The luxurious design has always been a hallmark of Alienware notebook is no exception M14x R2. You can choose 20 different colors in nine different zones, four of which form the keyboard. Even the constant change of color can be set.
For connectivity M14x notebook is equipped with three USB ports, two USB 3.0. HDMI port, Mini DisplayPort and VGA are all available for connecting external devices.
Case
Gills, eyes, or light? The design leaves room for imagination.
A luxurious design has always been the trademark of this Alienware notebook. M14x R2 is no exception here, and will light and bright colors like an amusement park if one desires it. One can choose from 20 different colors in nine different zones, four of which form the keyboard. Even the constant change of color can be set. If one is more like things more subdued, it is possible to disable the keyboard backlight are all outside the base.
These possibilities are already familiar to us from the test last year. Overall, this case showed no visible changes from its predecessor. This is not criticism because of the quality and workmanship of 2.9 kg (6.4 pounds) heavier and 3.8 centimeters (1.5 inches) thick notebook is hardly matched by anyone. Case of absolute stability is very good and only provide even minimal selective pressure. A better torsional stability of the display lid remained on our wish list, but it is a critique on a very specific level. The screen hinges are precise and well-known fine too. Thanks to the basic unit of weight, open the lid with one hand no problem.
Gummed surfaces and materials used for the exterior is also reprehensible and M14x continues to maintain its "very good" rating overall. Although the notebook Schenker XMG A102 and A502, which uses Clevo bare bones package, not at all bad in this case there is a noticeable difference in quality. It should be noted that the difference in quality is also equipped with a real difference in price.
Connectivity
Possible connections with the external display VGA, HDMI and Mini-DisplayPort.
As the case remains unchanged, the same connector remains unchanged. The parallels with the 2011 model continues here. There are three USB ports in total, two of which are the faster USB 3.0. As with other Ivy Bridge models, it is surprising that even the older USB 2.0 connector installed in all the HM77 chip set will allow all ports to use the USB specification faster and more modern 3.0.
HDMI, Mini DisplayPort, and VGA are all available which allows one to connect almost any external display. Last year, we criticized the lack of eSATA, Firewire, and ExpressCard slot. At this time, we want to qualify those statements. Because the distribution of the interface is reduced, fewer buyers will notice their absence.
With regard to all interfaces and further information about them, we would like to reiterate our reference for our review of the M14x first.
Communication
In the online configurator Alienware, we have a choice of Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 (as in our test model) or Killer Qualcomm / Bigfoot Wireless-N 1202. Both adapters are capable of MIMO (2x2) and enables the overall data rate of up to 300 Mbit / s. In addition, the latest version of Bluetooth (Bluetooth 4.0) is on board. Argument to spend the extra 20 Euros ($ 25 USD) for Qualcomm adapter consists of the support of 802.11a for 5 GHz networks, and optimization of the firmware to provide online gamers with faster ping to reduce lag. An integrated 3G or 4G radio is not available for the M14x.
Webcam notebook has a 1.3 Megapixel resolution and the corresponding ordinary give a decent picture quality. Sharpness and noise of this sensor could be better. On the other hand, bright video playback with high contrast, a slight delay, and perfect screening of liquids. Microphone array mounted on the left and right of the webcam is a very high quality and very natural sounding recording and maintaining a good dynamic range.
Accessories
Apart from several pamphlets, Alienware also includes Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit DVD, as well as the two drivers and software DVD. We tip our hats to Dell as it is rare these days. We love the soft fabric cover that serves as the perfect protection for transportation in a backpack or similar container. Sure power supply with maximum output of 150 Watts is included to supply power-hungry high-end notebook components.
Alienware programs allow users to adjust lighting, back up data, or modify the power saving profiles. These programs can be found Alienware dark, futuristic design. Fortunately, most customers to avoid collection of unnecessary toolbars and other software that might bog down the operating system.
Service
Remove 2 screws and pushing back the service hatch cover is all that is required to access the M14x's interior. Inside, look a little different from other notebooks. Rather than the typical green circuit board, users initially find out more and screw covers. Once this is removed, nearly all the critical components can be achieved and swapped if desired. One should not forget to look under the battery where mSATA connector (already used) and the WiFi radio to stay.
Warranty
Just one year on-site warranty service (next business day) is included. For devices in this price range, this is clearly not sufficient in our opinion. Warranty extension beyond this would leave a crater in the wallet. A two-year warranty costs 195 Euros ($ 240 USD) and a three-year warranty costs about 460 Euros which is very large ($ 570 USD). These costs appear excessive compared with other vendors. Although the software and telephone support is included, many customers will think twice before paying such high premiums.
Keyboard
If someone does not like the trend chiclet used by most major manufacturers, M14x offers assistance with the design of a classic desktop keyboard. The layout of the standard will save one from having to get used to the keyboard. Also important is a thin white border around each key, and the backlighting has been mentioned (see case).
Thanks to the concave surface and sloping sides, then (0.7 inches) 18mm keys are easy to hit without a doubt. In some chiclet keyboard, only the highly skilled typists can manage as well as one might with a traditional design. Company and the right pressure points in combination with the depth of the extraordinarily generous stroke gives excellent feedback, which could be an example for more than a business notebook. Unlike our last test, we did not find the keys squeak, but the keyboard is also not an example of the quietest of its kind with minimal typing its crackling sound.
Touchpad
Synaptics touch pad does his job perfect precision and excellent gliding characteristics. There were no differences with his predecessor or other peculiarities to report so we leave the reader with another link to the relevant tests.
Overall, the quality of input devices at a very high and exceeds most competitors in the gaming sector. In addition to an external mouse, something that is mandatory for gamers anyways, it seems there is no need for any further peripherals like an external keyboard.
In our testing of Schenker XMG A102, there is only one serious negative: just plain look of disappointment appeared HD resolution (1366x768), the contrast is weak, and reflective as well. Although the show is available for the M14x is also reflective, at least there is the option for 1600x900 pixel screen HD + for an extra 50 Euro ($ 62 USD) which we also chose to test our models for the standard WXGA screen. The resulting pixel density of 131 dpi is similar to the XMG A102, but thanks to a larger screen size, one can work more effectively in the M14x. May be offered Alienware 16:10 screen even larger, such as the display bezel was a bit wide at the top and bottom edges.
With the average brightness of 266 cd/m2, the display screen exactly the same as the predecessor and should be sufficient for most purposes. Unfortunately the lighting is disappointing, with a dark area visible at the lower end of which could be just the issue of our special units.
Information
Gossen Mavo-Monitor
Maximum: 286 cd / m²
Average: 266.4 cd / m²
Brightness Distribution: 83%
Center on Battery: 274 cd / m²
Black: 0.44 cd / m²
Contrast: 623:1
ICC File (X-Rite i1Display 2)
Distribution of brightness
Contrast enhanced before either became a very good 623:1, which can be explained by the increase of only 0.44 cd/m2 black now. Movies and games to get a real connection with this activity thanks to LG-Philips panel excellent (LP140WD2). Even a small detail in dark areas are sharply drawn.
Slight weakness can be observed when it comes to color reproduction, which covers only 40% of Adobe RGB color space. This is clearly worse than the A502 XMG, but for customers with no ambition to work with these images may be a significant limitation.
Strong help screen brightness when used outside, but a highly reflective plastic panel that covers the entire display edge to edge prevented a better ranking. Alienware can easily offer, non-reflective coated glass such as the Apple display cover panel is in place, less reflective, sensitive to initial plastic they currently use. A non-reflective alternatives are lacking in the first M14x models and customers should continue to receive the reflection unless they carefully choose the shade without background illumination.
For a TN panel, the display has a viewing angle is surprisingly dense and allows multiple users to browse the display does not change. Vertical angle is the main viewpoint which shows that the display is not VA or IPS panel. At 10 degrees above or below the head-on view, the contrast begins to shift and become quite prominent beyond 45 degrees. Compared with less than any other notebook panel, this is reasonable.
While only a few customers tend to use a VGA interface, anyone does not need this interface can enjoy sharp images and flicker free.
We have a faster Core i7-3720QM installed in our test model, a fast, high-end 2.6 GHz quad-core CPU. Turbo Boost 2.0 increase the clock rate for single-thread load to 3.6 GHz and, coupled with high-efficiency architecture is per-MHz processing, provide enough performance for almost every situation. Features already familiar to us from previous generations such as Hyper-threading, AVX, and AES-NI is a ship again. The 6 MB L3 cache also remain the same. Thanks to Intel's latest 22 nm process manufacturing, the TDP of the chip remains at 45 Watts, although improved performance.
Integrated GPU, now under the name HD 4000, and seriously upgraded in accordance with the performance of the AMD Radeon HD 6620G. Although this is a big step forward compared to the older HD 3000 GPU, 3D performance remains absolutely boring. To overcome this, a dedicated Nvidia GeForce GT 650m installed and available with either 1 or 2 GB of GDDR5 RAM. Our test model features only 1 GB version, but this should not have a negative effect if we keep detailed arrangements for the playable frame rate in the 650m. The 650m GT is based on the architecture of 28 nm and 384 sporting Kepler shader ALUs, 745 MHz clock in basic mode and 835 MHz in turbo mode.
With 8 GB of DDR3 RAM in two 4 GB DDR3-1600 modules, the M14x is up to date. For storage, we chose the 64 GB SSD mSATA in combination with 500 Gbyte 2.5-inch HDD. As indicated above, the online configurator offers many different storage options.
Alienware M14x R2 information system
Processor
Model testing begins the round of our benchmarks with a very good score of 6.85 points in Cinebench R11.5 (64-bit). This puts the M14x with some numbers on top of all notebooks tested so far with the same CPU, the results are speaking about a TurboBoost optimally utilized. We also set a new record at 4.0 x264 HD Benchmark by 150.05 and 37.67 fps in the past 1 and 2. Our single thread Cinebench R10 test (64-bit) passing the new best score by 6154 points only narrowly. Core i7-2630QM of tests last year left in the dust.
Particularly interesting is the comparison with quad-core processors that are smaller than two notebook Schenker XMG A102 and A502. While the advantage over the i7 3612QM-35 Watt model is a comfortable 20 percent, is shrinking compared to the i7-3610QM to more than 10 percent. Given the price difference is not too small and the three digit between 3720QM 3610QM, it will be accepted if Dell will also offer lower-cost models in their configurator.
The basic idea sounds great. Use (mSATA) fast SSD for the operating system and combine it with 2.5 HDD is slower but less expensive and far more traditional inches. This idea however started to unravel in the implementation. Already-small 64 GB 20 GB SDD sacrificed for the recovery partition and, as a result, have very few gigabytes of free space left over after installation of the operating system. After several months of growing up temporary files and such, users will experience the problem space. Installing a software program that is large enough only further accelerate this problem. The game must be installed on a traditional HDD slower.
It is very sad when I think of the excellent performance of Samsung's SSD PM830. The excellent 470 MB / s read speed and a large 167 MB / s write speed in the US-SSD benchmark is impressive to drive mSATA. The results are robust to small 4k file or SSD-typical short access time to the daily performance of the strong.
The Seagate ST9500423AS 500 GB hard drive is also noteworthy. At 7200 rpm 16 MB cache and hosting generously, it is one of the drive is faster than the type and conclusively prove the average transfer rate 75 MB
System Performance
Strong components such as application performance inspiring as demonstrated in our benchmark. On PCMark Vantage, which XMG A502, with 20 151 points, still manages to stay ahead of the M14x is only 18 158 points scored. M14x is returned in PCMark 7 and put a new record in multimedia class with 4444 points compared to the A502 XMG's 3750 points.
Here it becomes clear that synthetic benchmarks like PCMark series are not suitable for their own level of system performance. In real world use, SSDs M14x leads to only a small operating system benefits from high performance. As a result, we would like Alienware will offer a greater choice of mSATA as the market currently offers a drive up to 128 GB in size.
Experience 7.1Windows IndexProcessorCalculations 7 per second7.6Memory (RAM) memory operations per performance for Windows Aero7.1Gaming second7.8GraphicsDesktop graphics3D business and gaming hardware data transfer diskDisk graphics7.1Primary rate7.9
After just a few weeks since its release, Nvidia GeForce GT 650m has become a regular visitor to our testing facility. This is not surprising because it incorporates energy consumption and prices acceptable to the performance of nearly the previous level of high-end accelerator to the mix is almost second to none.
Without difficulty, we immediately reach 2358 points in 3DMark 11, founded the M14x at the same level with other notebooks sporting 650m GT GPU. Again, it should be noted that the DDR3 version of the Schenker XMG A102 card is a little ahead. Card used in the A102 XMG clock 13% higher than the base stock 835 MHz and 950 MHz turbo mode but has less than half the memory bandwidth with its 900 MHz DDR3 VRAM compared to 1000 MHz GDDR5. We consider this as an indication that Kepler has a memory bus architecture is too efficient.
While its predecessor GeForce GT 555M coming up short in some of the newer games, GeForce GT 650m remain completely unaffected and provide a frame rate of 60% higher on average.
It provides game play is really fluid at high detail and resolution of 1366 768 pixels x in all the games we tested. Even the anti-aliasing filtering and anisotropic can be activated. Native display resolution of 1600 900 pixels it takes only a minimal detail setting reduction in demand Anno 2070. We detected no problems or stuttering even though the card only shows 1 GB of VRAM, but upgraded to 2 GB version might help future-proof system in the medium term.
We take a very intensive look at the performance of a notebook in Diablo 3, which we already introduced in a special article. In the M14x, we observed an average frame rate 50-60 fps with maximum details and 1600 x 900 resolution. This game remained stable at above 40 fps in a larger battle.
Emission
System Noise
With up to 50 dB (A) in the game, the first version of the M14x is extremely harsh, even by the standards of gaming notebooks. This is one of the biggest criticisms in that test.
For this reason, we want to check the noise level under load, which unfortunately is almost no increase at all. Only seconds after the beginning of a more demanding 3D games, the fan started to accelerate to levels that violate the 50dB (A) threshold in a matter of minutes. Average sound while running 3DMark 06 is 45.2 dB (A), that while under a 2011 model, can not be called quiet by any reasonable action. We measured the same values for the XMG A102, but there is a subjective experience appear lower and more enjoyable.
During idle, the fan turns off completely most of the time, reduce the noise with a faint hiss from the hard drive (31.4 dB (A)). Depending on ambient temperature, load a particular system is necessary for fans to spring into action at low speeds. We did not observe the fans come in a simple office or use the Internet.
Before we focus on the measurements below, we want to show that we tested in ambient temperature 78.8 F. In this case, the idle temperature of around 95 F and 108 F under load is barely acceptable. We do not recommend using this notebook on your lap. Generally, we almost had to call traditional values in this class of notebook so we can not criticize Alienware is too hard for this. Otherwise, the M14x is probably going to be harder.
Behavior of the hardware seems a bit odd for a stress test. While the CPU is heated up to 201 F (94 C), it did not reduce the clock speed and remain between 3.1 and 3.2 GHz. GPU began to throttle less than 160 F, the temperature is really not critical. Since this does not occur in the application or game, the customer may not have to worry about this oddity.
Speaker
Is this supposed to be a sub woofer? The driver is really hiding behind a small notebook service hatch does not look very promising at first, but this impression is misleading. As an audio system 2.1, three small speakers produce impressive sound for a notebook. Bass, who is virtually invisible to most competitors, it is quite powerful and allows to enjoy movies or music with good audio quality without external speakers. If necessary, the maximum volume is possible without significant distortion.
To connect an external audio equipment, two 3.5mm connectors are present and able to drive higher quality high fidelity headphones like AKG K701 without difficulty.
Battery Life
Power Consumption
With minimal power draw is only 10.1 Watt, our test unit was efficient when compared with competing gaming notebook at the same speed. Depending on the brightness of the screen and the radio is on, the consumption of unemployed rose to 25.6 Watt which we still call accordingly.
In the game, M14x allows itself an average of 82.1 Watt similar to the One who is greater, but almost identically equipped M73. Model A102 and A502 Schenker two XMG use nearly 20 Watt less but the results look better because they are not active CPU turbo mode.
We can get out the maximum withdrawal notebook proficiency in the first seconds of running Prime95 and FurMark is 138.6 watts. Shortly after that, the GPU is throttling due to the power draw down to about 100 Watts. 150 Watt power supply does not have a problem with fat, but it does not get hot enough.
This seems to be the same in the case of the M14x. With less than 6 hours in the test battery eater reader (energy saving mode, WiFi off, minimum brightness) missed the runtime of the predecessor notebook with more than one hour. The battery itself can not be guilty as capacity remained constant at 62 Wh. Whether the manufacturer can induce more efficient than the optimization BIOS and the like, or if the new Intel platform generally achieves the running time is shorter than Sandy Bridge, we may not be able to determine the cause of short runtime during the following weeks and months.
Real world scenario we use WiFi to fall below expectations as well. With adjustable brightness (164 cd / m², set 5/8) we could surf at most for 4 hours and 9 minutes on a full charge.
Finally, test the Battery Eater Classic (maximum performance, Radio Active and the GPU is enabled with the maximum brightness) gives an indication of runtime under load. Here, the M14x runs out of charge after 66 minutes, which seems to be acceptable given the powerful hardware.
Alienware M14x R2
Expensive is not necessarily good but sometimes it is useful. Alienware M14x is certainly not cheap, but the buyer receives a gaming notebook is very good with some shortcomings.
The combination of Ivy Bridge and Kepler, more specifically the Core i7-3720QM and GeForce GT 650m providing excellent software and gaming performance. Only the far-too-small-SSD mSATA muddles the whole picture. This notebook also shows the value of other than performance. Stability and the workmanship is very good case. Selection of the interface and the quality of input devices provide little reason to complain. A highlight of contrast is also rich HD + screen, although inexpensive plastic cover reflective screen is annoying.
Although the M14x could be more mobile than many competitors, given the 14-inch screen, it gives away the trump card because of the high weight and battery working time is reduced. High power consumption is further cause enormous heat and noise emissions are a special attraction during the summer and even a very good sound system is a little consolation.
Can anyone ignore the constraints and has a budget of around 1,650 euros ($ 2.050 USD) (base model of 1150 Euro / $ 1,430 USD) to get a notebook and extravagant high-quality game. While somewhat less striking and simple, A502 Schenker almost matches the performance for much less money.
The stress test that you comment is only Prime95 or with furmark in parallel?
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