I want an OLED screen in my gaming laptop, and it's all Alienware's fault (hands-on)
The new Alienware 13 is replacing its highest-resolution screen with a speedy and beautiful OLED alternative -- at no extra cost.
The Alienware 13 was one of my favorite gaming laptops last year -- a relatively thin and light notebook that could harness the performance of a full desktop-grade external graphics card when docked. The only thing I didn't like was the 3,200x1,800-pixel display -- the laptop just didn't have enough horsepower to play games at that super-high resolution.
But here at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Alienware is showing off an Alienware 13 with a brand-new screen. It's an gorgeous OLED panel -- the same kind you'll find in our favorite TVs and the best smartphone screens -- that displays rich colors and deep blacks in photos, videos and games.
The Alienware 13's new OLED screen isn't just a looker -- it also makes games feel smoother.
Until this very year, PCs haven't really had OLED screens. They've just been too expensive. Now, that's changing: the Alienware 13 is just one of several new computers at CES this year to feature an OLED screen. But it just so happens that OLED has a special advantage for gamers like me. In addition to those gorgeous colors, OLED also allows the screen to refresh its pixels extremely quickly, reducing visual stutter in games.
Trying it was like looking through a window. My video game characters danced gracefully across the screen instead of smearing. Alienware general manager Frank Azor tells me that's because the screen can refresh in just 1 to 2 milliseconds, compared to the 16 milliseconds you typically get from laptop displays.
After seeing that, I think it might be hard for me to buy a gaming laptop that doesn't have an OLED screen. That may not be too difficult to accomplish, though, because Azor says you won't have to pay any more for this new OLED than the old 3,200 x 1,800 LCD. You'll sacrifice a bit of resolution -- the OLED only has a resolution of 2,560x1,440 -- but that's just fine with me.
Otherwise, you're looking at the same Alienware 13 R2 laptop, with Intel's new sixth-gen Skylake processors, that Alienware released late last year. The new screen should be available mid-April in configurations starting around $1,499.
See our complete CES 2016 coverage here.