15.6″ Alienware ANW15-1421SLV via Amazon
Designed for extreme gaming and entertainment Dell Alienware 15 ANW15-1421SLV is a 15.6 inch laptop with awesome graphics by NVIDIA GTX 965M GPU on its Full HD display and superior 4k capabilities, solid and premium feel with its carbon-fibre construction, power of a Haswell Intel i5 processor and large amounts of memory and hard drive. So the Alienware 15 includes the fast dual core Intel i5-4210H processor (3MB L3 cache) at 2.9 GHz stock speed that can be overclocked up to 3.5GHz dynamically with the turbo boost and you can push the two cores into 4 threads in parallel thanks to Intel Hyper-Threading to better use the CPU and multitask more efficiently, 8 GB DDR3L SDRAM (2 x 4GB) PC3-12800 at 1600MHz for multitasking power and system supports up to 32GB max, 1 TB Serial ATA hard drive at 5400 rpm spindle speed as ample storage space to hold quite a lot of multimedia files and 64-bit Windows 8.1 operating system. Intel i5-4210H was released in Q3 of 2014, has a Passmark benchmark score of 4620 as of today and a Thermal Design Power- TDP of 47 watts.
15.6 inch non-touch widescreen anti-glare 300-nits brightness LCD display with 1920 x1080 pixel native screen resolution and 16:9 image aspect ratio offers stunning images with clarity, accuracy and vivid colours which you’ll be able to view at up to 178 degree viewing angles as it comes with the IPS panel rather than the regular TN panel and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M with 2048 MB dedicated memory for smooth gaming and handling advanced 3D graphics easily- you can play the games of 2014/2015 titles easily at FHD resolution and high settings, even with features like anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering activated for extra quality with some games. And it supports up to 4 external displays with a max resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution via HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 2.0, with less power usage than the 870M GPU but still needs a proper cooling which this Alienware offers anyway. Intel HD 4600 also comes integrated into the main CPU and offers up to 60% better performance (and up to 30% in gaming) than the Intel HD 4000. Klipsch and Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi powered 2.0 speakers deliver rich and impressive sound that is loud and clear when you are gaming or streaming videos. It has a 2.0MP Full HD webcam with dual microphones to use for taking still photos, chatting on Skype or use it to play face to face with your opponents.
Silver Alienware 15 ANW15 weighs 7.1 pounds and measures 1.34 x 15.19 x 10.64 inches- not quite lightweight but slimmer than other similar powerful gaming laptops (it is more of a great desktop replacement) and built with aerospace inspired carbon-fibre materials it feels elite, premium, solid and durable. It comes with copper heat plates and pipes on both the CPU and GPU so there will not be any overheating and the chassis will stay cool even after hours of operation- even with intensive gaming. Premium reinforced keyboard with an integrated metal plate behind is designed for advanced gaming, is backlit and has the 9-Alienware TactX programmable keys to let you launch apps with single touch of a button in the middle of your game and will let you type flawlessly and smoothly. It has an 8-cell 92W Hour lithium ion battery, doesn’t come with an optical drive but a Killer 1525 802.11ac 2×2 WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet and RJ-45, Bluetooth 4.0 tied to wireless card to connect speakers and headphones wirelessly, 9-in-1 Media Card Reader to transfer photos from digital cameras or save and read data from memory card, 4 x USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, FastAccess Facial Recognition Biometrics, Headphone/Microphone Combo, Audio Line In and Mini DisplayPort.
Conclusion: Alienware 15 ANW15-1421SLV is an advanced laptop with decent gaming and graphics specs and features for superior and comfortable gaming and entertainment. Its main thermal module is made up of copper heat pipes and plates so that the system and the chassis does not get hot even after hours of advanced gaming, while using up all the wattage it needs to. Intel i5-4210H is a high end graphics card with a Passmark of 4620 and is suitable for both the regular daily tasks and is capable of performing heavy tasks and helps NVIDIA GTX 965M run the latest titles at FHD resolution and higher frame rates per second. There is no Antivirus program pre-installed so you can just get Avast or AVG for free online but the Microsoft Office 30 day trial is included and the warranty is 1 year In-Home warranty. We also like the size of memory and can be expanded up to 32GB if needed and also the size of storage but its is a regular HDD, not SSD and the speed is only 5400rpm so you may want to upgrade to a Solid State Drive later on. There is no DVD drive if you intend to play games from CDs or DVDs but not many customers seem to need the optical drives anymore and you can always connect a low cost external DVD drive to one of the USB ports. Keyboard design is great, we don’t have the info on battery life but should be decent considering it is an 8-cell 92W hour lithium ion battery and overall we find this Alienware to be a rather good value gaming laptop.
Click here for a closer look on Amazon