The joy of cleaning out your closets is small, save for the chance to think about the old gear that falls first from the ancient technology pyramid. First to fall from that peak was the old Alienware and Lenovo Legion gaming laptops that we unearthed while moving out of Gizmodo’s current New York City offices (and into new swankier digs). No doubt they are mindless machines to some people, but not to me. Instead, I look at them with a bit of respect and a bit of sarcasm. Those laptops don’t look great, but they feel great.
I Lenovo Legion Y920 the latest machine. It’s only seven years old, but the Alienware you can see in the pictures is historic. I Alienware site-51 m5550 It first hit store shelves in 2006. It sported an Intel Core 2 Duo and an Nvidia GeForce Go 7600. For context, Gizmodo was four years old at the time. I was 12 years old at the time. The first HP laptop of my youth was so poor in sports that it would work Team Fortress 2 at 10 FPS even when forced to play at DirectX 7 levels.
Those latest mobile rigs are the two gaming laptops I’ve reviewed since the beginning of the year. SpecificallyLenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 and Alienware m16 R2 boast a great feel and solid performance their number. On each side, you can tell how much more modern types are softer than their older counterparts. The flaming Legion logo and slanted sides on the Y920 seem to go beyond modern standards. At the time, that was considered taboo. Just look Alienware 13 from 2017 with its large, beaked frame.
Both companies are known for their laptop exterior designs, especially of the “desktop replacement” variety. The Alienware brand was notorious for screaming “gamer” with every desktop, laptop, and peripheral it put on store shelves, even before it. acquisition by Dell. Area-51 and the same Aurora m9700 are high Alienware at its most extreme. That plastic shell looks like it broke a set of JJ Abram’s name Star Trek films. Those silly black ribs aren’t really helping you lift yourself up. And it’s a tough field too. The m5550 is 6.94 pounds. The latest Alienware 16-inch without that hot shelf weighs 5.62. That’s a lot of pounds to have all those extra ports, which don’t work now.
The goal of any laptop designer is naturally one of compromise. You need to pack as much power as possible into a limited frame and still keep 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), though just for comparison, the Pro 7i weighs 5.46 pounds. Alienware’s The large 18-inch m18 r2 clocks in at 9.3 pounds.
The old Area-51 was so broken it looked like some cook had mistaken it for pork. It wouldn’t turn on, because its power button was missing. Sadly, we probably won’t see that alien symbol light up again. Legion Y920 was also dead. These things happen when you don’t take care of your equipment and put it in a cupboard near the copy room. But when you use them, you realize why these laptops are so popular in the first place.
Early Alienware had a tiny touchpad compared to modern machines, but it also had a touchpad off button, so you didn’t have to worry about palm rejection. Its keyboard still writes like a dream. Its keys are instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with past designs, and they press with depth and a satisfying click (loud enough to annoy your neighbors).
The Legion Y920 features a fully functional keyboard, and the key space in such a large frame feels luxurious compared to other mid-sized laptops. Maybe we should remind Alienware about the m17 R4 with those cherry switches? The palm rest alone is comfortable and anti-slip in a way that modern machines dare not. 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 was $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 around $2,000 to get the version with RTX 4070 and Intel Core Ultra 9.
In the beginning, the compromises that come with gaming laptops were there, but previous machines were more open about bringing out the reflections of their natural “players”. Is it bad now? No, it’s not. Taste changes. Some may look at them with nostalgia. Some may think that the old look is fancy.
Maybe we should look to the past for a laptop keyboard that doesn’t feel like a sea of sponges.
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