There’s little fun in cleaning out your closet, other than the opportunity to reminisce about the old gadgets that were the first to fall off the tech pyramid. The first to fall off the top were my old Alienware and Lenovo Legion. Gaming Laptops What we unearthed as we moved from our current Gizmodo offices in New York (and into our new, sleeker offices)No doubt they are a nostalgic machine for some, but not for me. I look at them with more nostalgia than reverence. These laptops aren’t pretty, but they feel great to use.
of Lenovo Legion Y920 is a much newer machine — seven years old at the time of writing — while the Alienware pictured here is almost prehistoric. Alienware Area-51 M5550 It first hit stores in 2006. It had an Intel Core 2 Duo and an Nvidia GeForce Go 7600. Gizmodo was just four years old at the time. I was 12 years old. The first laptop I bought, an HP, wasn’t very good at gaming. Team Fortress 2 Even if you force play at DirectX 7 level, it still runs at 10 FPS.
The latest mobile rigs from these brands are two of my favorite gaming laptops that I’ve reviewed since the beginning of the year.the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 and the Alienware m16 R2 boasted excellent feel and solid performance. It’s also reasonably priced. Side-by-side, you’ll notice that the modern model looks more understated than its predecessor. The Y920’s flashy Legion logo and sloping sides seem extreme by modern standards. Back then, it was considered understated. Alienware 13 Since 2017, it has had a large, beaked build.
Both companies were known for some really quirky laptop designs, especially of the “desktop replacement” variety, and the Alienware brand was famous for plastering the word “Gamer” on every desktop, laptop, and peripheral it sold in stores, even before they launched. Acquisition by DellThe Area 51-like Aurora M9700 is Alienware’s most unusual masterpiece. Its plastic shell is J.J. Abrams Star Trek movieThis pointless black rib doesn’t really help support it. And it’s pretty heavy. The m5550 weighs 6.94 lbs. The latest 16″ Alienware without the thermal shelf weighs 5.62 lbs. That’s a lot of weight for all those extra ports that you can’t use anymore.
A laptop designer’s goal is essentially a compromise: They need to pack as much power as possible into a limited frame, while still keeping it 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, the Pro 7i weighs 5.46 pounds. Alienware’s The large 18-inch M18 R2 weighs 9.3 pounds..
The old Area-51 had broken parts, as if a chef had mistaken it for a pork cutlet. The power button was missing, so it wouldn’t turn on. Sadly, we’ll never see the alien logo light up again. The Legion Y920 was broken as well. This is what happens when you don’t look after your device properly and shove it into a cabinet near the copy room. But when you use it, you’ll understand why these laptops were so popular in the first place.
The touchpad on older Alienwares was tiny compared to modern machines, but it still had a button to disable the touchpad so you didn’t have to worry about palm rejection, and the keyboard still types like a dream: the keys are instantly recognizable to anyone used to the old designs, and they have a satisfying depth and click when you press them (loud enough to annoy your neighbors).
The Legion Y920 has a full mechanical keyboard, and the key spacing on such a huge frame feels practically luxurious compared to other mid-sized laptops. Perhaps Alienware should remind us of the m17 R4 with its Cherry switches. The palm rest alone is comfortable and grippy in a way that’s unimaginable on modern machines. What hasn’t changed is the pricing structure of these laptops. The Y920 was $2,700 when it first came out; the 2006 Alienware laptop was $2,800; the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 9, meanwhile, starts at $3,220. The m16 R2 starts at $1,550, but you’ll have to pay nearly $2,000 for the version with the RTX 4070 and Intel Core Ultra 9.
Initially, there were compromises inherent in gaming laptops, but past machines were more open in expressing their inherent “gamer” asceticism. Is it worse now? No, not necessarily. Tastes change. Some people will feel nostalgia. Others will find the old look garish.
Perhaps to find a laptop keyboard that doesn’t feel like an ocean of sponges, we should look to the past.
