There’s little joy in cleaning out your closet, other than the chance to reminisce about old gear that first fell off the pyramid of ancient technology. The first ones to fall from their peak were veteran Alienware and Lenovo Legion. gaming laptop We discovered this when we were moving out of our current Gizmodo offices in New York City and into a new, fancier digs.. To some they are undoubtedly nostalgic machines, but not to me. On the contrary, I looked at them with less awe and more desire. These laptops don’t look great, but they feel great.
this Lenovo Savior Y920 It’s a much newer machine. It’s only seven years old as of this writing, but the Alienware you see in the pictures is actually prehistoric. this Alienware Area-51 m5550 Gizmodo first launched in 2006. I was 12 years old at the time. The first HP laptop of my youth was so bad at gaming that I couldn’t run it Team Fortress 2 Even when forced to run in a DirectX 7 level, it ran at 10 FPS.
The latest mobile devices from these brands are two of my favorite gaming laptops I’ve reviewed since the beginning of the year. SpecificallyLenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 and Alienware m16 R2 have good feel and stable performance their prices. Comparing side by side, you can see that modern models appear softer than older models. The dazzling Legion logo and sloping sides on the Y920 seem extreme by modern standards. At the time, this was considered restrained. Just look alien 13 From 2017, it has a large frame and a beak.
Both companies are known for some truly wacky laptop designs, especially of the “desktop replacement” variety. The Alienware brand is notorious for screaming “Gamer” on every desktop, laptop and peripheral on store shelves, even before it hit the market. Acquired by Dell. The Area-51 and the similar Aurora m9700 are Alienware’s pinnacle. That plastic case looks like it came off that set JJ Abram’s StarCraft Movie. Those pointless black ribs don’t actually help you hold it up. And it’s a heavy sucker, too. The m5550 weighs 6.94 pounds. The latest 16-inch Alienware without a hot stand weighs 5.62. Having all these extra, now-deprecated ports costs a lot of pounds.
The goal of any laptop designer is essentially to compromise. You need to pack as much power as possible into a limited frame while staying cool and portable. The 17-inch Y920 weighs 9.76 pounds. There’s no 17- or 18-inch version of the 7i (at least not yet), but for comparison’s sake, the Pro 7i weighs 5.46 pounds. alien Large 18-inch m18 r2 weighs 9.3 pounds.
The old Area 51 is in shreds and looks like some chef mistook it for a fried pork chop. It wouldn’t turn on, especially since its power button was missing. Sadly, we may never see that alien logo glow again. Legion Y920 is also dead. These things happen when you don’t take care of your equipment and stuff it in a cabinet near the photocopy room. But when you use them, you realize why these laptops were so popular in the first place.
The venerable Alienware’s trackpad is tiny compared to modern machines, but it also has a trackpad disable button so you never have to worry about accidentally hitting it with your palm. Its keyboard still types like a dream. Its keys are instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with past designs, and they have a satisfying depth and clickiness (and are loud enough to annoy your neighbors).
The Legion Y920 features a fully mechanical keyboard, and the key spacing on such a massive frame actually feels luxurious compared to other mid-sized laptops. Maybe we should remind Alienware of the m17 R4 with those cherry switches? The palm rest alone is very comfortable and non-slip, something modern machines dare not do. What hasn’t changed is the pricing structure of these laptops. The Y920 cost $2,700 when it was first launched. That 2006 Alienware laptop cost $2,800. Meanwhile, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 9 starts at $3,220. The m16 R2 starts at $1,550, but you’ll have to spend nearly $2,000 for the version with an RTX 4070 and Intel Core Ultra 9.
Initially, the compromises inherent in gaming laptops were there, but machines of the past have been much more open in expressing their inherent “gamer” asceticism. Is it worse now? No, not necessarily. Tastes have changed. Some may look at them wistfully. Others may think the old look is gimmicky.
Maybe we should look to the past and find a laptop keyboard that doesn’t feel like a sea of sponges.
