Hard Stuff: Falcon Northwest TLX review

Got a hankering for Ferrari-like paint jobs? Check out Falcon Northwest's TLX. Its lid is covered in an eyeball-caressing, glittery blue paint, with a majestic falcon's head emblazoned across the middle. Nice. The trackpad glides easily under the fingers, and the keyboard is one of the finest my digits have ever danced on—laptop or no. Not only that, but games look glorious on the 15.6” screen—all images were sharp and rich with color. The TLX's Nvidia GTX 460M is a rugged little videocard, and at 1920x1080, with high settings and 4x antialiasing/4x anisotropic filtering, it snagged a very decent 28fps in STALKER: Call of Pripyat and a fantastic 50fps in DiRT 2. The TLX's modest one hour and 40 minutes of battery life (under constant use) is at least enough for a single viewing of Commando (or any other short film) while traveling.

For those always on the go, the included, Falcon-branded backpack has loads of pockets and a sturdy top-handle. The power brick is practically a ball and chain, but that's a necessary evil for higher-end parts like the TLX's Core i7 2820QM processor. The single Crucial 256GB SSD hard drive is speedier than a standard 7200RPM hard drive, but a quarter-terabyte will quickly feel like an abysmal prison for anyone that wants to use the TLX as a portable cinema or mobile gaming library. Its power can't be questioned, but its value can—at almost $3,500 (and with just a one-year standard warranty), you could have two other laptops for the TLX's price.

SPEC ? Price $3,495 ? CPU Core i7 2820QM 2.3GHz ? RAM 16GB DDR3 1333MHz ? GPU Nvidia GTX 460M ? Storage Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB ? OS Win 7 Home Premium 64 ? Link www.falcon-nw.com ? Category Dream