Best gaming laptops

We’ll help you pick out the perfect gaming laptop.

2021-03-01 - TECH ADVISOR STAFF reports

The gaming laptop landscape is experiencing an earthquake-like shift. With advances in laptop CPUs and graphics technologies, you can now get great gaming performance in sizes from slender to huge, and prices from budget to sky-high. That’s where this buyer’s guide come in. We’ll name the best gaming laptops currently available. But before we get started, we’ll highlight what to look for when buying a gaming laptop.

HOW TO PICK THE PERFECT GAMING LAPTOP The ‘best’ screen for a laptop

When you buy a gaming laptop, one of the most important decisions you’ll need to make regards the screen. After all, what you get on day one is what you’re stuck with until you replace the device. You could run an external monitor but then, what’s the point of a laptop?

Screen size

The size of the screen dictates the size of the laptop itself, and thus weight. You can’t, for example, get a 17in gaming laptop that’s under 2kg, so think long and hard about whether you’re willing to take the weight penalty in exchange for the screen real estate.

If the laptop is going to be your only gaming machine, having a 17in screen might be ideal. We should also add that a 17.3in screen is easier on weaker eyes than a 15.5in screen. This is very much a matter of personal preference.

Screen resolution

The buzzword today is ‘4K’. That high resolution delivers sharper photo viewing and more space for video editing, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. Anything not using the panel’s native resolution of 3,840x2,180, such as games running at lower-than-4K resolution, won’t look quite as sharp unless you exponentially increase the graphics power of the laptop.

If you’re running at 1,920x1,080 resolution because your GPU can’t hit 60 fps at 4K, that feature is moot. For many gamers, 1,920x1,080 (1080p) or 2,560x1,440 (1440p) is more optimal.

IPS vs TN vs OLED

The panel technology is also a key feature. IPS (in-plane switching) generally produces much greater colour accuracy and superior off-axis viewing, but tends to lag in response times, which can lead to blurring. TN (twisted nematic) panels can offer far higher refresh rates and usually better response times than IPS, but can look washed out or just blah.

A middle-ground technology that’s appearing more often is VA (vertical alignment). VA is sometimes alternately referred to as ‘wide viewing angle’ technology. (Many assume this to spec to be IPS, but it’s not). In our experience, we’ve found VA panels to run the gamut from being worthy competitors to IPS to being worse than the better TN panels.

Generally, if colour accuracy is important, go IPS (a trademark of Sharp), and if you want the fastest response times go for a gamingoriented TN panel. With the variability of VA, we recommend you check

feedback from reviewers and users of a particular model.

The wild card in all this is OLED. OLED-based panels have been used in phones for years but have recently migrated to larger screens in laptops. IPS, TN and VA all use LEDs behind the screen or along the edges. ‘Black’ is produced by a shutter-like mechanism that blocks light from coming through. As you can imagine, there’s usually some light leakage, which means the black tends to be grey.

OLED panels don’t rely on edge or backlighting. Instead, each pixel generates its own light. To produce black, it just switches off the light. This amounts to truly stunning contrast ratios and vibrant colours. OLEDs also offer fantastic response times.

The negatives include smaller screen sizes (we haven’t seen anything larger than 15.6 inches yet), higher cost, and lack of support for variable refresh rate. OLED panels can also use more power than conventional methods if the image is on a white background.

G-Sync and FreeSync

Okay, we called this section G-Sync and FreeSync, but the reality is, when it comes to beefy gaming laptops, it’s a GeForce GPU world. And that means it’s a G-Sync world. In a nutshell, Nvidia and AMD’s respective variable-refresh-rate technologies help synchronize the monitor and the GPU to greatly reduce screen tearing. Variable refresh rates can make gaming at 40fps far smoother to your eyes than a screen without it.

The first variable-refresh-rate panels for laptops maxed out at 75Hz, only

marginally better than the standard 60Hz. More recently, we’ve begun to see laptop panels that can push 120Hz, 144Hz and even 240Hz. This generally means smoother and sharper gaming to your eyes. It even helps smooth out everyday tasks such as scrolling a browser page or Word document.

The downside of high-refresh rate panels is the technology it’s available on: TN. As we said earlier, TN generally looks less vibrant and less accurate than IPS. The off-axis view is generally inferior, too. You’ll also need a far more powerful GPU to feed that high-refresh rate monitor at its native resolution.

One last very important note: G-Sync screens have to be connected directly to the laptop’s discrete GPU, which means a large hit in battery life. In most laptops without G-Sync, the Intel integrated graphics is connected directly to the screen, so the GPU can be turned off when not being used. So while G-Sync is beautiful to behold, the cost in battery life is huge.

Which is right for you? If it’s primarily a gaming laptop, go for a high refresh rate and G-Sync (or FreeSync, if you can find a laptop that supports it with a Radeon GPU). If you tend to also push pixels in Photoshop or do any colour-critical work, skip variable refresh for an IPS panel.

Keyboard and trackpad

A new trend in gaming laptops is the offset trackpad, which is more conducive to gaming than a deadcentre trackpad. The concept is sound, but anyone who actually cares about PC gaming will just plug in a mouse. The worst thing about that offset trackpad is when you try to use it for non-gaming purposes.

As far as keyboards go, the most important gaming feature is n-key rollover. This means the keyboard physically scans each key separately. If you wanted to, you could press 20 keys simultaneously and they’d all register, as each is independently wired. That probably sounds excessive, but keyboards that lack this feature can suffer missed keystrokes, which both ruins gameplay and hurts in everyday tasks. Anyone who’s used an Adobe product that might require a left-Alt, left-Shift, left-Ctrl plus two more keys to do something may have run into the limitations of non-n-key keyboards.

Other keyboard considerations include LED backlighting (which adds ambiance but does nothing for gameplay) and mechanical keys versus membrane. Mechanical keys are excellent, but are available on only a handful of laptops that usually weigh a ton. We have seen a few designs with

low-profile mechanical keyboards, but they can be an acquired taste.

HOW TO PICK STORAGE

Having your games load from an SSD instead of a hard drive significantly cuts down on load times. But beyond that, we haven’t found it to matter that much whether it’s a super-fast NVMe PCIe drive or a slower SATA SSD.

What does matter more today is the size of the SSD rather than the interface it uses. With games now topping 50GB and some touching 100GBs, a once-spacious 256GB SSD will feel too small with just four games installed.

So when spec’ing out that gaming laptop, be mindful of just how much total storage you have. If you go for laptop with a small SSD and large hard drive combo, expect to install your games to the hard drive. If the laptop will have an SSD only, choose an absolute minimum of 512GB, with 1TB preferred.

HOW MUCH RAM DO YOU NEED?

When laptop makers spec out gaming laptops, one of the levers they use to try to convince you to buy their product is upping the amount of RAM. It’s not hard to find gaming laptops with ‘upgraded’ configurations that go from 16GB of DDR4 to 32GB. While having an adequate amount of RAM is important, today’s games typically top out at 16GB of RAM, and sometimes can run fine with just 8GB of RAM. Anything more than 16GB (our standard recommendation) is usually a waste of money. You might want to blame laptop and PC makers for using an erroneous spec to manipulate the public, but the blame actually lies with the average buyer. PC makers have told us for years they only over-spec RAM because the public thinks more is better.

DUAL-CHANNEL OR SINGLE-CHANNEL RAM?

Besides the amount of memory, a couple of other important, but not critical, questions to ask is what clock speed and what mode. Modern CPUs let you run RAM in sets to increase the memory bandwidth.

More memory bandwidth immediately helps laptops that are running integrated graphics, but the conventional wisdom has long been that discrete GPUs in laptops don’t benefit as much because they have their own dedicated, much faster GDDR5 RAM to use. That’s typically the case, but the performance of today’s GPUs and CPUs can make this conventional wisdom wrong.

Gaming performance is often about a balance between the CPU and the GPU, and how graphically intensive a game is. With games that are graphically intensive, the GPU is the primary bottleneck on performance. Play a game that isn’t graphically intense, though, and the CPU can rapidly become the bottleneck on performance.

With the power of today’s GPUs, a lot of games, especially at a sedate resolution of 1,920x1,080, have shifted more performance to the CPU. The reason we’re talking about this now is if you rob the CPU of memory bandwidth, even a decently fast one, you can take a sizable hit in gaming performance.

The basic lesson is you should opt for dual-channel memory bandwidth configurations when possible. On a laptop spec sheet, you typically would see this expressed as ‘dual-channel’ or ‘2 x 8’ to indicate that two 8GB memory modules were used in a laptop.

Some laptop makers will express memory in clock speed, so you’ll see ‘DDR4/2,133 or DDR4/2,400’. While a higher memory clock does increase memory bandwidth, the impact isn’t quite as great as going from dualchannel to single-channel mode.

HOW TO PICK A CPU

There may be real competition between AMD and Intel when it comes to gaming CPUs in desktops now, but in gaming laptops, the world is still very much 95-per cent Intel. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as Intel’s laptop CPUs are excellent. Still, there are a few things you need to consider about the CPU for your gaming laptop.

A typical Intel laptop CPU will pack from four to eight processor cores. Most will feature Hyper-Threading, which lets the CPU offer virtual CPUs to use its resources more efficiently.

Gaming laptops today mostly give you a choice of 8th-gen ‘H’ or 9th-gen

‘H’ high-power CPUs. That’s led to a lot of confusion for consumers. We recommend that you not sweat the difference between 8th-gen and 9th-gen laptop CPUs. Outside of security mitigations, the change is mostly a clock speed bump on Core i7 and Core i5 models. The key difference is at the high end, where the 9th-gen Core i9 gives you two more cores than the Core i7.

If you’re shopping in that zone of ‘do I buy 8th-gen gaming laptop?’ or ‘do I buy a 9th-gen gaming laptop?’ we’ve broken out each model’s differences. For contrast, we also break out that the biggest performance improvement was going from Intel’s 7th-gen to its 8th-gen chips.

HOW MANY CORES DO YOU REALLY NEED?

How many cores do you need in a gaming laptop? For most people on a budget, a 4-core CPU with HyperThreading will function just fine in most games, especially when combined with a lower-cost and lower performance GPU.

Still, if you have the extra cash, a 6-core CPU with Hyper-Threading is likely the sweet spot for today and tomorrow. If you plan to stream your gaming live or edit it, investing in a 6-core is recommended.

Intel’s top-end 8-core CPUs will deliver the greatest benefit to those who might do other graphics-intensive tasks, such as 3D animation or video editing. If you also plan to record and stream video, the 8-core will offer a performance benefit there, too.

If you’re thinking, great, let me buy a 4-core Core i5 CPU with a luxury laptop to save money, you usually can’t, because PC makers typically only offer budget CPUs with other budget parts. Why? Well, most budget shoppers

can’t afford any luxury items, and most PC makers like to add in the extras to increase the profit.

HOW TO PICK A GPU FOR A GAMING LAPTOP

The single most important piece of hardware in a gaming laptop is undoubtedly the GPU. For AMD fans, the situation is as sad as it is in CPUs: It’s an Nvidia GeForce world. As with CPUs though, the good news is that the dominating products are top-notch.

The hardest part will be deciding just how much GPU you need. Our general guidance is to buy as fast a GPU as you can afford and are willing to heft. Generally, the faster the GPU (or GPUs), the larger and heavier the laptop.

Because one of the easiest buying mistakes is to not be armed with enough knowledge, we’ve compiled a graph of results we’ve seen from gaming laptops using 3DMark Time Spy. It’s a DirectX 12 test that is a good representation of modern gaming. Our score focuses in on the graphics portion only, so the CPU differences have little impact on the score.

We generally think the GTX 1050 or GTX 1650 is a good 1080p GPU, if you’re willing to play on medium settings. To hit High in some games, you’ll need to lower the resolution to 720p.

If you really want 60fps at 1080p with few compromises, the GeForce GTX 1660Ti or GeForce RTX 2060 is a good level of graphic card to shoot for. If you need to feed a high-refresh panel of 144Hz or 240Hz at 1,920x1,080, we would recommend notching up to an GeForce RTX 2070 or even higher.

If you’re talking about playing on a higherresolution panel of 2,560x1,440 at high-refresh rates,

then keep increasing the amount of money spent on the GPU.

WHAT ABOUT RAY TRACING?

One other wrinkle you have to sort out in a gaming laptop is support for hardware ray tracing. Ray tracing is a graphics capability touted by Nvidia that creates more realistic plays of light and shadow over any given scene in a game. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX-series of cards accelerate ray tracing in real time using Microsoft’s DirectX Ray Tracing API.

One rub against RTX is its hefty performance penalty when enabled. Also, the techniques are supported in only a few games (and mostly sparingly). Games such as Remedy’s Control, however, are finally showing how beautiful ray tracing can be.

The performance penalty, especially in laptops, is steep. Using Nvidia’s own ratings for ray tracing performance – a Giga Ray – the parity between mobile and desktop isn’t what it once was.

A full-power GeForce RTX 2070 in a laptop is specified for the same Giga Rays as a GeForce RTX 2060 desktop graphics card. The Giga Ray specs for the lower-power Max-Q rated RTX cards is even worse. The GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q, for example, has the same Giga Ray spec as the full power GeForce RTX 2070.

In actual games, such as the punishing Control, the GeForce RTX 2060 mobile might push 30fps, while the GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q and the GeForce RTX 2080 without Max-Q might hit the 40fps range. That’s with the game set to its highest settings with all of the DirectX Ray Tracing features turned on. The vast majority of DXR games today aren’t likely to use as many bells and whistles as Control does.

The good news is that even if the ray tracing performance of the mobile parts is a bit disappointing, the cards

are also fast when ray tracing features aren’t used. If you want the fastest gaming laptop today, reach for one with a GeForce RTX 2080 in it.

DECODING NVIDIA’S MAX-Q

We’re now in our second generation of laptops with Nvidia’s Max-Q technology. Max-Q is essentially the same GPU as the full power version, but tuned to run at a lower power and thermal output. This lets laptop makers stuff performance previously unheard-of into a thin laptop.

As expected, there is a performance cost, which is similar to what we saw with the 10-series of Max-Q laptops. Most of the performance hit is taken at the top end with the GeForce RTX 2080

Max-Q. It sees a large power savings along with a large performance penalty. We’ve seen the GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q perform on a par with a ‘full-power’ GeForce RTX 2070 in conventional gaming. The two lower rungs of RTX Max-Q cards don’t save you as much power. No surprise, the performance isn’t as bad either, with the hit being around 10 per cent.

The basic lesson in life is you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you want to lug a 2.25kg gaming laptop instead of a 4kg gaming laptop, the cost is performance.

EXTERNAL GRAPHICS SUPPORT

Another category you should think about is the burgeoning support for external graphics in gaming laptops. Customers of Alienware have long enjoyed this with its relatively inexpensive (and proprietary) Graphics Amplifier technology, but many new laptops support external graphics cabinets using Thunderbolt 3.

These cabinets let you plug your laptop into a more powerful discrete GPU. The Akitio Node, for example, is one such Thunderbolt 3 cabinet that’s helped usher in lower prices. Although

external graphics are primarily desired by users who run on integrated graphics, a gaming laptop with Thunderbolt 3 support could come in handy when the GPU inside gets too old to play the latest games.

BATTERY LIFE

The last topic we’ll cover is battery life. The best way to understand battery life on a gaming laptop is to accept that it’ll be horrible for all things gaming.

The minute you crank up a GPU on a gaming laptop to play a game, you’re limiting yourself to an hour or an hour and a half of battery runtime. Full stop. And in some cases, far less than that. The only reason to consider battery life on a gaming laptop is if you want to use your laptop unplugged for non-gaming purposes. In that respect, you’ll find a lot of variance, with some – such as Gigabyte’s Aero 15 – offering decent battery life, albeit with a trade-off in gaming performance.

BEST OVERALL: ASUS ROG ZEPHYRUS G14

Price: £1,099 from fave.co/39YNeO3 A gaming laptop with ultrabook sensibilities – Asus’s ROG Zephyrus G14 brings this intriguing cross-pollination to the table. Launched at CES 2020, the Taiwanese company has created what it the “world’s most powerful 14in gaming notebook” – a claim that we’re inclined to agree with.

Asus has married an impressively compact form with specs that you simply don’t get considering the dimensions at play, and the team behind the G14 still found time to add some design flair and innovative thinking to augment the use cases a machine such as this might find itself in.

Design

The G14 is a small but solidly-built machine, as gaming laptops go.

Considering the power on offer, it’s easily one of the most portable entries there is; made possible by a mix of meticulous thermal design on the inside and a strong magnesium-aluminium alloy deck on the outside.

The body measures in at 17.9mm thin, with the sides choc-full on the I/O front; including two USB-C and two USB-A ports, alongside a 3.5mm headphone jack and a full-sized HDMI port (so VR gaming is on the table). The lack of a card reader and no Thunderbolt 3 connection will come as frustrating omissions for some, too.

Having been able to peek under the hood, Asus demonstrated an excellent thermal design that involves a duo of its n-Blade fans and custom heatsink fins to eject dust out of dedicated exhaust ports on the G14’s back. While this should help reduce the risk of dust build-up and thus heat build-up over long-term usage, the inherent benefits of the company’s ErgoLift hinge design shouldn’t be overlooked either.

As seen on Asus’s original Zephyrus laptop, opening the lid raises the deck of the machine up and off whatever surface it’s on, at an angle. While a more comfortable typing position is an additional benefit, the primary purpose of this is to improve airflow onto the G14’s internals from underneath.

For all the love being paid to the thermals at work on the G14, it should be said that the fans sport a pretty aggressive curve, which brings them in at what sounds like full force when placing the machine under any heavy load, be it demanding creative work or gaming.

Despite the machine’s overall size, the compact keyboard feels pleasingly generous, with plenty of space around each key

and a satisfying 1.7mm of travel to work through. The sticking point is, in fact, the backlighting, which is wildly uneven and prone to light leak, meaning it’s best left off, unless in the darkest of environments.

With no webcam in the G14’s bezel, we expected to find it relegated to within the keyboard – MateBook-style – but instead, Asus chose not to include one altogether.

Beyond the cooling setup and keyboard, you’re presented with a quad-speaker arrangement (two tweeters and two woofers) with Dolby Atmos’s blessing, a Windows Hello-compliant fingerprint sensor-laden power button (which admittedly could be more reliable) and a choice of three different displays.

While the ROG-branding suggests that the G14 is a portable gaming rig first and foremost, the overall styling and hardware options highlight that this is a machine made for more than simply dominating in League.

Display

Those who do look at the G14 as their next gaming laptop should probably swing for the 120Hz Full HD IPS LCD (as we tested), while those who instead aim to spend more time wielding this machine’s power to edit video or work on graphic design tasks will likely prefer the crisper 60Hz WQHD panel that’s up for grabs (there’s also a Full HD 60Hz option, but that’s best left alone).

Look past the spec sheet of conventional parts and it’s not hard to see what makes the G14 so instantly recognisable and memorable. Dubbed the ‘AniMe Matrix’, the top-tier versions of the G14 possess a CNC milled lid, covered in some 1,215 mini LEDs.

These can be set to show text, visualizers and even animated GIFs that would no doubt serve as an eye-catching way to rep your favourite e-sports team (or silently trash-talk your opponents). On every other SKU of the G14, however,

the lid is simply covered in a number of tiny holes that, although not as exciting, still grant this machine a distinctive look.

Performance

The various screen set-ups and the matrix of LEDs already talked about are just two choices to make when configuring your G14. Behind the scenes, there’s also room for a pretty significant set of performance tweaks, starting with the processor.

You can choose from a number of entries within AMD’s 4000 series Ryzen chips, topping out at the 7nm AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS. Asus has managed to nab the tuned 35W variant that retains the same clock, 8 cores and 16 threads as the standard 45-watt version but benefits from smarter throttling and greater thermal efficiency.

Geekbench 4 (multi-core)

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: 30,285

Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED: 28,300

Acer Predator Helios 300: 13,211

Razer Blade 15 (2019): 17,318

Alienware m15: 23,179

Asus ROG Scar 2: 18,948

3DMark(Sky Diver)

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: 33,007

Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED: 34,670

Acer Predator Helios 300: 29,647

Razer Blade 15 (2019): 34,615

Alienware m15: 34,919

Asus ROG Scar 2: 29,178

Total War: Warhammer II (Ultra 1080p)

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: 67fps

Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED: 94fps

Acer Predator Helios 300: 58fps

Razer Blade 15 (2019): 69fps

Alienware m15: 66fps

Asus ROG Scar 2: 71fps

Total War: Warhammer II (Medium 1080p)

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: 111fps

Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED: 142fps

Acer Predator Helios 300: 105fps

Razer Blade 15 (2019): 116fps

Alienware m15: 111fps

Asus ROG Scar 2: 127fps

Battery drain (120 nits, 30 minutes)

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: 11 hours, 33 minutes

Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED: 6 hours, 28 minutes

Acer Predator Helios 300: 6 hours, 1 minute

Razer Blade 15 (2019): 6 hours, 19 minutes

Alienware m15: 5 hours, 8 minutes

Asus ROG Scar 2: 2 hours, 37 minutes

The options list also allows for up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM, up to a 1TB of M.2 NVMe SSD storage and then there’s the graphics card to consider. Despite its size, the G14 can accommodate up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 (Max-Q), offering enough clout for high-performance gaming and video streaming simultaneously, if that’s your bag.

The included 180-watt charger unlocks the power of the discrete GPU, although the G14 is USB-PD compatible up to 65 watts too, meaning you can still get work done and charge this machine up, even if you only take your phone charger with you.

Asus quotes ten hours of use per charge, but in testing, our G14 swiftly passed that threshold – throwing in the towel at just over 11 and a half hours. As such, creatives and gamers alike should feel confident in using the G14 as they please while mobile, without concern.

Verdict

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 shows that small can certainly mean mighty, with a balance of portability and power unlike anything else currently on the market, especially considering the price range it’s on offer for.

The AniMe Matrix is sure to turn heads, as is the performance made

possible by AMD’s latest Ryzen chips and some serious graphical power, courtesy of Nvidia. The lengths that Asus has gone to, to ensure the G14 stays thermally viable also deserve a serious round of applause. Alex Walker-Todd

Specifications

• 14in 16:9 Full HD/60Hz, Full HD/120Hz or WQHD/60Hz IPS LCD

• AniMe Matrix LEDs (special edition only)

• Windows 10 Home or Pro

• Up to AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS

• Pantone validated display

• AMD Adaptive Sync

• ‘ErgoLift’ design

• Up to Nvidia RTX 2060

• Up to 32GB DDR4-3200 RAM

• Up to 1TB M. NVMe SSD

• USB-PD charging support up to 65 watts

• Up to 3A charging output

• 2x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (one with DisplayPort 1.4 support)

• 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1

• 1x HDMI 2.0b

• 1x 3.5mm combo jack

• Wi-Fi 6

• Bluetooth 5.0

• Windows Hello-compliant fingerprint sensor power key

• Quad-speaker set-up

• Dolby Atmos audio

• 324x222x17.9 mm

• 1.6kg or 1.7kg

BEST 17IN MODEL: RAZER BLADE PRO 17

Price: £2,399 from fave.co/3qMumYz In the not too distant past gaming laptops were big, bulky beasts that were more akin to a portable PC tower than a sexy, sleek laptop. However, companies like Razer have made leaps and bounds in the laptop design department over the past few years and now offer products that are both powerful and sleek.

Razer’s Blade Pro 17 is the company’s top-of-the-line 17.3in laptop for gamers, offering desktop-level graphics in a chassis that’s not only 25 per cent thinner than its predecessor, but small enough to fit in most 15in laptop bags too. Is it enough to solidify its place among the best gaming laptops available? We think so.

Design

The Razer Blade Pro 17 follows a similar design aesthetic to the rest of the Razer collection, including the Razer Blade 15 and even the Razer Phone 2, complete with a black-and-green colour scheme and a bold, angular design that looks sleek. It’s certainly a step away from the in-your-face gaming laptop design on offer by the likes of Alienware, with the

understated Razer Blade Pro 17 looking just as good at the office as it does playing games at home.

The chassis of the Razer Blade Pro 17 features an anodized matte black finish which in addition to looking good and keeping fingerprints at bay, helps the laptop stay scratch- and scuff-free, although we’re not in the position to start defacing it in the name of testing. It should also prove quite sturdy, as the entire chassis is milled from a single block of aluminium.

Despite featuring a 17.3in display, the 0.6mm bezels that surround it allow the chassis to stay relatively small – in fact, the Razer Blade Pro 17 is 25 per cent smaller than the last-gen Pro and offers similar dimensions to 15in laptops we’ve used in the past, measuring in at 395x36x19.9mm and weighing 2.75kg. We can confirm that it’ll just about fit into a 15in laptop bag too, making it easier to transport between home and work.

Despite the chassis magic, the Razer Blade Pro 17 has a larger surface for cooling when compared to the 2018 variant, which translates to better heat dissipation and better performance during long, intense gaming sessions.

The Blade Pro 17 isn’t the thinnest laptop on the market – that goes to the LG gram 17 (a non-gaming laptop) – but this offers a high-end gaming experience and, arguably just as importantly, a variety of full-size ports.

Compared to the laughable amount of ports included with some modern laptops – sometimes just one USB-C – the Razer Blade Pro 17 is about as connected as a laptop can be. It features not only standard USB 3.2 ports, but USB-C and the latest HDMI 2.0b port, allowing you to output games to your TV, use it to power your VR sessions and

plug in a suite of accessories. Here’s a full list of the ports on offer across all iterations of Blade Pro 17:

• 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A Ports

• 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C Ports (Shared with Thunderbolt 3 Port)

• 1x Thunderbolt 3 Port

• 1x RJ45 – 2.5Gb Ethernet

• 1x Power Port

• 1x HDMI 2.0b

• 1x UHS-III SD Card Reader

There’s also a lack of a hefty power brick (or two, as is the case with the Area 51M) with the Blade Pro sporting a single streamlined charging brick. It uses Razer’s custom charging port rather than the

USB-C on offer from competing laptops, but we don’t think that’s too much of an issue – as long as you don’t damage or lose the cable anyway!

Keyboard

The Razer Blade Pro 17 has an interesting keyboard set-up. It features per-key RGB lighting powered by Razer’s Chroma software along with anti-ghosting tech, giving it the high-end gamer vibe, but it doesn’t deliver in terms of performance – and that’s a bit of a shame given the high price tag of the product.

Our main gripe is to do with the keyboard layout itself; it’s lacking a full numberpad and customizable Macro keys. We wouldn’t expect it on a 13or even 15in laptop, but the Blade Pro 17 has plenty of space on offer – it’s just not properly utilised. There’s space not only to the left and right of the keyboard, but above and below too. Why not move the stereo speakers and

offer gamers a full-size edge-to-edge keyboard like Alienware’s Area 51m?

While the typing experience is quick and reliable, it’s certainly not mechanical, and the button-presses feel a little soft and squishy compared to the satisfying click provided not only by most gaming keyboards but Razer’s own range of gaming keyboards. It’s a surprising move considering the laptop is supposed to be the ‘Pro’ of the range, and one that we hope Razer addresses in the next iteration.

Beneath the keyboard, you’ll find a large glass trackpad. It supports both tap and click input, although there is a little too much click resistance for the left-click compared to the right-click. It helps differentiate between left- and right-clicks, but we’d have preferred to have less resistance on the side we use more frequently.

Click feedback aside, the trackpad is great for browsing the Internet and working, but most gamers will want to buy a dedicated gaming mouse for the best possible experience.

Display

As we’ve mentioned above, the Razer Blade Pro has a 17.3in display, and unlike other laptops on the market, the display offering is the same across all variants of the laptop. Whether you get the entry-level model or premium model, you’ll get the same 1,920x1,080 144Hz LED display with incredibly thin 6mm bezels.

It’s a great move from Razer, as the 144Hz refresh rate makes everything look smooth and allows games to run at much higher frame rates. We’re also a huge fan of the matte finish on the display, which helps negate annoying reflections, although it’s not the brightest we’ve ever seen.

In our testing, we found that it maxed out at 264cd/m2 and generally speaking, we always have the brightness on full when using the laptop for work and play. That’s a bit short of the 300 mark we look for, especially on a laptop this expensive.

It’s colourful, offering 97 per cent of sRGB, but only 75 per cent of Adobe RGB, the colour gamut favoured by designers. This isn’t an issue if you’re mainly using the Blade Pro 17 for gaming, but if you’re looking for something to design with, there are more accurate options on the market.

Performance

Much like with the display, regardless of the model you choose, you’re going to get a 9th-gen six-core i7-9750H processor with a 2.6GHz base speed, boosted to 4.5GHz with Max Turbo. It’s the same story with RAM and storage,

with all variants boasting 16GB DualChannel DDR4 2667MHz RAM and a 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD alongside an additional M.2 slot to further upgrade the storage post-purchase.

The only real difference is in terms of graphics; all feature Nvidia RTX cards, but only the mid and top tier laptops feature Max-Q cards. The base model comes with the RTX 2060, while the mid-tier option boasts the RTX 2070 Max-Q and the top-tier sports the RTX 2080 Max-Q. If that’s not enough, you could always pick up Razer’s Core X eGPU to house a desktop card.

For reference, we’ve been testing the base model with a 9th-gen core i7, 16GB of DDR4 RAM and an Nvidia RTX 2060 GPU, and performance is what we’d expect from an entry-level RTX, although there are cheaper, more powerful options on the market if you can do without the Blade Pro 17’s sleek design.

Geekbench 4 (multi-core)

Razer Blade Pro 17: 19,162

Aorus 15 X9: 19,446

Razer Blade 15 (2018): 17,956

Huawei MateBook Pro X (2019): 17,160

Alienware Area 51m: 30,256

3DMark(Sky Diver)

Razer Blade Pro 17: 31,137 Aorus 15 X9: 37,362

Razer Blade 15 (2018): 28,475

Huawei MateBook Pro X (2019): 8,856

Alienware Area 51m: 53,612

Total War: Warhammer II (Ultra 1080p)

Razer Blade Pro 17: 73fps

Aorus 15 X9: 82fps

Razer Blade 15 (2018): 64fps

Alienware Area 51m: 93fps

Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Ultra 1080p)

Razer Blade Pro 17: 50fps

Aorus 15 X9: 57fps

Razer Blade 15 (2018): 45fps

Alienware Area 51m: 73fps

As you can see in our benchmark results above, the Razer Blade Pro 17 came in below the Aorus 15 X9 in every test despite costing £200 more. Admittedly, the Aorus 15 X9 has a more powerful RTX 2070 GPU so the higher results aren’t surprising, but it’s worth noting the premium that you’re paying for Razer’s design aesthetic and the larger, faster 144Hz display. We’ve also included the Razer Blade 15 from 2019 for comparison as well as a top regular laptop in the Huawei MateBook X Pro. Note that the Alienware Area 51m has mega performance but costs a lot more – we tested a £3,799 model.

Comparison aside, the Razer Blade Pro 17 scored 19,162 in Geekbench 4’s multi-core CPU test. GPU-wise, the laptop managed an average of 122fps in Total Warhammer at medium and 73fps when set to ultra. That drops down slightly in the more graphically-demanding Ghost Recon: Wildlands, scoring 84.5fps at medium quality and only 50fps at ultra quality.

While the benchmark results suggest that it’s capable of running games at a decent 60fps+ frame rate with Ultra-level graphics, it’s more suited to high or even medium-quality graphics – especially if you want to hit high frame rates and take advantage of that 144Hz display.

Connectivity and audio

The Blade Pro 17 has an Intel AX200 chipset for Wi-Fi, offering Wi-Fi 6 (802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax) capabilities alongside Bluetooth 5.0 and an RJ45

Ethernet port with theoretical speeds of up to 2.5Gb/s, ideal for gaming, streaming and anything else you need.

You’ll notice a 1Mp 720p HD webcam and array microphone sat above the display, which are good enough for video calling but not much else. The key feature here is the Windows Hello-supported IR webcam that sits beside it, enabling you to unlock your laptop with your face instead of a password.

Audio-wise, the Razer Blade Pro has a stereo speaker set-up housed to the left and right of the keyboard, helping direct the audio towards your ears.

Of course, they’re no replacement for a decent gaming headset, but the quality of the speakers is surprisingly good with very little distortion at high volumes, even during intense gunfights, and there’s noticeable stereo separation so you can get a bit of an idea of where the sound of footsteps is coming from.

Battery life

It’s no secret that gaming laptops aren’t great in the battery department, often offering no more than a couple of hours of battery – and that’s when you’re not gaming. After all, most gamers would prefer more powerful internals over long battery life as most of the time the laptop will be plugged into the mains.

The Razer Blade Pro 17 actually has a smaller battery than the standard Blade 15, offering a 70.5Wh battery compared to the 80Wh battery of the high-end Blade 15. It’s still a decent battery compared to the likes of Alienware Area 51M, but you won’t be getting all-day battery life.

In fact, in our battery benchmark tests, the Razer Blade Pro 17 lasted four hours and 22 minutes – and that’s only playing a 720p movie on loop at 120cd/m2 (44 per cent brightness in this case).

Of course, you could increase the battery life somewhat by dropping the 144Hz refresh rate to 60Hz, but that’ll lower the overall gaming experience on offer by the Blade Pro 17.

Verdict

The Razer Blade Pro 17 is a phenomenal laptop in terms of design, featuring the same sleek angular look as not only the rest of the Blade collection but the Razer Phone too. The 17.3in display isn’t the brightest we’ve ever seen, but the 144Hz refresh rate enhances the gameplay experience and the slim bezels mean the laptop chassis is similar to a standard 15in laptop.

However, that design comes at a premium, with the Razer Blade Pro costing more than the likes of the Aorus 15 X9 despite having less powerful internals. You can get more powerful variants of the Blade Pro 17 with RTX 2070 and 2080 Max-Q cards, but again, there’s a premium compared to other laptops in the market.

Game performance is fairly decent considering the entry-level RTX GPU, with the laptop boasting 60fps+ in most game benchmarks, and the ray-tracing support makes games look incredible without additional impact to gameplay.

You get a decent array of ports and stereo speakers, too. However, the keyboard – while colourful with Chroma lighting – is a bit of a let-down in terms of performance. Mike Jennings

Specifications

• 17.3in Full HD 144Hz, 100 per cent sRGB, 6.0mm bezel, factory calibrated

• Windows 10 Home (64-bit)

• 9th Gen Intel Core i7-9750H 6 Core (2.6GHz/4.5GHz)

• Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB GDDR6 VRAM)

• 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD

• 16GB Dual-Channel (8GB x 2) DDR4 2667MHz

• Per-key RGB keyboard powered by Razer Chroma

• 2.5Gb Ethernet

• USB 3.2 Gen 2 (USB-A) x3, USB3.2 Gen 2 (USB-C)

• Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C)

• Intel Wireless-AX200 (802.11/a/b/g/n/ ac/ax)

• Bluetooth 5

• Built-in HD webcam (1Mp/720p)

• Black with backlit green logo and green

USB ports

• 70.5Wh battery

• 395x260x19.9mm

• 2.75kg

BEST VALUE: ACER PREDATOR HELIOS 300

Price: £1,349 from fave.co/3m5ordA The Acer Predator Helios 300 has been around for a few years, but this 2020 model is an updated version. It’s been outfitted with new components, and minor exterior changes make it a little easier to live with.

A more powerful Nvidia RTX 2060 graphics card and a new Intel 10th-gen CPU have both been fitted, and it’s paired with a 144Hz display and a whopping 20GB of memory.

The Predator Helios 300 is designed for mainstream gamers, and its £1,399 price makes it a little more expensive than its predecessor, but it’s still a little cheaper than both of its key rivals.

Design

There haven’t been big visual changes here from the Helios 300 (2019). The lid still has a blue, illuminated logo between two slashes. You’ll still find dramatic air vents with blue internals – although minor tweaking means they now have a row of metallic plastic underneath, too. Around the front, the trackpad is ringed

with metal to match the front of the machine, and the bulk of the machine is built from matte black aluminium. Acer’s black-and-blue theme looks reasonable, but rivals are more subtle if you would prefer: the MSI GS66 Stealth is almost entirely black, with fewer flourishes, and the Asus ROG Zephyrus 14 also looks more mature.

The Acer Predator Helios 300 weighs 2.2kg and is 23mm thick, which makes it larger than rivals too. The MSI is a little smaller and lighter, while the 14in Asus is far more compact.

Build quality is middling: the base is sturdy but the screen has a little too much give. It’s not worryingly weak, but its rivals are more robust, and a protective sleeve would be a good idea.

Also bear in mind the laptop’s front edge – it can dig into your wrist and can be quite irritating.

The Helios 300 has single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and Type-C ports, with both connections supporting faster 10Gb/s transfer speeds and charging. There are two slower USB 3.1 Gen 1 connectors, HDMI and mini-DisplayPort outputs and a headphone jack alongside Gigabit Ethernet.

Once again, rivals are arguably better: the MSI has more, faster USB ports and adds Thunderbolt, while the Asus subtracts Gigabit Ethernet and Thunderbolt but does include two USB-C connectors.

Keyboard

The Helios 300 has a dedicated numberpad, which instantly lifts this keyboard above both rivals. There’s a dedicated button for Acer’s Predator software alongside a good layout – the only minor issue is the singleheight Return key.

The WASD, cursor and Predator buttons are highlighted with seethrough plastic, and every key has

a slightly concave shape for better grip. The Predator has RGB LED backlighting, although it’s not a per-key affair – instead, it uses four zones. It’s a sensible compromise, and the lighting is bright and consistent.

The keyboard offers ample travel for gaming and typing, and its action is comfortable and quick, with a good amount of snap. It’s crisper than the Asus, but a tad softer than the MSI. It’s also a little too loud for my liking.

The keyboard is decent, but the trackpad is disappointing. The buttons are soft, and the MSI’s pad is far wider. The positioning is awkward too as it sits on the left of the machine, so trying to use the trackpad and the WASD keys simultaneously is cramped. If you want to enjoy gaming, use a USB gaming mouse.

Display

The 15.6in display has a Full HD resolution, a 144Hz refresh rate and a 3ms response time, which means it’s ideally positioned for mainstream single-player and competitive gaming.

This display has no syncing and it’s certainly possible to get a higher refresh rate – the MSI has a 240Hz screen. However, a 144Hz display is smooth in all games, and most users won’t notice the benefit of a leap to 240Hz.

The screen has middling quality. Its brightness level of 329 nits is fine, but its black point of 0.38 nits is high. The contrast ratio of 866:1 is underwhelming, and in real-world situations that means colours are a little pallid, with darker areas that appear grey rather than black. The colour temperature of 8,621K is on the chilly side, which also leaves the screen feeling a little washed-out. For gritty, metallic games and movies, that’s not terrible – but other panels have more punch. The Acer’s

sRGB coverage level of 87.2 per cent is mediocre, and this display can’t handle DCI-P3 or Adobe RGB.

The average Delta E of 2.59 is reasonable, and the panel’s uniformity is good – the brightness deviated by 11 per cent in the top-left corner and by less than 6 per cent everywhere else.

The Helios 300’s display is good enough for gaming, thanks to its refresh rate and response time – it’s smooth and fast, even in frantic situations. However, the MSI’s 240Hz panel is faster, with better contrast and more accurate colours. The Asus is also better in those areas, and is available with 1080p/120Hz and 1440p/60Hz options.

The speakers have enough volume for bedroom gaming, but they have weak bass, a muddy mid-range and a tinny top-end – they’re only useful if you have no other options. None of the Acer’s different audio modes made a difference, either. The Asus is much better, and a gaming headset would be a wise investment.

Performance

The Intel Core i7-10750H and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 are a popular laptop combination at the moment. The former component is one of Intel’s new 10th-gen CPUs, and the latter is a solid graphics core with Nvidia’s latest architecture.

The RTX 2060 included here has the usual 6GB of memory, and it runs at base and boost speeds of 1,005MHz and 1,350MHz – speeds that outpace its default specification. The Predator Helios 300 also has Fast and Extreme overclocking modes that improve the boost speed to 1,400-and 1,450MHz.

The processor has six multi-threaded cores, base and boost speeds of 2.6GHz and 5GHz and Intel’s Comet Lake architecture. Specs are rounded out with 16GB of memory and a 1TB SSD alongside Killer-branded Gigabit Ethernet and Wi-Fi 6. It’s a good selection overall.

The rival MSI has a virtually identical specification, but the smaller Asus uses a more efficient RTX 2060 Max-Q alongside a new AMD Ryzen 4000-series mobile CPU. The Acer’s RTX 2060 is impressive in benchmarks. We’ve also included Acer’s Nitro 5 to show how a cheaper option compares.

Geekbench 5 (multi-core)

Acer Helios 300 (2020): 6,022

MSI GS66 Stealth: 5,957

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: 7,693

Acer Nitro 5: 4,452

PCMark 10

Acer Helios 300 (2020): 5,111

MSI GS66 Stealth: 5,112

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: 5,682

Acer Nitro 5: 3,929

3DMark Sky Diver

Acer Helios 300 (2020): 36,003

MSI GS66 Stealth: 34,390

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: 33,007

Acer Nitro 5: 31,575

Total War: Warhammer II (Ultra 1080p)

Acer Helios 300 (2020): 64fps

MSI GS66 Stealth: 61fps

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: 67fps

Acer Nitro 5: 68fps

Wolfenstein (Ultra 1080p)

Acer Helios 300 (2020): 103fps

MSI GS66 Stealth: 96fps

Acer Nitro 5: 96fps

Wolfenstein (Medium 1080p)

Acer Helios 300 (2020): 113fps

MSI GS66 Stealth: 104fps

Acer Nitro 5: 104fps

Battery drain (120 nits, 30 minutes)

Acer Helios 300 (2020): 4 hours, 50 minutes

MSI GS66 Stealth: 8 hours, 22 minutes

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: 11 hours, 33 minutes

Acer Nitro 5: 6 hours, 32 minutes

In 3D Mark Sky Diver, the Acer scored 36,003, which is more than 1,500 points beyond the MSI and further ahead of the low-power Asus. In Wolfenstein: Youngblood the Acer averaged 103fps, which is seven frames beyond the MSI, and its 75fps pace in Far Cry: New Dawn matched the GS66.

The Acer’s 64fps pace in Total War: Warhammer II is three frames ahead of the MSI and three frames behind the Asus, which pulled ahead thanks to its AMD CPU.

The Helios 300 is a little quicker

than rivals in most gaming scenarios, and it’s got enough speed to handle key situations: it’ll play high-end singleplayer games at tough graphics settings, and it’ll run e-sports games at the speeds required by the 144Hz display.

Don’t expect much from the Acer’s GPU overclocking, though: these modes provided inconsistent results, with declining speeds in 3D Mark and Far Cry alongside a modest gain in Wolfenstein.

The Predator’s Geekbench 5 score of 6,022 is marginally ahead of the MSI, and those machines were virtually identical in PCMark 10. The diminutive Asus machine is better, though, thanks to its eight-core AMD CPU. That machine scored 7,693 points in Geekbench 5 and 5,682 in PCMark 10.

The Acer has the power to handle everyday work, multi-tasking, office applications and photo editing. However, the Asus’s AMD chip is far better if you need a laptop for work alongside play.

The Acer has no interior or exterior temperature issues, and its noise levels are fine when gaming using conventional performance modes – there’s fan noise, but it’s modest. The noise is louder when using the misfiring overclocking modes, and stressing the CPU also caused the noise to increase. Both scenarios are easy to avoid, however.

Battery life

The Acer can’t compete with either rival when it comes to battery life. In a video playback test with the screen at 120 nits the Acer lasted for four hours and 50 minutes, but the MSI lasted for eight hours – and the Asus eleven hours. When gaming, the Acer lasted for an hour and 14 minutes. You’ll need to stick by the mains if you want to use this laptop for a proper gaming session.

Verdict

The Predator Helios 300 has a decent price, a fast GPU and solid components and connectivity.

Combine this with the good keyboard and the smooth 144Hz screen, and you’ve got a system that can easily cope with mainstream gaming and e-sports.

It’s a well-rounded machine and is cheaper than the MSI GS66 Stealth with very similar performance, although that has a 240Hz display if that’s enough to tempt you to spend more.

The bigger issue for Acer is that the excellent Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is even cheaper and offers amazing performance and a better screen. Both rivals have a more svelte and portable design than the Helios 300, too.

For mainstream gaming the Acer Predator Helios 300 is easily good enough thanks to its solid components and design. If you want more finesse, specialization or CPU power, though, Acer’s rivals remain a tad more compelling. Lewis Painter

Specifications

• 15.6in (1,920x1,080) Full HD, IPS display

• Windows 10 Home (64-bit)

• 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-10750H

• Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060

• 512GB SSD

• 16GB RAM

• 2.5Gb Ethernet

• 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2

• 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C

• 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1

• 1x audio

• 1x HDMI

• 1x mini-DisplayPort

• Bluetooth 5

• Built-in HD webcam (1,280x720)

• 59Wh battery

• 363.4x255x22.9mm

• 2.2kg

BEST DESKTOP REPLACEMENT: ALIENWARE AREA 51M

Price: £3,799 from fave.co/3n8IvwN The Area 51m is a stunning, noteworthy machine. On one hand, it’s unmistakably Alienware: huge, imposing and eyecatching. On the other, several big departures mark this laptop out as a new chapter for Dell’s gaming arm.

As ever, though, this Alienware is not light or cheap. The model we’ve reviewed costs £3,799, and it tips the scales at nearly 4kg so let’s see if either of those are justified.

Design

The Area 51m uses a new style called Alienware Legend, which is sleeker and less aggressive than previous Alienware notebooks.

It looks fantastic. The wrist-rest and lid both have a soft, matte black coating, and everything else is made from magnesium alloy. The outrageous vents

and angles of older Alienware machines have largely gone, and you get slimmer screen bezels on this new design.

Of course, this is still an Alienware, so there’s still some extravagance. The logo-shaped power button, keyboard and trackpad still have RGB LEDs, and the Alienware head on the lid is similarly illuminated. The model we’ve reviewed is black, although Alienware calls the finish ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. Unusually, a white model is also available, called ‘Lunar Light’.

The Alienware’s most outlandish design lurks behind the screen. The rear bulks up to a thickness of 31mm, and the metal is peppered with hexagonal cooling vents. The vents are ringed with a band of RGB LEDs – the largest area of lighting on the laptop.

The screen is sturdy and the base is solid, and the wrist-rest only budges slightly with a lot of applied pressure. The Alienware’s build quality should be good, because it’s huge: it weighs 3.87kg and it’s 31mm thick. Few machines are this large. Even the Aorus 15 X9, which relied on the full-power mobile RTX 2070 and had a 15.6in screen, weighed 2.4kg and was 24mm thin.

One of the Alienware’s big draws is the ability to easily upgrade the internals. Only six Phillips screws secure the base, and you do get good internal options. There are two spare memory slots alongside the two occupied sockets, and the battery, storage and wireless card are easily accessible.

Because the Area 51m uses a desktop CPU, that chip can be swapped – although there’s nowhere to go from a Core i9-9900K. The graphics card can also be swapped, although the Alienware uses a bespoke mobile form factor and Dell currently doesn’t sell any alternative GPUs. There’s also no word on whether future Nvidia cards will be supported.

Connectivity is fine, although it could have been much better. You get three USB 3.1 ports, a Thunderbolt 3 connection that supports USB 3.1 Type-C and DisplayPort, and an HDMI 2.0 output. Elsewhere, there’s an audio jack, a 2.5Gb/s Ethernet output, and a port for Dell’s Graphics Amplifier – somewhat redundant in a machine with this much on-board horsepower.

However, there is spare space everywhere on this chassis, so you could easily have had more USB ports, more Type-C connectivity, a second audio jack and a card reader. That’s not the only design compromise. The Alienware uses two power bricks – so that’s an extra 1.5kg of weight.

Keyboard

The Alienware’s exterior is new, but the ergonomics will make old Alienware fans feel right at home. It’s a traditional keyboard rather than a chiclet unit, and it has a good layout: you get five discreet macro keys, large cursor buttons and four more customizable buttons above the number pad. The keys have a generous 2.2mm of travel, and a steel plate installed beneath makes the unit feel robust. It’s got anti-ghosting and n-key rollover, so it’s well built for the demands of gaming. Typing is consistent and fast – but they’re a bit too soft. This keyboard may look a bit like a mechanical unit, but it doesn’t feel like one. With more low-profile mechanical options available these days, and with the Alienware’s huge price, that’s a tad disappointing – even if most gamers will be sated by the Alienware’s typing hardware.

The trackpad is smooth and responsive, and the two discrete buttons are comfortable. However, the buttons are soft and press down too far. If you’re serious about gaming, use a mouse.

Display

The Alienware has a Full HD IPS panel with Nvidia G-Sync that peaks at 144Hz and that’s a good specification.

The addition of G-Sync means games will run with butter-smooth frame rates, and the graphics hardware easily has the power to take advantage of this feature. However, there is a missed opportunity here – because the Alienware isn’t available with a 4K screen. The RTX 2080 has the power to run most games at 4K and at 60fps.

Quality levels are very good. The screen delivers a Delta E of 1.69, which is beyond the point where human eyes notice deviation. The colour temperature of 6,950K is a bit cold, but it’s not wayward enough to make an impact. In short: colours are very accurate with an ample 95 per cent of sRBG.

The brightness level of 337cd/m2 is great, too – high enough to cope with all situations. The backlight only deviated by around 12 per cent in the corners, too, which is not high enough to prove noticeable.

The black measurement of 0.3cd/m2 is the only negative. It’s a little too high, which means that darker areas will lack a tiny bit of depth. It also contributes to a contrast ratio of 1123:1. Let’s be clear: those two latter figures are still good, and they won’t impact gaming negatively – this screen is punchy, vibrant and has good depth. It’s just that some

other laptops will be a little better. The speakers are excellent: they’re loud, with great clarity. They’re easily good enough for games and movies.

Performance

Unusually, the Alienware uses desktop components. The Core i9-9900K has eight Hyper-Threaded cores that can address sixteen threads, and it runs at a base clock of 3.6GHz with a Turbo peak of 5GHz.

Compare that to the familiar Core i7-8750H: it’s a six-core part that runs at 2.2GHz with a Turbo peak of 4.1GHz. Even the high-end mobile Core i9-8950HK has six cores and speeds of 2.9GHz and 4.8GHz.

The desktop-class Nivida GeForce RTX 2080 is deployed here, which means you get 2,944 stream processors and 8GB of GDDR6 memory. The Alienware also has a slight GPU overclock – the original base speed of 1,515MHz has risen by 30MHz, with an extra 15MHz applied to the original 1,710MHz Boost pace.

Laptop GPUs have no answer to this. A mobile RTX 2080 retains the 2,944 stream processors and 8GB of memory, but its base speed of 1,380MHz is reduced. The mobile RTX 2070 has 2,304 stream processors and a base clock of 1,215MHz.

Elsewhere, there’s 32GB of memory that runs at a mediocre 2,400MHz alongside a 512GB SSD. The drive delivered read and write speeds of 3,149MB/s and 1,376MB/s – good pace. Customers will get a RAID 0 array made from two 512GB drives, so you’ll get more space.

These components produce fearsome performance. In Geekbench 4, with the laptop at default settings, the Alienware scored 30,256. That’s sensational: at least 7,000 points better than laptops with conventional mobile chips, and sometimes more than 10,000 points faster.

In PCMark 10 the Alienware delivered a result of 7,332. That’s a couple of thousand points ahead of any other gaming laptop.

You can do virtually anything on this rig. It’ll run software for streaming, video editing, multi-tasking or handling databases alongside loads of other productivity tasks.

The Alienware matches its muscular CPU performance with lightning-quick gaming. It averaged 92fps in Total War: Warhammer II and 100fps in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided with both running at Ultra settings. In a tougher game, like Ghost Recon: Wildlands, the Alienware still averaged 73fps with every setting at maximum.

Every game will run smoothly, with 60fps averages or better. Every e-sports title will easily run at beyond 140fps – so with frame rates high enough to master that 144Hz screen. More demanding single-player titles will also run at that pace with only minimal reductions to graphical quality. This machine will also handle widescreens, 4K panels and VR headsets.

Elsewhere, the Alienware also handles Nvidia ray-tracing: its 77fps result in Metro Exodus dropped to a still-playable 66fps with that setting activated. In 3D Mark Port Royal, which tests ray-tracing, the laptop scored 5,722.

More conventional laptop GPUs will run most games at 60fps, with many titles also hitting 100fps or beyond. But none of them will do that with the consistency of the Alienware, and none will be as adept with ray tracing, VR or 4K outputs.

Check out the benchmarks below compared to the Aorus 15X and Razer Blade 15. We’ve also included the MateBook X Pro as a regular laptop that has as MX250 graphics card.

Geekbench 4 (multi-core)

Alienware Area 51m: 30,256

Aorus 15 X9: 19,446

Razer Blade 15 (2018): 17,956

Huawei MateBook X Pro (2019): 17,160

PCMark 10

Alienware Area 51m: 7,332

Aorus 15 X9: 5,913

Razer Blade 15 (2018): 4,962

Huawei MateBook X Pro (2019): 4,023

3DMark Sky Diver

Alienware Area 51m: 53,612

Aorus 15 X9: 37,362

Razer Blade 15 (2018): 28,475

Huawei MateBook X Pro (2019): 8,856

3DMark Port Royale

Alienware Area 51m: 5,722

Aorus 15 X9: 4,086

Total War: Warhammer II (Ultra 1080p)

Alienware Area 51m: 92fps

Aorus 15 X9: 82fps

Razer Blade 15 (2018): 64fps

Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Ultra 1080p)

Alienware Area 51m: 73fps

Aorus 15 X9: 57fps

Razer Blade 15 (2018): 45fps

And then there’s the overclocking. The Alienware’s first overclocking mode runs the CPU at 5GHz – so you get its Turbo speed all the time – and adds 100MHz to the GPU clock. Its second ups the CPU to 5.2GHz and adds 150MHz to

the GPU’s speeds. Using these modes delivers a modest performance boost. Running the CPU at 5GHz improved the Geekbench 4 score to 30,410, while upping the chip to 5.2GHz improved its result to 30,681.

Increasing the GPU clock by 100MHz saw its 3D Mark Sky Diver score improve around 3,000 points to 56,397, while running the GPU with an extra 150MHz revised that score to 57,089.

In the real world these boosts will give you a handful of extra frames in games, but that’s it. Manual tweaking was less successful. The Alienware can run its CPU at a peak speed of 5.5GHz and to add a total of 200MHz to the GPU, but we were never able to hit these speeds without crashing.

The Alienware’s thermal performance is inconsistent. First, the good: this machine is never loud. No matter the stress-tests we ran, in stock or overclocked modes, the fan noise is fine. It’s present, of course, but it’s quieter than most other gaming laptops, and it’s easy to drown out with the speakers or a headset. When idling and handling easier tasks, it’s basically silent.

The exterior heat levels were fine. The exterior remained cool, the keyboard only had a tiny bit of warmth, and not much heat was ejected from the right-hand side vent – so your mouse hand won’t get warm.

The graphics card impressed. Even when overclocked and in the middle of full-system stress-tests its peak temperature of 81°C is fine, and its speeds were good – it always ran at 1,725MHz or higher.

The CPU is a different matter. When running at stock speeds and when overclocked its peak temperature during stress-tests hit 99°C, which is too high. That means throttling, with

speeds being reigned in to between 4.1GHz and 4.4GHz.

If you’re using the Alienware for games then you likely won’t run into these issues. But if you want to use this machine for intensive productivity tools, too, it’s worth bearing in mind.

As ever, the Alienware Command Center app remains an intuitive tool: one tab optimizes installed games, another handles lighting and a third is used for overclocking. You also get the Tobii Experience app, which can be used to unlock the laptop, switch apps, and more – see fave.co/3oA34CK.

Battery life

Alienware uses a 90Wh battery here. That’s sizeable – the Aorus only had a 62Wh power pack – but it’s not enough to provide any real longevity.

In our standard video looping test with the screen at 120cd/m2 brightness the Alienware lasted for two hours and 12 minutes. In a gaming test that lifespan was halved. That’s no different from most gaming notebooks, and no surprise for desktop replacement.

The lesson remains the same: stay close to the mains.

Verdict

The Alienware Area 51m is an impressive, frustrating machine. It’s very good, of course, but it’s not as good as it should be – especially at this price.

Performance is stellar, with more gaming ability than any other laptop. It’ll handle everything, from today’s toughest single-player games to the fastest competitive titles, and it’ll output to VR headsets and 4K panels. The CPU will run virtually any work application, the screen is excellent, the internals are accessible and the speakers are stonking.

Elsewhere, though, good attributes are undermined. The Alienware looks great and build quality

is decent, but it’s extremely heavy – especially with two power bricks. The keyboard and trackpad are fine, but underwhelming, and the Alienware’s overclocking features don’t always work.

Battery life is expectedly poor, and the port selection could have been much better considering the size of this laptop.

Also remember that much cheaper laptops will play games smoothly too, and while also handling plenty of work tasks. If you’re not going to fully exploit the Alienware’s components you could save loads by opting for a more modest notebook.

This is a very good desktop replacement, and a certain demanding niche will be more than satisfied with the Area 51m. But, for this money, we expect perfection – and the Alienware doesn’t quite deliver. Mike Jennings

Specifications

• 17.3in (1,920x1,080) IPS 144Hz Nvidia G-Sync display

• Windows 10 Home

• 9th Generation Intel Core i9-9900K

• Nvidia GeForce RTX 2870

• 512GB SSD

• 16GB RAM

• 3x USB 3.1

• 1x mini-DisplayPort

• 1x HDMI 2.0, C

• 2x audio jack,

• 1x Gigabit Ethernet