Flashy colors and custom paint jobs, once the sole domain of high-end gaming desktops, have been steadily creeping into notebook design for years. The Alienware Area-51 m15x takes this trend and puts a more futuristic and elegant spin on things, with its clean look and color-shifting LEDs. The notebook's smart appearance is accompanied by the best mobile performance and hardware money can buy. Even better, it's all squeezed into a relatively light (for a high-octane gaming laptop) 7.8-pound chassis, making it a delightful system for even the most demanding fraggers on the go. For all this, it easily earns our Editors' Choice.

Alienware had taken a toned-down approach earlier, with its Area-51 m9750. For that system, the company opted to go with a rubber-like body reminiscent of Batman's suit of armor instead of the wildly colored designs it usually offers. It was this slick subtlety that helped the machine achieve an Editors' Choice back then, and now the Area-51 m15x follows some of the same winning principles. Rather than cover the frame with over-the-top paint jobs or fancy graphic splashes, Alienware has given the m15x a simple sophistication. The frame is reminiscent of a perfectly appointed briefcase, minus the handle and any distracting curves. Meanwhile, the laptop's solid silver treatment is reminiscent of some of the world's most luxurious automobiles.

The lighter color also complements the notebook's extraordinary display of color-shifting LEDs. Sound familiar? These lights are similar to the LEDs found on the XPS M1730, made by Dell, Alienware's parent company. The m15x's use of them is a little more stylish, futuristic, almost, well, alien—especially in the way they're laid out. Alienware has made them look like strings of light outlining areas such as the touchpad, the touch-sensitive group of multimedia buttons, the power button, the Alienware logo, and a "pipeline" that runs down on both sides of the screen. As if that's not enough, this LED extravaganza is topped off with a cool illuminated keyboard.

As with the Dell XPS M1730, each of these areas can be highlighted using a palette of 12 colors. For instance, the keyboard can be lit up in blue, while the touchpad glows in red. These color shifts are controlled through Alienware's "Command Center" software, where you can pick colors to your liking, create themes for each day of the week, or even have an LED area sparkle when e-mail arrives.

Touch-sensitive buttons include a Bluetooth and a Wi-Fi on/off button, a button that launches the Command Center, and a Speedometer key—a unique feature that throttles down the speed of the CPU and graphics card to save battery life. These controls aren't what I would describe as feather touch; you have to press down hard in order to get a response.

More often than not, hardcore gaming laptops are typically 10-pound monsters with gargantuan 17-inch widescreens, like the Gateway P-171XL FX, the Toshiba Satellite X205-SLi4, and Dell XPS M1730. Instead, the m15x goes with a 15.4-inch widescreen, reducing its weight to a manageable 7.8 pounds and making it easier to lug to LAN parties. The smaller screen doesn't mean a lower resolution. In fact, this display boasts an ultrasharp 1,920-by-1,200 resolution, which makes your games really pop. The screen also supports the full 1080p format for watching Blu-ray, or any high-definition movie for that matter, in all its glory. Unfortunately, the system comes with only a dual-layer DVD burner (though you can throw in a BD-ROM drive for as little as $300). For a $4,499 configuration, I would've liked to see a Blu-ray drive.

Oddly enough, while the DVD burner is modular (that is, you can swap it out for an extra 320GB hard drive or an additional six-cell battery), it doesn't have a physical eject button. You have to use a combination of the Fn and F7 keys. In fact, many of the features can be accessed through the use of the Fn key. Alienware believes that the omission of an eject button complements the cleaner look, but I find it hard to believe that a tiny little button would detract from the design. If that were the case, the company could have added a touch-sensitive eject button above the keyboard or gone with a slot-loading drive, like the one on the Dell XPS M1530.

Internally, the m15x is configured with a 200GB, 7,200-rpm hard drive, which is built more for speed than for storage capacity. (Other gaming laptops feature up to 320GB of hard drive space, with some 17-inch models loading dual hard drives, which can mean up to 600GB of total hard drive space.) The three USB ports offered aren't as many as the Toshiba X205-SLi4's six or the M1730's four, but they're enough for a wide variety of peripherals. Other ports include a FireWire and a 4-in-1 card reader (MMC, MS, MS Pro, SD). There's even an HDMI port, which takes the place of both a VGA and an S-Video out port. Again, a Blu-ray drive here would have made full use of the HDMI port. With a Blu-ray drive, you could conceivably hook this laptop up to a larger, flat-panel display or even a 60-inch HDTV. (You can, of course, hook up the laptop and output any kind of video, not just Blu-ray.) The four speakers at the back of the system sound spectacular, and a 1.3-megapixel webcam sits above the screen.

During testing in PC Magazine Labs, the m15x really flexed its muscles. Although its SYSmark 2007 Preview Overall score fell behind that of the Gateway P-171XL FX and the Dell M1730 by 9 percent and 12 percent, respectively, on other measures its performance trumped that of competitors including the P-171XL FX, the M1730, and the Toshiba X205-Sli4. Granted, I haven't reviewed the latest M1730 configuration with a similar Extreme processor, but the Alienware m15X's performance scores were still a marvel in their own right. The laptop secured the best scores among gaming laptops on Adobe Photoshop CS3, CineBench R10, and Windows Media Encoding tests. I'm sure it helped that the m15x was configured with one the fastest mobile processors on earth—the Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 (2.8 GHz). Both the Gateway P-171XL FX and the Dell M1730 configurations I reviewed had previous-generation Intel Extreme processors, although that doesn't take anything away from their impressive performance prowess.

Another of the m15x's unique features is its dual graphics solution, similar to the hybrid graphics setup in the Sony VAIO VGN-SZ791N. It comes with both Intel's 965GM integrated graphics and the best mobile graphics to date—the nVidia GeForce 8800M GTX. The benefit of having a configuration like this is two-fold: One graphics solution saves battery life, and the other delivers phenomenal gaming scores (I'll let you surmise which is which). Switching between the two graphics options, or what Alienware calls "BinaryGFX," is initiated by pressing the Fn and F8 keys and then rebooting. The nVidia card dominated the competition with 3DMark scores that broke 10,000 points at low resolutions—a first for gaming laptops. It also delivered high marks on both Crysis and World in Conflict game demos. While the components are wickedly fast, the combination unfortunately takes its toll on battery life. The laptop drained completely in just 1 hour 49 minutes on MobileMark 2007 tests. But that's why you have the option of running integrated graphics. With it, I managed to get 3:05.

When it comes to a gaming laptop, I feel design is as important as being top dog in terms of performance. The Alienware Area-51 m15x beautifully balances these two concerns, giving hard-core gamers a compelling reason to empty out their bank accounts. Sure, the system's sticker price of $4,499 might seem outrageous, but you're honestly getting your money's worth with all the bleeding-edge components stuffed inside. It's a portable gaming laptop you'll be proud to show off.

Check out the Alienware Area-51 m15x's test scores.

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