Hands on Dell’s Sick XPS M1730 Gaming Laptop

Overclocked to 3.4GHz, Dell’s XPS M1730 gaming laptop is a smoking machine, listing from $2,999 to a “You have a serious gaming problem” price of $4,486, and we got a hands on at its official unveiling at DigitalLife. The only laptop currently capable of running the Ageia PhysX engine, and Unreal Tournament 3’s dreaded Tornado Mod (shown in the gallery), it’s built for an immersive experience. There’s sort of an Ambilight effect going on, something that is apparently best enjoyed when playing games in near darkness: all of the LEDs can be programmed to work with the game engine, so that when you take a hit, or pick up a weapon, the lights in speakers, keyboard and outer shell all react, like this:

It’s a heavy machine, starting at around 11lbs, but easily up and over 12lbs once you load ‘er up. Dual HDD slots can be used in a RAID array, and Blu-ray will be an option, good for the 1920 x 1280 screen that has a sweet 7ms response time. Here it is, from all angles:

[Official Site]