My brother Ryan bought me an Alienware M11x R2 for my birthday this past September, so a review is in order! First released in March 2010, the M11x is a relatively new player in the gaming notebook scene. Despite this, the line is already on its second revision, adding Core i5 and i7 processors to the mix as well as NVIDIA’s Optimus automatic graphics switching technology. Does the 11-inch gaming notebook have enough power to play in the big leagues? After spending two weeks playing various games on it, I think so!

My M11x R2 has the following specs:

  • Intel Core i7 640UM at 1.2GHz
  • 1GB NVIDIA GeForce 335M graphics card
  • 8GB DDR3 800 RAM (dual channel)
  • 500GB 7200RPM hard drive
  • 1366×768 TN 11.3 inch display
  • Dell DW1520 802.11n Wi-Fi card
  • 10/100 Fast Ethernet
  • 8-cell 63 watt-hour battery
  • Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

I don’t have most of the boxes anymore, but Dell/Alienware did an excellent job with the M11x’s packaging. The laptop comes in a felt bag surrounded by plastic foam, which in turn is encased in a heavy cardboard ‘briefcase’. Not much to see inside besides the notebook, power adapter, and some manuals! Until you get a sleeve or case, the felt bag does a good job of preventing minor scrapes and scratches. I’m actually using one of Gary Waterfield’s excellent SleeveCases. That might be overkill though — as far as build quality goes, the M11x is superb. Coated in soft-touch black paint and weighing in at a solid 4.5 pounds, it’s built like a tank. The frame is made out of magnesium alloy, taking a cue from IBM’s legendary ThinkPad line, and the case is constructed from high-quality plastic. One caveat: There’s been a lot of discussion centered around an issue with the hinges. I haven’t had a problem yet, but it seems to be fairly widespread. Dell seems to be honoring hinge repairs, even out of warranty, for what it’s worth. Overall, the unit is extremely well-built.

Build Quality and Ports

Here’s a quick tour around the notebook:

  • On the left side, we have (from left to right) a Kensington lock slot, DisplayPort, HDMI port, a USB 2.0 port, a 10/100 Ethernet jack, a SIM card slot, an SD card reader, and a mini-Firewire port.
  • On the right side, we have two headphone jacks, a microphone jack, and two USB 2.0 ports.
  • Rocking the (surprisingly excellent) speakers on the front.
  • Nifty laser-etched nameplate on the bottom!

But what about the inside? Is the keyboard decent? What about the trackpad? Actually, they’re pretty good!

The trackpad is one of the nicer ones I’ve used, and I’m not a fan of them in general. The M11x’s is textured (the first I’ve used) and (in a wondrous change of pace) actually comes with two separate buttons instead of a single bar that clicks in two locations. There are some multitouch features available in the drivers for the pad, but I haven’t had a chance to check them out yet.

As far as the keyboard goes, it’s got zero flex (the backplate in here is one of the best I’ve seen) and good key depth, but the keys (as one might expect on an 11 inch machine) are a tiny bit smaller than usual. The key travel suffers a bit as a result, but it’s expansive compared to most netbooks. Oh, and the whole thing is backlit with user-configurable LEDs. Using the built in Alienware Command Center app or Wattos’s excellent AlienFX Lite tool, you can change the backlight colors on the whole laptop. The only thing I’m not big on is the vertical Home/End row on the far right — I never seem to remember that it’s there and have subsequently ended up typing a few rows off from where I wanted to be in a document.

As far as ports go, the M11x drops the VGA port of its predecessor and replaces it with a side vent. I am told this was done to compensate for the hotter Core i5 and i7 chips. However, you still have DisplayPort and HDMI outputs to work with. Unless you planned on hooking your M11x up to a projector on a regular basis, it’s not a huge deal. The 3 USB 2.0 ports are standard for a chassis this size, and the combination micro/standard SD card reader is a nice touch.

Screen and Graphics

The screen is easily the most disappointing part of the M11x. Not even the ultra-glossy front panel and a hardware color calibration can salvage display’s terrible contrast ratio (which ends up being something like 130:1 on my particular panel). The viewing angles would be good…if the glossy coating wasn’t quite so reflective (as you can see in the pictures). The resolution (1366×768) and brightness (at maximum, retina-searing) are both decent though. I wouldn’t say no to a nice RGB panel upgrade offering in the M11x R3!

Luckily, the M11x isn’t short on graphics horsepower. Packing NVIDIA’s Optimus technology, the M11x seamlessly switches between the built-in Intel HD graphics and the GeForce 335M chip when confronted with heavy graphical workloads. When you’re finished and back to browsing the web, the Intel HD chip comes back online to keep your battery life up to snuff (which, incidentally, is pretty good. I get 5 hours out of the integrated 8-cell battery surfing the web). The detection mechanism a little flaky sometimes — you have to add a good number of games to a “graphics whitelist” in order to get the 335M to kick in, but it works pretty well in practice. The primary benefit is constant driver updates. Unlike the manual switching solutions of 2009, Optimus can use NVIDIA’s Verde program reference drivers, meaning you’ll never be stuck with a 2 year old graphics driver.

I don’t have any formal benchmarks yet, but I’m sure you’re wondering “so…does it actually deliver in the game playing department?” Yep, as long as you’re not expecting to run everything on ultra detail settings! So far, my experiences have been in line with most other reviewers — anything brand new and graphically intensive (StarCraft II, Battlefield Bad Company 2) will likely need to run on low/medium settings at native resolution. If you’re playing something a touch older, say Left 4 Dead 2, you should be fine (above 30FPS) with the details cranked up. It’s not the most GPU-intensive game out there, but I played Civilization V for 4-5 hours at medium details and native resolution and had no complaints.

The M11x R2 is better with the CPU intensive games than its Core 2 Duo-equipped predecessor was, but the CPU is still the bottleneck. If you’re feeling brave, you can give unclewebb’s ThrottleStop a try. This utility will let you override the TDP settings that keep the Core i7′s Turbo Boost from working to its fullest at 100% load. Alienware seems to have set the TDP threshold pretty low, so here’s hoping a future BIOS update makes things a bit zippier. In day-to-day tasks, you won’t even realize you’re using a ultra-low voltage processor.

Sound and Camera

The speakers on the M11x are excellent, far above what I’m used to hearing on most laptops. You can crank the volume up and fill a room, and the sound is clear. As you might expect, the bass is lacking, but there’s no dedicated sub-woofer. All in all, everything sounds good enough that you could get away without using headphones. Speaking of which, the M11x has two 3.5mm headphone jacks. In a semi-permanent setup, you could connect standalone speakers and a headset without worrying about swapping jacks. The twin jacks are also useful if you need to share audio during a film. There’s no dedicated optical out, so you’ll have to rely on the HDMI port’s audio if you need a digital interface for your outbound audio.

The webcam is 1.3 megapixels, more than enough for Skype chats and the like. I made some brief test calls; the color reproduction was good and I wasn’t disappointed by the low-light performance.

Networking

I’m struggling to figure out what the deal is with the 10/100 Fast Ethernet port. Alienware, every laptop I’ve used in the last 3 years has had Gigabit Ethernet. In my case, it’s actually somewhat irritating since I back all of our machines up to a Windows Home Server box. What takes 20 minutes on each of our gigabit-equipped desktops takes nearly three hours on the M11x. That’s crazy on a machine built in 2010, and I hope the M11x R3 come equipped with a 10/100/1000 port.

I found the built-in 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi to be a below-average performer, although to be fair I don’t have an 802.11n access point in our apartment. Average network transfer speeds over wireless to our Home Server were about 8-10 megabits (~1 megabytes/sec). I didn’t have any issues playing World of Warcraft and Civilization V over WiFi, so the low throughput isn’t a huge deal for playing games.

My unit didn’t come with one, but the travelers in the audience will be happy to know that the M11x is wired for Qualcomm’s Gobi series of wireless broadband cards. Alienware sells them in two configurations out of the box (AT&T or Verizon), but the beauty of the Gobi cards is their ability to use just about any wireless carrier. They’re really nice if you find yourself on the road a lot, and as an added bonus, you get assisted GPS functionality for any location-based applications out there (Google Earth, etc.).

Conclusions

Arguably, the M11x is the only game is town if you’re looking for a portable gaming notebook under 15 inches. Despite this position, Alienware’s done a decent job with unit as a whole: excellent build quality, a solid graphics chip, a decent processor, and plenty of storage are underscored only by a lackluster screen and the baffling inclusion of 10/100 Ethernet instead of Gigabit. If you’re looking for power in a portable package, the Alienware M11x R2 won’t disappoint you. Available starting at $799 directly from Dell.