For a dozen years PAX has been a celebration of gamer culture – a bastion for likeminded fans to get together and utterly geek-out. Why does that sound familiar to us? Because it’s the founding ethos of Alienware, born in a garage near Miami two decades ago.
As we proudly celebrate our 20-year anniversary and countless firsts along the way, from simply adding color options on a desktop to introducing the desperately imitated but never duplicated Alienware Graphics Amplifier, we couldn’t be happier to be among our people at PAX. And today Alienware blasts into this year’s PAX West with another first: our first VR-ready notebooks. Our uncompromised dedication to performance and quality, and an unyielding drive for innovation has helped us earn the loyalty of passionate gamers around the world. These gamers, like us, seek a competitive advantage and want to win…and want to look good doing it. The new Alienware family of notebooks can help with that, plus they add a little something special.
Supercharging the experience of mobile gaming, our innovative new line of notebooks takes gameplay into an immersive parallel universe. Gamers will be awe struck as they’re transported into beautiful gaming worlds like in No Man’s Sky with graphics powered by NVIDIA’s new GeForce® GTX 10 Series. While we thank NVIDIA for providing the graphical horsepower, our own engineers have come up with innovative ways to make the new Alienware 17, 15 and 13 more powerful than ever before. With advanced materials and better thermal management, they keep the action hot while you stay cool enabling you stay in the game longer. These materials also add durability and rigidity; they all come together in a new, beautiful chassis that’s even enabled all the notebooks to be thinner than previous generations.
At PAX, on the fourth level, booth 223, we’ll be showing off all the new gear with awesome, even exclusive gameplay and VR demos. We have merch and special show offers for anyone that comes by, and a fun scavenger hunt for raffle prizes every day. We’ll also be streaming each day on Alienware.tv, including in-depth looks at the new notebooks and features like Tobii eye-tracking, awesome gameplay including exclusives on Lawbreakers, as well as some special guests.
On Friday, September 2nd from 1-2pm in the Hydra Theatre we’ll host a panel – Virtual Reality is off the Chain – with our good friends from AMD and THE VOID, moderated by the incredible Becky Taylor (@omglazerkittens). For those of you that do come around we’ll have a raffle for the new Alienware 15, as well as some two AMD Radeon 480 RX graphics cards from AMD. And even if you don’t win we’re giving away commemorative Alienware 20th Anniversary pins if you bring your raffle ticket to our booth.
And even if you don’t make it to the show but are in the area, keep an eye out for our Alienware truck (above). It will be making stops in the Westlake Park area by the convention center, and stopping by Fry’s in Seattle on Sunday, September 4th.
You can track all the fun we’re having at PAX, and be a part of it, with #AlienwareLive.
ALIENWARE 17
At our booth we can’t wait to show you the goods, headlined by our Big Dog, the Alienware 17. The ultimate gaming notebook, the new Alienware 17 delivers full-throttle excitement with an emphasis on screen size, gaming performance and overall immersion. We’ve added support for optional Tobii eye-tracking technology, letting you fine-tune your skills with an exclusive new Ovenwolf app that can replay your gaze pattern, allowing you to learn from mistakes and find new opportunities to crush the competition. Some of the other Alienware-first features we worked on with Tobii include:
- Wake on Gaze – In order to wake the notebook up from sleep mode, the user looks directly at the Alienware logo and the device will power up. This ensures the notebook acts on the specific user intent of activating the device and avoids accidental power ups.
- Keyboard Lights – Now equipped with the ability to understand the user’s current focus and attention, the Alienware 17 is able to optimize the power exchange between both the keyboard’s lighting zones and the screen. When the user is looking at the screen the keyboard backlights remain off since the user is not currently interested in this area. Key illumination also only occurs in the region the user is currently looking, rather than the entire keyboard, further optimizing power management.
- Alienware Logo and AlienFX Chassis Lights – These visual brand elements are also gaze-reactive and optimized to save power.
- Stay Awake / Dim Screen – These presence features inform the device when the user is both present and engaged with the screen, prompting the screen to either stay awake or dim to conserve power when the user engages/disengages with the screen. These features are also found in the Alienware 15 and 13 models.
- Autolock – Another presence feature powered by Tobii, this enhanced security measure prompts the device to lock when the user steps away from the device. This reduces the vulnerability of unauthorized use by another user when the sleep timer is engaged but the device is not yet locked. This feature is also found in the Alienware 15 and 13 models.
- Windows Hello – As previously seen on other eye trackers, like the Tobii EyeX peripheral, Alienware 17 owners can also count on more secure and more convenient device log-ins with Windows Hello. Activated immediately after Wake on Gaze, this biometric login gets users into their device faster and more conveniently without the need to type in a traditional password. Tobii platforms are the only eye tracking platforms in the world validated to support facial recognition for Windows Hello.
Alienware 17 options include:
- Intel Core i7 CPU up to 6820HK Dynamically Overclocked up to 4.1 GHz
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5,AMD Radeon RX 470 with 8GB GDDR5, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 with 8GB GDDR5, and available in November, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 with 8GB GDDR5
- 8GB DDR4 2400 MHz memory up to 32 GB
- Various storage capacities across SATA and PCIe, including a 3 TB option: 1TB PCIe (boot drive), 1 TB PCIe (storage) and 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (storage)
- Networking includes Killer e2400 Gigabit Ethernet, wireless and Bluetooth
ALIENWARE 15
How do you perfectly balance size and speed, performance and portability? Alienware 15, of course. Our new mid-size 15 notebook packs more power in a thinner frame, with the same new hinge-forward chassis design to increase ventilation just like the Alienware 17. A VR-ready portal into 360-degree worlds, its own visuals are delivered on a 15.6” FHD, IPS Anti-Glare, 300-nits display. The notebook remains portable because of the anodized aluminum, strong from a steel-reinforced full-sized TactX keyboard, and temperature regulated by copper thermal management. Along with an infrared camera with support for Windows Hello, the new keyboard introduces optimized RGB LED lighting, each key providing a full 2.2mm of gaming-grade travel. For a gamer-first notebook, it has exceptional battery life with a 68 watt-hour lithium ion battery and an optional 99 watt-hour battery.
Alienware 15 options include:
- Intel Core i5 CPU up to Core i7 6820HK Dynamically Overclocked up to 4.1 GHz
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5,optional AMD Radeon RX 470 with 8GB GDDR5 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 with 8GB GDDR5
- 8GB DDR4 2133 MHz memory up to 32 GB
- Various storage capacities across SATA and PCIe, including a 3 TB option: 1TB PCIe (boot drive), 1 TB PCIe (storage) and 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (storage) Networking includes Killer e2400 Gigabit Ethernet, wireless and Bluetooth
ALIENWARE 13
Coming in November, the new Alienware 13 may be our smallest notebook, but we’ve packed in some sizable improvements. Like the whole notebook family, it will house the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10-series graphics and support out-of-the-box VR.. Nothing is better than games at high frame rates, especially on a breathtaking OLED display with response times around 1ms. In combination with the new lighting design and AlienFX, this notebook is dazzling. The richness of the colors on the 100,000:1 contrast ratio screen are a perfect complement to the trillions of lighting combinations through eight unique programmable lighting zones, with up to 20 distinct colors. It is also thinner than its predecessor, with a top cover incorporating anodized aluminum and an aerospace-inspired carbon fiber-filled base to ensure rigidity, durability and portability. .
And if you want to kick it up even further? Just as like our previous notebooks, the new lineup supports our Alienware Graphics Amplifier. With the same ports and reliability, the Graphics Amp is designed as a plug-in companion so you can quickly and easily supercharge your experience with the latest discrete graphics performance. Who knows what AMD and NVIDIA have up their sleeve for the future; with the Amplifier you’re ready to drop it in and play.
If you’re mobile enough to get to PAX West, come visit the Alienware booth (Level 4 #223) check out our rigs, and hang with us! I hope I see you here! And if you can’t get here in person simply become a member of Alienware Arena, sign up and make sure you don’t miss anything! Follow us on Twitter @Alienware and keep an eye out for us on Facebook. In the immediate near term join us on Alienware.tv, or please sign on and watch our Twitch stream as we’ll have the latest updates and information during this awesome, exciting time.
