear any creaking coming from the body. As mentioned earlier, the predominant color is white, except for the area where the hinge that joins the lid from the rest of the laptop resides.

However, the white parts are made of slightly rubberized plastic, in order to increase the comfort during use and to have a better tactile feedback. Although the color is extremely light, we will hardly be able to dirty the notebook or leave our imprints on it.

The upper area of ​​Alienware M15, or the one where the lid is, is quite simple and minimal: we find almost nothing except for the hinge, a silkscreen imprinted with the number 15 which indicates the diagonal of the display, and the iconic company logo, that is the head of an alien, to be precise a Gray, according to the collective imagination, equipped with LED and obviously RGB lighting.

Once the Notebook is open, to do this we will have to use both hands, in addition to finding the trackpad, keyboard and display, we will also find the sensor for Eye Tracking, that is a particular technology able to identify our eye and adapt the view of the game to it, but we will talk about this later.

The keyboard has an international layout: in addition to changing the arrangement of some special characters, accented letters are not present, so we will have to enter the accent manually, a nuisance if someone, besides using the notebook to play, also uses it to write large texts.

The mouse pad isn't overly large, but still allows us to use the notebook at its best thanks to the presence of multi-finger gestures. Alienware M15 offers broad enough connectivity for a notebook. On the left side we find one USB 3.0 port, one 1.0Gbps Ethernet port and one 3,5mm 4-pole audio jack, able to handle both the input and output signal: if you find yourself with a headset with two jacks, you will have to use an adapter to be able to use both headphones and microphone.

On the right side we find instead two 3.0 USB ports. On the back, in addition to finding a beautiful frame equipped with RGB LEDs, we also find two video outputs: one HDMI 2.0 and one Mini Display Port 1.4.

Here it is also present a USB Type-C port able to quickly recharge our devices such as smartphones and tablets, and the input for the power supply.

At an aesthetic level and input and output connectivity, the Alienware M15 does not miss anything and at the hardware level it is certainly not far behind. The beating heart of the notebook is entrusted to a Intel Core I7 9750H CPU with 6 cores and 12 threads able to work at a base frequency of 2,60 Ghz, but which can rise up to 4 Ghz if necessary. Next to this CPU we find 16 GB of DDR4 RAM which operates at a frequency of 2666 Mhz.

The GPU, the most important element in a gaming notebook, is one nvidia Geforce GTX 1660 Ti, mid-range video card capable of running any game discreetly. The storage unit is entrusted to a single 2GB M.512 NVMe SSD, a little 'if you are a serial accumulator of video games. Alienware M15 also offers the new standards as well Wi-Fi 6 802.11 AX, able to offer excellent performance even without the aid of the Ethernet cable. On a technical level, the Dell notebook does not miss anything. Now all that remains is to test it.

The first test carried out is the one with the 3D Mark suite using the classic TimeSpy (DX12) and FireStrike (DX11) scenarios. In the first case we scored a score overall of 5580 points, with a Graphics Score of 5575 and a CPU Score of 5615. On FireStrike we scored a instead total score of 12870, with a Graphics Score of 14810, a Physix Score of 13825 and a Combined Score of 6170.

The second test carried out is the one with PC Mark 10, a software that simulates the most classic office operations. Alienware M15 managed to score a total score of 4026 points, with an Essentials of 7094, a Productivity of 6582 and a Digital Content Creator of 3795.

For our third test we used the inevitable Cinebench, both in the R15 and R20 versions. In the old version, namely Cinebench R15, the Alienware M15 got a score in Multi Thread of 524 CB, while in Single Thread of 138 CB. With Cinebench R20 in Multi Thread we totaled a score of 1711 points, while in single we scored 368 points.

We also looked at the Alienware M2 M.15 NVMe SSD - it's one unit manufactured by Micron, namely the 2200S model. The first test was carried out with Anvil's Storage totaling a total score of 8879,55 points, while in reading we totaled a score of 4556,44 points and in writing of 4323,11 points.

The second test used is with the Crystal Disk Mark with an 8GB setting. The Micron 2200S unit tested by Random writing 4KQ32T16 totaled a score of 865,60 points in reading, while in writing of 879,22 points. In the image below you can also read the other scores.

As the Alienware M15 is a gaming notebook, we also tested it in several recent and extremely heavy titles.

As we can see from the table above, Alienware M15, with the settings at the highest level offered by the game, manages to guarantee an excellent framerate which allows us to play safely in any title. If we lower the details instead, we manage to keep the framerate above 60 FPS on any title so that you can have an extremely smooth experience.

The monitor that we find on board the Alienware M15 has a Full HD resolution, therefore 1920 x 1080 pixels, with a refresh rate of 144 Hz. The panel manages to return an excellent color range, with very high contrasts in order to make the image even deeper and more realistic: unfortunately it is not HDR type but SDR and therefore we will not be able to reproduce the contents with a wider dynamic range. The high refresh rate is able to give us a unique fluidity, able to make each of our games exceptional.

A sore point of the Alienware M15 is definitely the battery life, but this is an inherent problem with all gaming notebooks. The Dell laptop for office use or for the use of video content, manages to guarantee an autonomy of about 2 hours and fifteen minutes with the monitor brightness set to medium level and the backlight on. Not a striking fact, especially if you always carry the notebook with you to work, but since it is a gaming product we already know that a lot of power also requires a greater absorption of energy.

All this energy as we all know turns into heat, but when does Alienwaaare M15 heat up? Dell's notebook features an active dual-fan cooling system that can keep hot spirits at bay. In our sample, however, there is something wrong. The Intel CPU, both in idle and under load, maintains a temperature of about 100 ° C, quite excessive especially in the long life. Since this is a sample we cannot ascertain with certainty whether this defect is due to the dissipation system or some other factor. The GPU, on the other hand, turns out to be fairly fresh, in fact idle hardly exceeds 56 ° C, while after several hours of play reached a maximum peak of 74 ° C. Even the body turns out to be quite cool, without creating extremely hot areas which can ruin our experience of use.

Above the keyboard we recorded a temperature of about 40 ° C, while in the middle of it 35 ° C and in the touchpad area of ​​about 22 ° C.

As already mentioned at the beginning of the review, Alienware M15 has a Wi-Fi module compatible with the new 802.11 AX standard. The chip that we find inside is Intel Dual-Band Wireless-AC 8265 with MU-MIMO and Bluetooth 4.2, capable of reaching the theoretical maximum speed of 2,4 Gbps. Obviously we tested the Wi-Fi module with a router compatible with 802.11 AX technology, to be precise Netgear Nighthawk AX8 RAX80. Staying close to the router, we were able to connect with a carrier of 2400 MB / s, which is the maximum speed allowed by the Alienware M15's Wi-Fi card. While copying, we were able to achieve quite remarkable speeds compared to what we can achieve with an ethernet connection, this is because many routers and motherboards are still equipped with 1 GB / s network cards.

We managed to get a peak speed of around 220MB / s, but then settle on around 190MB / s. We also tested Steam's remote gaming functionality, which managed to play smoothly and flawlessly at 4K resolution and with a really high bit-rate, all without compression problems. We also tried to play in our PC a movie with 4K resolution and with a total weight of about 80 GB present in our NAS. Needless to say, the streaming took place flawlessly, without any kind of slowdown or annoying buffering, in practice it seemed that the file was present inside the notebook.

Alienware M15 has proved worthy of bearing the name of one of the companies that in the past have revolutionized the concept of PC Gaming: the hardware inside is up to the level of today's games and manages to reproduce them with a good number of frames per second , all without having to compromise; The design is as eye-catching and futuristic as any product from Dell's division, and the lighting is really well integrated with the design; Alienware M15 also offers good connectivity, giving the gamer every port they need; the 144 Hz display is able to make our various games fluid and unique, without making us miss our desktop PC; the dissipation system is able to keep both the GPU and the body cool without creating extremely hot areas but unfortunately we cannot express ourselves regarding the CPU because we have registered an anomaly; the battery life is the same that we can find inside any gaming notebook; the presence of Intel's Wi-Fi 6 802.11 AX module is able to reach stratospheric speeds and make us forget the Ethernet cable. Like everything beautiful and branded Alienware, the price is certainly not competitive: the version we tested has a price that is around € 2100, and with the same price the competition offers equally valid notebooks and with better hardware.

If you are an Alienware fanatic and want one of their products at all costs, you can customize and purchase the Alienware M15 directly on the Dell website.