Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Dell’s Alienware M Series Laptop Goes Big With 18-Inch Laptop”.
This may not surprise you, but Dell has a lot of new gaming laptops at CES this year, both from Alienware and from Dell proper. Now, if you look at the Alienware line, there’s the X Series and the M series – The X Series is thinner. The M series is more full power so on the X line, they’re going to have 14 inch and 16 inch models and on the M line, they’re going to have 16 inch and get ready for this 18 inch models more on that in a second and then There’S also the Dell G Series, which is their lower cost uh gaming laptop so they’re, going to have 15 inch and 16 inch versions of those that are actually pretty different from the ones that uh you’ve seen previously foreign and I’m excited about this series of changes And new models, because the Alienware X15 was one of my favorite gaming laptops of 2022 and the dell g15 and g16, I thought were really good budget gaming laptops. So in 2023 you got big changes across the board. First of all, visually Alienware has this design language that they call Legend, and this is going to be the third iteration of that.
They did a lot of focus group testing, a lot of design, ideas and sketches and and mood boards uh. So they went through one two. This new version of it is shifting a little bit away from the previous one, which had a lot of like matte, white kind of Stark, futuristic, look, uh kind of designs. This is more silver and dark metal, but still a lot of contrast, uh.
So just you know an evolution of that Legend design. They also took the little fins under the laptop and made it more of a all-around rectangle that goes under there. Almost like a little laptop mini stand underneath it and that allow for better airflow, they’ve, also cleaned up the back of the units to make them a little flatter a little easier to pick up and carry, and you have a clothes you kind of put it under Your arm, the previous versions kind of stuck out a little bit in the back and were not as easy to carry around. Interestingly, all the screens are moving to a 16 by 10 aspect ratio, which is becoming increasingly common across laptops everywhere, and this further differentiates gaming laptops from console gaming on a TV where you’re playing on a 16×9 TV that has not changed not changing anytime soon.
But a lot of laptops, even gaming ones – are going 16 by 10. Now that gives you a little more height, so it changes the resolution that you’re going to be playing at, and it just gives you you know less of a widescreen look more top to bottom space. I find that’s frankly, more practical for a lot of things, not just gaming, but also reading documents scrolling through web pages.
I think it’s a welcome change and almost everyone’s adopting it now another thing they’re, adding that everyone else is adopting is full HD webcams. That’S just table Stakes now. Frankly, if you don’t have a full HD webcam on anything, that’s not a super budget computer.
I don’t know what you’re doing, because we’re all doing the hybrid work now we’re on a lot of video meetings. You need a at least a 1920 by 1080 full HD resolution webcam. I think we’re getting there now and I think the biggest overall news out of the new Alienware systems is that there’s going to be an M series, 18, the Alienware M18 18 inch screen. It’S not the only 18 inch screen gaming laptop I’ve seen for CES so far this year. Clearly, that’s going to be a trend. I think almost everyone is going to end up with an 18-inch gaming laptop.
I for one think that’s super cool. We have not had those in a while. I went and looked back at my own reporting history and I found that I had reviewed an 18-inch Alienware back in 2013. I think that might have been the last year. They had that, but these big screens, I think, they’re super cool, especially when you can make the laptops a little bit thinner a little bit lighter they’re, not like the giant tanks that older 18 inch screen laptops were so the new Alienware systems, including that M18 they’re Going to have the Next Generation Intel and Nvidia Parts also AMD, but for Intel that’s going to be the 13th gen core. I series chip. So it’s going to be the 4000 series gpus from Nvidia. I think you’re going to see that in a lot of gaming laptops uh starting in CES – and you know going throughout the year and for something like this big giant 18 inch laptop.
Obviously, cooling is a big deal. There’S a bigger Vapor chamber: there’s more heat pipes: uh they’ve expanded the fans to put more air through it all things you need when you have just a giant hulking box like this. The other big notable thing is the x16, which is a slim 16 inch.
Gaming, laptop Dell has not had a 16 inch gaming laptop since apparently 2004., now getting away from Alienware because that’s expensive stuff Dell also has the G Series which I’ve always liked because it brings in some of the Alienware stuff uh. But it’s closer in spirit to Dell’s, modest Inspiron laptops, but they don’t call that they just call it the G Series and they have as they had in 2022. They have a 15 inch, the g15 and they have a 16 inch. The g16 there’s not a ton new here other than moving up to the current generation, that 13th generation Intel the new Nvidia 4000 series, new AMD chips and gpus uh.
The big change here I see is visual. It’S really a striking bold design that I would not expect to see in a budget gaming laptop instead of just kind of Dome gray. The previous G Series Laptops just looked very generic uh there’s a lot of bold contrast, bold colors here, there’s purple and blue and bright matte white.
All kind of shoved together – and you really have some great looks – really stands out. Listen laptops are very visual. You carry around with you, they sit on your desk. You want them to look nice.
I appreciate anybody who has a bold new design look, and I think these are frankly some of the coolest looking laptops I’ve seen at CES, even though they’re not the fanciest and not the most expensive. The Alienware Laptops are coming this winter they’re, going to start with high-end configurations. First, the M18 is going to start at 2 900. The G Series Laptops are coming in the spring. They occur or start much less they’re, going to start at 8 50 and go up from there uh. The G Series is usually a really good value for PC gaming, and I don’t see that changing in 2023 .