Laptops Arena

Alienware has been building gaming notebooks longer than any other company here, and its experience shows in the 9.5-pound Aurora m9700. Anything weighing less than ten pounds is positively svelte in a crowd like this. The Aurora m9700 is encased in a solid chassis adorned with Alienware’s trademark glowing AlienEyes and rubberized grips.

Notable features include a 1.3-MP tilting camera above the display, a touch-sensitive, quick-launch pad, and a front-mounted optical drive. Positioning the optical drive away from the sides allows for better port distribution and makes room for the RAID configuration that is fast becoming a company standard.

Alienware takes the crown for packing SLI graphics into a 17-inch, sub ten-pound notebook; the Aurora is certainly more portable than Vigor and Voodoo’s giants and more powerful and affordable than the Dell XPS M1710. With SLI starting at $2,396, this should be the first choice for all but the wealthiest gamer.

Read full review here.