The M11x triumphed as last year’s T3 Gaming Gadget of the Year. Now,  Alienware’s M17x (M17XR3) gaming laptop is up for the computing gong with a feast of top end specs in a larger but still portable package.

Price: £1499.99 | Alienware

Encased in a Base Stealth Black casing with red keys, the Alienware M17X R3 is a true portable PC gaming powerhouse.

An jaw-flooring line-up of specs is led by Intel’s latest Sandy Bridge Core i7 CPU, running at 2GHz processor with 4GB of RAM. Handling polygon-shifting duties is Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 460M graphics card with 1.5GB of RAM. It's optimised for gamers, but also makes mincemeat of streaming, viewing and editing HD video. There's also a 256GB SSD for that little bit of extra speed when firing up games and other software.

The 17.3-inch, 1080p, full-HD screen tops it all with a rich colour pallete, wide viewing angle, sharp detail and superb 2D and 3D playback. A nine-cell battery takes your gaming time past the three hour mark. A knock-out machine.