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Alienware’s sleek new M15 offers the power without the extra padding

Chuong Nguyen
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Alienware m15 Gaming Laptop

Dell’s making good on its promise to deliver a slimmer power-packed laptop to gamers, and the company’s redesigned Alienware M15 notebook will be available beginning today at a starting price of $1,379. By relying on Nvidia’s Max-Q design, Dell was able to shave a bit of thickness and heft off of its 15-inch Alienware-branded gaming notebook. The new Alienware M15 clocks in at just 0.83-inches thick and 4.8 pounds, making it 0.17 inches thinner and just shy of three pounds lighter than the same model from a year ago. In fact, Dell claims that the new Alienware is its thinnest gaming notebook to date.

In order to shrink the laptop down to size while keeping the same 15-inch screen size, Dell invested in reducing the bezel areas around the display and flattening the lid. Dell claims that the 15-inch model is the first Alienware notebook to come with this narrow bezel display. The overall effect of redesigning the Alienware is that the laptop now comes with a more angular aesthetics, and this places the 2018 Alienware M15 within measurements of rival Razer’s new and slim Blade 15. Unlike Razer’s use of aluminum for the Blade’s construction, Dell’s opting for magnesium alloy on the Alienware M15’s lid, which the company claims as the lightest structural metal. It’s unclear if the work in redesigning the Alienware this year has resulted in extra costs, but the $1,379 starting price through Dell is $79 more expensive than Dell’s target price when it announced the notebook earlier this month.

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Despite its more svelte form factor, the Alienware doesn’t skimp on performance or power and gamers will likely appreciate Dell’s quoted up to 17 hours of battery life when the Alienware is paired with an optional 90Whr battery on idle. All configurations ship with Dell’s AlienFX lighting controls and an RGB-lit keyboard with 1.4mm key travel. The laptop will be available in a number of configurations, and gamers will be able to choose from Intel’s eighth-generation quad-core Core i5 or six-core Core i9 processors. Graphics top out with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q GPU, but less demanding gamers can save some money with the base GTX 1060 configuration. The Alienware M15 can be configured with up to 32GB DDR4 memory and dual-drive setups for storage.

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Like the Blade 15, the Alienware M15 will also have an option for a fast 144Hz refresh panel. The base 1080p full HD display will come with a 60Hz refresh rate. More demanding users can configure the Alienware with a 1080p resolution panel and 144Hz refresh rate or go for a high-resolution 4K UHD panel with 60Hz refresh rate. Given that the Alienware M15 is purpose-built for gamers, it will come with a generous assortment of ports, including a Thunderbolt 3 over USB-C port, three USB-A ports, HDMI, Mini DisplayPort, Ethernet, and Alienware’s proprietary docking port to connect an eGPU.

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Chuong Nguyen
Chuong Nguyen
Computing Writer
Silicon Valley-based technology reporter and Giants baseball fan who splits his time between Northern California and Southern…
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