Alienware 15/17 VR Ready Notebooks Ready to Roll

October can be a month for tricks, but also for treats. And this month we’ve got one of the latter for our Alienware customers – our new Alienware 15 and Alienware 17 notebooks started shipping last Friday! The product pages just went live last week, and you can read all the details and finally place your order. The Alienware 15 is available at $1,349.99, with the Alienware 17 at $1,499,99; each with awesome VR-ready configurations. Now that’s what we call a sweet deal.

Alienware 17 gaming laptop

Alienware notebooks are the gold standard for mobile gaming, offering a counterpoint to our award-winning line of desktops. What can you expect from Alienware 15, 17 and, coming in November, the new Alienware 13? Sure they’re thinner than ever before, increasing their portability. Sure our new notebooks incorporate advanced materials for better thermal management allowing you to play those all night gaming sessions.  But most importantly, with their graphics driven by the top of the line NVIDIA GTX GeForce 10 series, their improved power and performance make the entire Alienware family of notebooks VR ready, a significant milestone in our history of innovation that further accentuates our 20th anniversary this year.

So let’s talk performance. In our lab, we broke down some of the details to show our improvements over the previous generation. When we look at the new Alienware 17 and compare its 10-Series graphics to the previous generation (comparing NVIDIA’S GeForce GTX 1060 vs their 970M) we’re talking up to 60% performance increase in Fire Strike graphics score and up to 51 percent performance increase in 3DMark 2011 Extreme.1 For the Alienware 15 generation comparison (again that’s the new GTX 1060 vs the 970M) you get up to 57 percent better performance in Fire Strike graphics score and up to a 56% increase in 3DMark 2011 Extreme.2 You add in peak performance from Intel’s Skylake processors (don’t worry, Kaby Lake will be here soon) and you have a gaming powerhouse that can handle just about anything you throw at it.

Balancing superior gaming performance with portability, Alienware 15 is the perfect way to make your world – and the alien worlds you want to explore – VR ready. Coming standard with a 15.6” FHD, IPS Anti-Glare, 300-nits display that makes gaming outdoors during the day crystal clear, its options include FHD 120Hz display with NVIDIA G-Sync for incredibly smooth, synchronized frame rates during those intense squad battles all in UHD IGZO for 4k resolutions.  Its new Alienware TactX™ keyboard also introduces optimized RGB LED lighting, will last for up to 10 million keystrokes and each key providing a full 2.2mm of gaming-grade travel.

The ultimate mobile gaming notebook, the new Alienware 17 offers full-throttle excitement, with maximum screen size, performance and immersion. Our flagship notebook gains more power with overclocked Intel Core i7 k-series processors and DDR4 memory running up to 2667 Mhz – more than enough power to handle any multiplayer battles filling the screen with action and mayhem. The notebook will look sweet as well with a sleek anti-smudge finish along with easier access to all internal components. Need to distinguish between your squad commander and teammates voices? Our new speaker design includes internal smart-amps that monitor audio waveforms, enabling the use of the entire thermal margin of the speaker for stronger sound.  The new notebooks even roll out our new Alienware Sound Center with Audio Recon technology which ads a mini map to supported games letting you know which direction in-game sounds are coming from.

Both the Alienware 15 and 17 incorporate a standard infrared camera and come pre-packaged with Tobii eye-tracking software.  For the full suite of Tobii eye tracking features to work on the Alienware 15, you’ll need an attachable Tobii eye-tracking camera; on Alienware 17, an upgrade option, has the Tobii camera already built in. Alienware has partnered with Tobii on an exclusive package of features you won’t find anywhere else. Paired with an exclusive new Overwolf app, it lets you replay your gaze pattern, letting you learn from mistakes and improve your competitive focus. Enjoy faster log-ins through Windows Hello biometric facial recognition and secure autolock when you step away. Wake the notebook from sleep mode simply by looking directly at the Alienware logo, my personal favorite. Manage power better with the screen and our patented AlienFX lighting zones illuminating, or dimming, based on where you look.

In November, once our rigorous internal testing is complete to ensure reliability, we’ll be rolling out the Alienware 13. Our smallest notebook is getting some big improvements; it certainly has what it takes for the most portable 360-degree gameplay experience on the planet. More on that coming soon!

 

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1Based on Dell Labs testing in September 2016 using 3DMark Fire Strike and 3DMark 2011 Extreme benchmarks comparing the Alienware 17 (The new “Cassini” NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060) with its predecessor Alienware 17 (“Echo” with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M).Configurations were comparable in order to isolate graphics performance. Actual performance will vary.

2Based on Dell Labs testing in September 2016 using 3DMark Fire Strike and 3DMark 2011 Extreme benchmarks comparing the Alienware 15 (The new “Cassini” NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060) with its predecessor Alienware 15 (“Echo” with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M).Configurations were comparable in order to isolate graphics performance. Actual performance will vary.

About the Author: Joe Olmsted

Joe Olmsted serves as the director of product management for Alienware products at Dell. In this role, Joe leads a team of people who define all products that carry the Alienware brand. Joe first joined Alienware in 2003 while Alienware was still a small business operated in Miami, FL. Joe first left his mark on the brand by bringing a series of living room focused PCs to market under the DHS moniker. Over eight of the next eleven years, Joe has been defining and developing nearly every type of product from Alienware including peripherals, desktops and notebooks. Prior to joining Alienware / Dell, Joe held various product marketing positions at Intel, NEC and was a co-founder in an online music startup. Joe now resides in Austin, Texas with his wife and daughter.