If you’ve been holding out for an ultrathin and featherweight Dell /Alienware gaming laptop in the same vein as the Razer Blade, you’ll need to summon a bit more patience. Alienware’s design philosophy has always catered more toward performance and durability over mere measurements (though it is the company’s thinnest laptop to date), and they’re bringing that mentality into the launch of the Alienware 13 this holiday.
During a conversation with an Alienware representative yesterday, I asked a simple question: “Why 13 inches?” Certainly they’re not alone in that specific space, and popular screen loadouts for mainstream gaming laptops are trending downward from 18 inches to 14-inch or 15-inch displays. It turns out that 2010′s Alienware M11x — notable at the time for its portability (1.29-inches thick, 4.4 pounds) and surprising performance (HD gaming! 30fps!) – is among the most requested pieces of hardware for Dell and company to resurrect. In the modern gaming landscape, though, Alienware believes 11-inch displays are too small and that a 13-inch will be a welcome compromise.
One thing is absolutely welcome: The touchscreen. Sure it’s not essential in a notebook, but touch has become standard on every other portable screen. Watching the multitude of gaming notebooks launch bereft of that feature is puzzling. In its best loadout, the Alienware 13 will rock a 13-inch, 2560×1440 IPS touchscreen panel, with an excellent 400 nits brightness rating. If its older and larger cousins the Alienware 14 and Alienware 17 are any indicator, expect the screen to be even more stunning — last year’s 14-inch model maxed out at 300 nits.
Dell’s also offering two additional screen configs: a 720p, 200 nit TN-panel with a 45% color gamut, and a 1080p, 350 nits IPS panel with a much more acceptable 72% color gamut. I would recommend avoiding the former at all costs. Depending on pricing (which Dell hasn’t revealed just yet), the 1080p IPS panel could be a sensible, non-touchy option.
As I alluded to above, it may not boast MacBook Air thinness, but it measures just under 1-inch thick and weighs in at 4.4 pounds. Again, last year’s 14-inch model was tank-like at 1.6-inches thick.
The Alienware 13 will integrate Nvidia’s Maxwell architecture via the GTX 860M, a mobile GPU easily capable of smooth gaming at 1440p, and likely an available trio of Intel's INTC +0.2% Haswell-based Core i processors. It will also accommodate two SSDs, up to 16GB of system memory, 802.11ac Wireless, and the already excellent Klipsch audio present in last year’s Alienware notebooks. And of course it will ship with AlienwareFX lighting and their latest 4.0 version of the Command Center (which is a surprisingly useful piece of software).
They’ve designed this notebook with a “full throttle” cooling system — it’s an internal, copper, thermal solution designed to keep the hardware cool under heavy loads. It’s a problem thin and light notebooks are plagued with. Need proof? As sexy as the 2014 Razer Blade is, I just measured its hottest external point after just 20 minutes of gaming: 126 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s a scenario Alienware is actively working to avoid.
Perhaps the best news for gamers of a certain persuasion? You can have Windows 7 Professional installed instead of Windows 8. While that does negate the usefulness of the optional touchscreen, it also arguably negates a few headaches.
The Alienware 13 ships sometime this holiday (my best guess is early November). Dell has yet to announce pricing and final CPU configurations.
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