Alienware m15 review: The mother of gaming notebooks finally gets slimmer

Temperature, battery life & portability

Temperature, battery life, & portability

Temperature

I measured the external temperatures of the four quadrants of the notebook after 40 loops of 3DMark's Fire Strike Extreme stress test. This amount of time is more than enough to get an idea of your average maximum running temperature for this workload.

There's nothing much to remark on here, and the Alienware m15 turned out temperatures that are more or less in line with the competition. Its palm rests also never got uncomfortably hot, which is perhaps the most important thing here. 

Battery life and power consumption

I used the built-in battery life benchmark in PCMark 8 Home to assess the battery life on the laptops.

The Alienware m15 is actually pretty power efficient, coming in second only to the Gigabyte Aero 15X. Despite that, its 60Wh battery is still on the smaller side, and it can't really compete against the notebooks with 80Wh batteries or larger. That's a pity, considering that the m15 is also thicker than those laptops. Alienware does have the option for a larger 90Wh battery, which should really have been included by default.

Portability

The portability index is an objective measure of how portable a notebook is, taking into account factors like size, weight, and battery life.

Unfortunately, the Alienware m15 didn't do that well here, owing to its relatively chunky dimensions and mediocre battery life.