| I cant quite describe just how refreshing it is to write about a laptop that looks absolutely nothing like an Apple MacBook. Alienwares design language has always been a world apart from practically anything else on the market, as the company strove to build machines that evoked living alien creatures, with gaudy lighting seeping out of their frames. |
| Todays Alienware 14 design shares much with its predecessors, but its more angular, more reserved, more precise. When you open the finely textured aluminum lid with its glowing slits and watch the keyboard, trackpad, and underbody light up in anticipation of your commands, it almost feels like youve stumbled upon an alien artifact. | | At 6 pounds and 1.6 inches thick, its not the most comfortable artifact to carry around or stuff into certain kinds of bags, but the reinforced magnesium alloy frame is as stiff and strong as Ive ever seen on a consumer-grade laptop. Theres no flex, no creak, not even when you grab the base at opposite corners and twist with a good deal of force. If not for the spinning hard drive and LCD screen, Id probably have no qualms about occasionally dropping it on the ground. | | The machine might not be a seamless unibody hunk of machined metal, but it feels crafted in a way that makes sense for gamers. The black soft-touch surfaces give the laptop a dark, silky, grippy, premium feel, and insulate the hands from heat. Meanwhile, theres enough metal to make the machine strong and to catch the eye without appearing as garish as previous generations. | | The Alienware 14 doesnt have every port you could possibly want (Thunderbolt? HDMI input? VGA?) but all the majors are here and about as plentiful as youd expect: three USB 3.0 ports, three 3.5mm audio jacks, an HDMI out, an SD card slot, a Gigabit Ethernet socket, and a lock slot. The USB ports are nicely spaced, with one on the right and two slightly apart on the left, and a slot-loading DVD (or optional Blu-ray drive) is still around for movies and disc-based installation. |
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