Dell’s Alpha out to beta gaming big boys such as Sony and Microsoft

THE Alpha is Dell-owned performance PC outfit Alienware’s attempt to carve out a chunk of the massive games console market.

Alienware Alpha games console

BEATING  inside Alienware’s Alpha game console is a proficient little PC.

The Alpha is Dell-owned performance PC outfit Alienware’s attempt to carve out a chunk of the massive games console market dominated by Sony’s Play­Station and Microsoft’s Xbox.

While the Sony and Xbox consoles use custom chipsets and ­operating systems to run their games, the Alpha is a full-blown Windows 8.1 PC, although it ships with an Xbox games controller instead of a mouse and keyboard.

The Alpha was designed to use a game-oriented operating system cooked up by Valve which owns Steam, the online games store that also manages games licensing and updates.

The Alpha even has an unused slot in its belly to handle the special Steam OS dongle, but Valve is behind on its development schedule so the Alpha has Windows and Alienware’s own software wrapper that is designed to look good on a big TV, work well with the Xbox game controller and get you easily into the Steam login screen for gaming.

Herein lay the Alpha’s strengths and weaknesses compared to a traditional console. System and game updates on modern consoles are generally seamless and fast and there’s minimal hassle getting into playing games.

The Alpha does its ­updates in the same, clunky way as any other Windows box. We waited an age while our Alpha went through numerous reboots getting everything up to date.

On the plus side, the Alpha will run any other windows software you want, such as Microsoft Office, and you can plug in all the peripherals you like into the Alpha’s four USB ports. Want a mouse, keyboard, printer for a ­little office work between games sessions? How about a bit of video encoding? No problem.

There’s also HDMI in and out ports, Bluetooth 4.0, Ethernet and wireless connectivity.

The Alpha can be had with a variety of Intel processors, system memory and hard drive sizes. Our $1299 review unit was the top-of-the-line model with an Intel Core i7 4765T processor, 8 GB of system memory and a roomy 2 terabyte hard drive but what really gives all versions of the Alpha (the cheapest Core i3 version is $699) gaming credibility is the custom-made Nvidia graphics processor.

We ran a bunch of Windows games on the Alpha, including some recent, graphics intensive shooters and found the Alpha was up to the task, certainly way more so than an equivalent laptop with low-end graphics.

Unfortunately the graphics are not upgradeable, meaning it will eventually become obsolete. While it’s obviously no laptop, the Alpha is in a portable chassis just 76mm by 203mm by 203mm.

Rating: 7.5/10