Alienware Area-51 m5700 notebook

Conclusions

Let's think about the Alienware along a few different lines.

Form factor: This system is pretty gorgeous. I really like the black, sleek lines and the chunky alien backing on the display. It's often the case that PC notebooks look too middle-of-the-road, but this one sets its stall out without any qualms. We've taken it out to a couple of places and the chassis never fails to attract admiring looks. This looks like a beast of a machine and that's exactly how it should look. It's heavy, obviously, but this adds to the sturdyness. Definitely the nicest 17" gaming machine we've seen.

Specification: We can't help but feel that the machine is a little under-specified for the money. Sure you get a top of the line Pentium M processor and 1GB of RAM - that's undisputedly a good thing. The 7200 RPM hard drive is also a winner, and we like the array of extras also included.

However, the simple fact is that this machine sports Go 6800 graphics when rivals in the same price bracket are sporting the Go 7800. The 6800, as we showed in our gaming benchmarks, is clearly slower than the 7800 to a noticeable degree, and the playable settings are a good couple of notches lower.

The 6800 also has no chance of powering the uprated 1920x1200 panel at anything like native resolution in games, which means the 1440x900 panel is the only option. Whilst 4:3 games do look good at 1024x768 on the panel, it would look better if we could run a higher resolution. We think that 1680x1050 (WSXGA+) is a great compromise size for game playability and Windows work, but Alienware don't offer this option.

The rest of the machine is full of high-end components, including the 7.1 Azalia audio which we adore, especially when paired with the extra speakers.

We were also really impressed with the battery life. To get 2 hours of playback on a screen this size is impressive, and makes this a great 17" notebook for being on the move.

Value: We're not adverse to paying extra money for the Alienware flashness: the chassis, the name, the package. However, the difference between a machine with a 7800 and a machine with a 6800, for the same price, is too much to ignore. You going to have to really want the gorgeous casing to forfeit all that extra graphics power.

Final thoughts

I do love this notebook. It's a great gaming platform and we have to retain some perspective: 6800 graphics are really not slow. You can play FEAR at a very good resolution and we got some really smooth gameplay out of everything we threw at it.

However, it's just hard to recommend this machine wholeheartedly when you can get double the graphics performance for the same cost. We really, really hope that Alienware can make a few quick changes over Christmas and get this machine re-specced with a 7800. As it is, it's a great gaming notebook that doesn't quite hit the high bar set by rivals.