You may remember earlier this year at the CES when Alienware shocked the world with its announcement of a 11-inch gaming laptop. The reviews following its release cleared any doubt about its performance, generally raking in positive remarks with relatively few criticisms.
Chief among those critiques were its Core 2 Duo CPU and no option for a matte screen. Alienware took note of these points and decided to release a new version of the M11x, which they call “Revision 2,” or R2. Only one of these issues have been addressed, and it isn’t the matte screen.
The R2 now comes equipped with Intel “Arrandale” Core i5/i7 CPUs, which means faster performance overall. However, these new CPUs are not ultra-low voltage, meaning reduced battery life should be expected. Also available with the new line of Intel processors is Nvidia’s Optimus technology, which allows for on-the-fly switching between the integrated Intel graphics and the Nvidia GeForce GT 335M video card. This means you can save the big guns for gaming and let the less intense integrated graphics take over for web browsing or word processing, saving battery life when the extra power isn’t needed.
While the lack of a matte screen option is disappointing, the fact that the M11x is, even up to now, one of a kind means that there’s still no contest in choosing an extremely portable gaming laptop. For what it was built to do, it exceeds expectations, capable of playing Left 4 Dead 2 at full settings and, yes, even running Crysis.