Small Gaming Laptop

f you are looking to buy a small gaming laptop, the best choice is the Alienware M11x. This is the newest gaming laptop made by Alienware which comes with a 11.6 inch display.

The starting price of this laptop is $800 and the price of the unit configured in this review is $850. This unit is based on a 1.3 GHz Intel SU4100 processor or you can go for a 1.3 GHz Intel SU7300 processor. The total amount of RAM is 4 GB of DDR3. The hard drive can store up to 160 GB of files and applications. The graphics card is a nVidia GeFoce GT 335M with 1 GB of GDDR3 RAM and you can switch it with the integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500 MHD. The dimensions of this unit are 11.25 x 9.19 x 1.29 inches and the total weight is 4.4 lbs. The unit comes with the preinstalled 64 bit version of the Windows 7 Home Premium.

The 11.6 inch display comes with a native resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. The levels of brightness and contrast are average, with nothing to spectacular to speak about. The horizontal viewing angles are good and the only thing that people could complain about with this display is the matte option which is the only one available. Come to think of it, what are the real advantages when you own a glossy display? There is always the problem with reflections when you use the laptop under powerful light. The keyboard is probably the best one you have ever seen on an 11 inch notebook. The key spacing is very good and the support frame of the keyboard is very solid. Even if you apply really hard pressure, there is a good chance that the Alienware M11x will never flex. When you want to benefit from the ultraportable capabilities of this laptop, you have to keep in mind that even if the touchpad is great and it offers great precision and good response times, nothing can compare to an external mouse when it comes to gaming.



Selection of ports and connections on a 11.6 inch gaming laptop can be confusing as we generally expect to get a poor variety from a small ultraportable and expect to get a good selection of ports on a gaming laptop. The unit hosts 3 USB ports, one FireWire port, an Ethernet port, one VGA out, a HDMI port, a Display Port, a 3-in-1 media card slot and the regular headphones out and microphone in jacks. As for the battery performance, this small gaming laptop gives you the option to switch between the integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator and the nVidia GeForce GT 335M and is you go with the first choice, set to display brightness to 70%, surf the internet via the wireless connection and set the Windows power management profile to “balanced mode”, you can get about 7 hours of battery life from this small gaming laptop. Quite an amazing performance, if we consider the fact that we are dealing with a gaming laptop.