Some were undoubtedly disappointed when the news came that Alienware is discontinuing its ‘gaming netbook’, the M11x. Luckily there is still hope for anyone looking for a really small gaming laptop, thanks to the brand new Clevo W110ER. It basically delivers desktop performance in an 11.6-inch form factor.
The new Clevo has already been released by Origin PC (in this case known as EON 11-S) and other custom PC builders and offers a great deal more firepower than the current (and final) version of the Alienware M11x. It can even be customized with Intel’s new 35 Watt quad-core Core i7-3612QM (Ivy Bridge) processor clocked at 2.1 GHz (up to 3.1 GHz with Turbo Boost). What’s different with the i7-3612QM is that it is the first quad-core chip with a 35W TDP–all other ‘QM’ chips are 45W.
But that’s only half of the story. The other half is that this comparatively tiny machine comes with Nvidia’s brand new GeForce GT 650M with 2 GB of DDR3. This GPU features the new 28nm Kepler architecture with 384 CUDA cores and a 128-bit memory bus. It is only one step below the high-end GTX 660M with the same core count but GDDR5. Considering that the resolution on the Clevo is just 1366×768, the GT 650M should be more than capable of playing the latest games at high settings on this machine. The W110ER/EON 11-S can also hold up to 16 GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM.
With a weight of 3.9 lbs including the battery pack it’s not exactly a MacBook Air competitor in terms of portability, but it is actually a bit lighter than the M11x (4.39 lbs). Needless to say, it also runs circles around the MacBook Air as well as every other laptop in this size category in terms of gaming performance.
