A small review of m15x

This is my very basic review of the m15x. Its probably not as good as the other reviews out there, but hopefully an extra opinion helps out people who will buy the machine. Sorry if this isnt as detailed as its suppose to.

Total amount of time to get to my house: 38 days

3/3 Ordered
3/5 Payment Received
3/6 – 4/2 Phase 4
4/3 – Phase 3
4/7 Phase 6
4/9 Shipped
4/12 Received

Estimated Shipping Date: 4/28

Specs of my m15x:

Display: 15.4" WideXGA+ 1440 x 900 LCD (720p) with Clearview Technology
System Lighting: Alienware® AlienFX® System Lighting - Fuchsia
Video/Graphics Card: 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800M GTX
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz (6MB Cache 800MHz FSB)
Memory: 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 667MHz – 2 x 1024MB
Operating System (Office software not included): Windows Vista® Home Premium
System Drive: 200GB 7200RPM (16MB Cache)

Positives

Design – the design is done really well. This is definitely one of the best notebooks I’ve seen. I actually wanted this in silver and ripley so I am very happy with the design. You definitely wont see another laptop like the m15x. Even the writing “Made in China” on the bottom looks cool with the custom font they use on the keyboard and the bottom of the machine. When you turn all the lights on im pretty sure that some people will stare at it for a while.

Keyboard – this lights make the keyboard look really nice. The lights are much brighter than my Razer Lycosa keyboard and the keys feel the same as the keys on the Lycosa when I type with the keyboard. The keyboard doesn’t seem to be slow for me since some people are saying that the response time is a bit slow.

Performance – I have the 8800 and the 2.5Ghz so I think my laptop’s performance is pretty high up there. The performance level is definitely one of the selling points for the m15x since currently there isn’t another 15.4 inch notebook out that has the same performance as the m15x.

Alienware Extras – the command center, the smart bay, Binary GFX, and the stealth mode really helped me make the decision to buy the laptop. If it wasn’t for these features I might have went with the Dell M1530.

Touch Controls - The touch controls on my laptop work pretty well. I do wish that the sound control was a bit more sensitive.

Screen – the screen I have is the 1440 X 900 and the screen is very clear. Compared to my Samsung 193P (which was one of the best monitors available when I bought it), it makes my Samsung look like a low quality, budget lcd. The screen is very bright and clear. I would suggest you get the 1440 X 900 than the other one which is bigger if you don’t do a lot of video or image editing and you play a lot more games. The glossy lcd makes the games look better and the lower resolution helps you run the game a bit smoother.

Battery life – thanks to the smart bay battery the battery life on the laptop is pretty high compared to other gaming notebooks. You get around 2 – 3 hours when you game with both the smart bay and the stock battery. The Binary GFX also helps the battery life when I take this to class.

Touchpad – the touchpad feels terrible out of the box. Once you put the sticker on it feels much better. It also looks better because there are alien symbols on the sticker.

Noise When Idle: It is very quiet while the laptop is idle. Cant really say the same when the fans spin at max speed though.

Negatives

Build Quality: There is no creaking when I open up the lcd but I really wanted the case to be more solid. The screen wobbles when you try to move the laptop or you shake the table. I didn’t feel any flex in the keyboard, or probably it is so minimal that I can’t detect it. The lcd can also bend a bit if you apply a bit of pressure on each side. There are no gaps, cracks, or gaps on my 15x though. The case is mostly plastic but the bottom is made of metal.

Heat – this does get kind of hot. I haven’t seen any down clocking yet since I only had enough time in the weekend to try a bit of team fortress 2. I was also watching a movie which gets it up to 71 so I don’t think that was too bad. The lower right side does get pretty warm though.

Speakers – the only thing I can say about these is that they work. They have pretty bad sound quality. If I were to compare the sound quality to something, my RAZR2 speakers basically has the same sound quality. They are loud enough if your room is quiet, but if your room is loud it will be pretty hard to hear. You will definitely need some external speakers if you want to watch a movie or play games.

Noise while gaming: The fans are louder than expected when they spin at the max rpm.

Webcam & Microphone – pretend as if this feature does not exist. Get an external mic and webcam if you want to use skype or voip.

Miscellaneous: I wanted the velvet bag to be made of a different material. That thing is a dust magnet. When it does get dusty and you use a lint roller on it some of the velvet comes off. The mouse pad that was included is a pretty good mouse pad and it seems to be pretty good quality. The Manual is a bit big since it is half the size of the notebook :/

Pictures:

Sorry if the pictures arent that good quality. It might be a bit dark since the lighting in my house kinda sucks

Setup
Its in pink since I haven’t seen a picture with it in pink yet.



Top View


Doesn’t seem to be a gap


Assessories - the picture for the hat came out a bit worse than expected


All 3 Smartbay Items (Hard Drive, Battery, DVD drive respectively)



Lightpipe(I wanted this to be thicker. The picture on the site lied to me>>)


Keyboard Overlay


Keyboard


If you need anymore pictures just message me or post a request.

 

Nice review! I just wish there were a few more pictures showing off the m15x. Would you mind posting a picture of all of the touchpad overlays?

 

great review, thanks exiled

 

Nice review, thanks!

One question, where are you from US or EU?

 

On the last picture of your m15x, is that a scratch in the right corner or a reflection?

 

Good job Exile.+1 rep I like the pictures. They look nice. I noticed 3 smartbay drives. Are they all batteries?

 

I believe he said it is a dvd-drive, a harddisk-drive and a battery

Quite a nice review exiled, thank you

 

haha, didn't read that. I was too busy looking at the pics.

 

Rock-solid review!

Much appreciated!

 

awesome review man. good to see some threads like this talking about the good side of the m15x

 

Great job on the review, it was short & sweet. The pros and cons you detailed generally line up with the points I talked about in the NBR m15x review.

 

awesome review man. good to see some threads like this talking about the good side of the m15x

 

Nice one - unbiased and honest
Thanx for that.. Just *wondering* if there'd be any videos coming out ?
Have a great rest of the week with your m15x !!

 

@MichealD01
There isnt a scratch there, its probably something wrong with the picture. ill post the 2 touchpad overlays once i get home.

@crizzler
I am from the U.S

In case anyone wants to get the smartbay hard drive i think this might be a good tip. I opened it yesturday and saw it was just a regular laptop hard drive in it so if you want one just buy the 80 gig and upgrade the hard drive inside. Ill see if i can remove the hard drive from the casing. I can show you a picture of how it looks like inside if anyone wants to see.

EDIT: if i can remove it and turn it into a bigger hard drive having the smartbay hd will definitely be better than having an external hard drive sticking outside your m15x

 

exiled that would be great if you could show us a pic of the inside!

 

Hi,exiled
Why did you move from phase 4 to phase 3?

 

@nofate
i've seen it with alot of people. there seems to be a error with the order status computer when it tries to put you to a phase higher than 4 it will put it back to phase 3 temporarily before putting you into phase 5+

 

Hmmm...
I'm asking because I'm in the some situation.On 3 april i moved to phase 4 but from today my status order show phase 3

 

Its because while in Phase 4 they play the stock market with our money and after they have all things in stock they have to check if they lost the money while speculating with it - if it is there you're lucky and the production will start if not ... yaa just take a look at the threads....

 

exiled, Very nice review. I like your detaile style and matter of fact reporting.

Reminds me of Chaz's style of reporting lol

I'm envious that you have a beautiful AW notebook.... I'm waiting for the M17X..... eventually

OB

 

some interesting info with the smart bay hard drive

Just a little tip for some people if they want to save some money.

the cost is about the same as the one on the alienware site if you were going to change the hard drives



mod prices are from newegg hard drive prices + 100

You should ask why bother modding? Well if you did mod you just got yourself a free 80 gig 7200 rpm hard drive. This is most likely a external hd enclosure so we can update to a higher amount of memory when the higher amount of memory hard drives come out.

the hard drive in my smart bay is this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822116039

Screens that this can be taken apart (Sorry if the quality isnt the best )






EDIT: Thanks for the compliments about the review

 

So in theory you could use the new Samsung 500Gb HDD.... (",)

I have a notebook HDD in an enclosure i use as my memory stick, the enclosure similar but has a small circuit board built in, presumable for the USB interface, which wouldn't be needed when inside the M15X i'm guessing?

Nice article by the way.

OB

 

in theory yes you should but i dont think this has been tested yet. ill try to test this out when i can get some money and buy a laptop hard drive. who knows when that will be though .

if someone has a bigger capatcity smart bay hard drive see if you can open it up and see if there is a circuit board inside.

 

Great Job Exiled! thanks!

 

Hey exiled could you write down the model of the hard disk inside the samrt bay since I cant seem to be able to view any page of the newegg site (maybe bcause im from Canada?)

Thank you

 

its a Fujitsu MHW2080BJ

 

this is great review, its nice to see a text one as opposed to my video one.

 

OMG!! thanks a lot for the info on the smartbay HDD!! i got one and really interested in upgrading it!! GOOD JOB BRO!!! HeLLa Good JOB!!!

 

quick question : What do you have that takes up 500gigs????
I know vista uses up a bit, but 500 well i suppose you could burn all games and so on onto it - ditch the bluray,

 

In answer to your question:
With my WD 500 Gig external I only get 460ish GB after formating
My cousin put music on it ~ 20GB
I got most of my downloads/patches/fixes on it ~ 10Gb
My personal collection of Anime ~ 92GB
Movies ~ 72GB
Desktop Backups ~ 60GB
Got around 200GB left now

 

i dont really know if you can use the external hard drive's, hard drive inside but i think you should be able to use a laptop hard drive inside.

 

I have a WD 320Gb external drive that has 130Gb of iTunes (99.16Gb - Music, the rest is saved podcasts) and my own back-up i'm left with just over 100Gb. I'm planning to digitise my entire CD library and probably mu wifes as well, then we can save the space lol more DVD's i think ha ha ha

I was wondering of the M17X will have it as an option, it's only 5400rpm but you can have three of them 1,500Gb storage with 1Tb in Raid 0 how cool would that be?

Hey, Wraithers, sounds like you store everything like me... nothing gets deleted unless a better version is released lol

OB

 

Hehe.. Indeed I do, OB
Have complete collections of a ton of anime shows.. Problem is every April there are 3-4 amazing ones that come out at the same time and I just have to sit back and watch 15GB get eaten up

 

how do you open the optical drive actually?? can post pic about it? i mean do you slide it out like in normal notebook or some other way? since the smartbay can be pulled out... thanks! sorry if what im asking are too much or weird...

 

the optical drive can be opened with fn + f8. the tray will come out then you put your disk in and slide it back in yourself.

 

Ah, i think Bankster means the actual smart-bay itself. I'm guessing that somewhere there is a lever or tab. You push this in and it extends out, then push the now longer lever in to dessengage the smart-bay.

My Inspiron had a similar design, i'm sorry if my explanation is a bit off...

OB

 

Welcome to the forum Bankster
You're quite close OB
Just to be on the safe side here's the instructions off the Alienware Knowledge Base..

Hope this helps..

 

Just trying to help...

It's a built in latch on the M15X then. On my Dell, you had to push in the small tab and then the lever extended out.

OB

 

if your talking about how to remove smart bay then yes there is this built in switch that you push in. when you push in this handle will come out and then you just pull the smart bay part out and switch it with a different smart bay item.

 

@OB - I didn't mean to undermine your post

 

Lol, yeah adn i said to push the longer lever in to release, instead of just pulling on it ha ha ha Ho hum...

OB

 

Thanks this is the answer im seeking~~ sorry if i trouble you guys~~ just really curious on how the optical drive opened since the image of the smartbay look all the same, even the optical drive... since normal optical drive have words(MULTI-DVDRW, RW, and etc) on the place whr you open the tray... thanks for the link and info!

 

explain the Web cam and mic situation... . . Whats so wrong with the webcam?

 

well they are really really bad. i dont know how i sound myself when i try to use the mic in games but other players say its pretty bad. the camera is kinda blurry and the image quality is also bad. if you were going to use skype you should definitley consider purchasing a external cam and external mic. it is usable but the camera and mic seem to be on the cheaper side.

since im too lazy to take pics myself of how bad the cam is take a look at this review

http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?p=2880925

there are some pics that someone took of himself using the built in cam.

 

Nice review you did.

+1

 

Your review prompted me to do mine See how I kinda copied your structure? hahaha, glad we both got pretty good m15x's and good job on your review
hope you changed your keyboard lighting though

 

yea i remember my old review when i saw yours . i decided to show it off in pink since people took alot of pictures already in all the other different colors. no1 wanted to do pink so i did pink. i even made my color to be in pink when it first arrived to be unique

 

Haha.. Exiled, for the longest time you've cracked me up.
Kudos to you

Grats on the 1000th post !!

 

my comments were funny . i never knew that

 

wow that sticker for the touchpad is awesome!