Gaming laptops are going mobile. Of course, the word “laptop” means that’s always been the idea behind these machines. But until recently, gaming on the go meant being strapped with a pretty hefty piece of computing. Such massive hardware, usually with a scorching hot chassis and shit battery life, makes you wonder if it’s even worth it.
Dell and Alienware are returning to their mobile ambitions with Alienware 13 — stress on the word “ambitions”. The company’s hardware has always attracted gamers with plenty of discretionary income, but their brick-like quality and back-breaking weight was an unfortunate side effect. With the Alienware 13, the engineers have attempted to cram the performance we crave into a computer we wouldn’t mind carrying. Its weight is a full two pounds lighter than the Alienware 14, and actually, slightly lighter than even its 11-inch ancestor. It’s also only one inch thick, chopping off an excess .7 inches in comparison to the chunky Alienware 14.
At a press hands-on with this new hardware, an Alienware engineer stressed that they didn’t “sacrifice performance for mobility”: despite its slimming figure, the laptop matches graphics capability with the Alienware 14. That’s because within this one-inch chassis lives a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M graphics chip as well as any Haswell Core i processor of your choosing. Alienware reps mentioned that the chronically delayed Broadwell chips will probably not make it to the Alienware 13’s launch, which will be sometime this holiday season, but will be added to the lineup as soon as they’re available. These processors will be full-voltage, which means heat could be an issue, but the Alienware team has copper heat sinks and two separate fans to help fight burning fingertips and sweaty palms. The 13-inch will also offer both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 options at launch.
With a 13-inch LCD screen, powered with TN or IPS tech (depending on the model), the Alienware 13 will offer HD, Full HD, and Quad HD (2560 x 1440) experiences with optional touchscreen technology.
The new Alienware 13 resting on top of the last year’s Alienware 14.
The Alienware 13 is a pretty obvious answer to the Razer Blade (2014) we saw earlier this year. Although we think that the Blade is a great fit for any serious gamer, its absolutely astounding display and GPU and CPU were overkill for normal, mundane tasks. The Blade’s QHD+ made many applications look terrible since few have actually been scaled up to run optimally on so many pixels, and the high-spec’d chips made it uncomfortably hot and drained its battery in only 40 minutes at max settings. Alienware promises 8 hours of streaming video with the 13, but won’t gives specifics on expected gaming time as the laptop design is still being tweaked. Also, Alienware is keeping tight-lipped on pricing tiers, but Dell’s price on a fully-spec’d 14-inch is around $US2200. So if you want the best of the best, you might want to start saving.
The Alienware 13 makes a lot of promises: a laptop with stunning graphics, a relatively cool chassis, moderate battery life, and a price that doesn’t require applying for a low-interest loan. If it can deliver, maybe pro level gaming can really go mobile.
Comments
7 responses to “New Alienware 13-inch Laptop Promises Pro Gaming Without Backache”
When it’s closed it still looks butt ugly. Bring back the Area 51 cases.
Looks like a console from 2004.
Alienware? Never.
Say no to gaudy hardware kids.
First off blame Windows for the scaling issue, any game running at that resolution looks amazing and as for battery life, are you kidding? Of course using this machine at it’s full potential takes a toll on the battery which is a real shame, but you can easily get 4 hours out of any game with average settings.
Regardless, I look forward to seeing the review of this new machine with an “identical-situation” battery test when compared to the Razer Blade 14…
It’s worth to have a look at evo15 s pro from origin pc.
I think alienware is the past now. Performance nor value for money are good like msy, blade or origin pc
isn’t 13 inches a little too small to peer at?
I know alienware ‘have a look’ but its tired and insulting to people who play games. Just because I want to play games on a well specced laptop, doesn’t mean I want a monolithic spaceship with blinking multicoloured lights. The Razer blade is gorgeous, I just wish it was cheaper.
“back-breaking weight”? According to the dell website, the alienware 14 they’re comparing it to weights 2.8kg, how pathetic have backs gotten recently?
I don’t think you ever own a gaming laptop. have you ever carried a gaming laptop on foot over a few blocks of distance? it’s frigging back breaking. how? when you bring a laptop with you, you also carry the powerbrick. I have had 2 gaming laptop so far (gears of war laptop aka toshiba x205-sli1 and eurocom phantom x aka clevo d901c. their powerbrick is as big as xbox 360 ‘ powerbrick. beside that you may also be carrying other things. books if you are a college student, a spindle of discs, those things add up real fast to say the least!
Still rather the Metabox w230ss 13″ Gaming Laptop, better build quality, cheaper price overall and hardware. Also locally built in Australia >_>
Trust me. clevo machines aren’t “well built”.
The Metabox w230ss isn’t built in Australia, it’s a Clevo w230ss barebone that is assembled in Australia (as in the cpu, ram and so on is put it that’s just it).
The build quality of the w230ss like all Clevo machines isn’t as good than that of an Alienware 14 or 17 and so. But that’s not weird considering it’s a lot cheaper as well.