Massive 18-inch Gaming Laptop Leads New Alienware Lineup
Laptops
Speaker 1: 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-er and the M Series. The X-er is thinner, the M series is more full power. So on the X line they're gonna have 14 inch and 16 inch models. And on the M line they're gonna have 16 inch and get ready for this 18 inch models more on that in a second. And then there's also the Del G series, which is their lower cost, uh, [00:00:30] gaming laptops. They're gonna have 15 inch and 16 inch versions of those that are actually pretty different from the ones that, uh, you've seen previously.
Speaker 1: And I'm excited about this series of changes and new models because the Alien Wear X 15 was one of my favorite gaming laptops of 2022. And the Dell G 15 and G 16 I thought were really good budget gaming laptops. So in 2023 you got big changes across the board. First of all, [00:01:00] visually Alien Wear has this design language that they call Legend, and this is gonna be the third iteration of that. Uh, 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 Matt White, kind of stark futuristic look, uh, kind of designs. Uh, this is more silver and dark metal, but still a lot of contrast. Uh, so just, you know, an evolution of [00:01:30] that legend design.
Speaker 1: They also took the, uh, little FJ under the laptop and made it more of a all around rectangle that goes under there, almost like a little laptop, uh, mini stand underneath it. And that allows for better airflow. Uh, they've also cleaned up the back of the units to make them a little flatter, a little easier to pick up and carry when you have a close kind of put it under your arm. Uh, the previous versions kind of stuck out a little bit in the back and we're not as easy to, uh, carry around. Interestingly, all the screens are moving to a 16 by 10 [00:02:00] 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 by nine tv. That has not changed, not changing any time soon, but a lot of laptops, even gaming ones are going 16 by 10 now.
Speaker 1: That gives you a little more height so it changes the resolution that you're gonna be playing at. And it just gives you, you know, less of a wide screen look more top to bottom space. Uh, I find that's frankly more practical for a lot of things. Not just [00:02:30] gaming, but also reading documents, scrolling through webpages. 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 cuz we're all doing the hybrid work now. We're all on a lot of video meetings. You need a at least a 1920 by 10 80 full HD resolution webcam. I think we're getting there now. And I think the biggest overall news out of the New Alien we're systems is that that there's gonna be an [00:03:00] M Series 18, the Alien Wear M 1818 inch screen.
Speaker 1: It's not the only 18 inch screen gaming laptop I've seen for CES so far this year. Clearly that's gonna be a trend. I think almost everyone is gonna 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 alien where back in 2013, I think that might've 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. [00:03:30] They're not like the giant tanks that older 18 inch screen laptops were. So the new alien wear systems, including that M 18, they're gonna have the next generation Intel and Nvidia parts also amd, but for Intel, that's gonna be the 13th gen, uh, core Eye Series chips.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be the 4,000 series GPUs from Nvidia. I think you're gonna 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. [00:04:00] 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 X 16, which is a slim 16 inch gaming laptop. Dell has not had a 16 inch gaming laptop since apparently 2004. Now getting away from alien wear cuz that's expensive stuff. Dell also has the G series, which I've always liked because it brings in some of the alien wear stuff. Uh, but it's closer in spirit to Dell's modest Inspiron laptops.
Speaker 1: But they don't [00:04:30] call it that. They just call it the G series. And they have as they had in 2022, they have a 15 inch the G 15 and they have a 16 inch the G 16. There's not a ton new here other than moving up to the current generation, that 13th generation Intel, the new Nvidia 4,000 series, new a d chips and GPUs. Uh, the big change here I see as 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 dull gray. The previous G series laptops [00:05:00] just look 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. Uh, listen, laptops are very visual. You carry 'em around with you.
Speaker 1: They sit on your desk, you want 'em 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 alien wear laptops are coming this winter. They're gonna start with high end [00:05:30] configurations first. Uh, the M 18 is gonna start at $2,900. The G Series laptops are coming in the spring. They of course start much less, uh, they're gonna start at eight 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.
