MALIBAL Nine X7200

With its six-core Core i7 Extreme processor, dual Nvidia SLI graphics chips, and pair of solid-state drives configured for RAID, the MALIBAL Nine X7200 is as tricked out as laptops come. Not surprisingly, this desktop-replacement notebook blows the competition away in terms of performance, and it has more features than you can shake a stick at. You don’t get much in the way of battery life, however, and its huge 13-pound chassis will keep you close to home. The price starts at $2,610 for a base configuration, but our fully loaded review system will take a massive $5,325 bite out of your bank account. But if you want the fastest notebook ever, it doesn't come cheap.

If you have only about $2,000 to spend, you can get this system with a 3.06GHz Core i7-950, 6GB of RAM, one Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M graphics card, and a 320GB standard hard drive. But configuration options abound in all of those categories, with storage being the one we're most concerned with. Our test configuration came with two 80GB solid-state drives (SSDs), which left us with only 160GB of total storage—fast, but hardly enough to store games and videos. However, you can equip your system with up to three standard 5,400rpm hard drives at 640GB each. If you kept the rest of the configuration the same as our tested config, you could choose this option for a total price of $4,554, or a savings of $771. (Of course, these slower drives would affect performance.)

The Nine X7200 is packed with features. On the right side, you'll find four audio jacks and three USB 2.0 ports. The headphone, microphone, and line-in jacks support external surround-sound output, and an S/PDIF optical output provides an additional audio option. On the left side are DVI and HDMI video outputs, two USB 3.0 ports, an eSATA port, a FireWire port, and a nine-format flash-card reader. There’s also a cable-TV antenna jack for the TV-tuner option ($85), an Ethernet port, and a combo drive that burns and reads both DVDs and Blu-ray discs. The 3-megapixel Webcam embedded in the display’s upper bezel is a bit sharper than the usual 1.3-megapixel cams that you get with most laptops, although the image it delivers is still a tad grainy. That said, it's more than adequate for video chats.

The brushed-metal wrist rest matches the lid and contains a very responsive touch pad and dual mouse-button array, with a fingerprint reader sandwiched between the two buttons. The Chiclet-style keyboard is full-size and offers plenty of typing room. The keys are well-spaced and have a bit of flex, but the feel is not at all mushy or soft. A dedicated number pad sits off to the right, and a handful of touch-sensitive controls is at the top of the keyboard deck, including a volume slider, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi toggles, and a Webcam switch. A set of five speakers at the top of the keyboard deck is complemented by a subwoofer located on the bottom of the chassis, all of which combine to deliver one of the best audio experiences we’ve heard from a notebook. The Realtek HD audio subsystem supports Dolby Home Theater and 7.1 surround output, and it offers a boatload of presets and custom settings to help you get the exact sound you’re looking for.

With its 1,920x1,080 resolution and 16-to-9 aspect ratio, the Nine X7200’s 17.3-inch display is ideal for watching movies in full high definition, playing 3D action games, and viewing multipage documents. The glossy screen is LED-backlit and delivers sharp, vibrant colors and a bright overall image, and its viewing angles are nice and wide. Scenes from the movie 2012 on Blu-ray were displayed in high detail, and they played smoothly. We knocked out a few rounds of our favorite first-person shooter, Far Cry 2, and we were impressed with the panel’s ability to display fast motion without smearing or artifacts. The killer audio system helped make the game even more immersive—explosions and rapid gunfire sounded more realistic, with a good amount of bass behind them. 

Armed with a 3.33GHz Core i7-980X Extreme CPU (Intel’s most powerful current processor, featuring six cores), a whopping 12GB of DDR3 RAM, and dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M graphics chips (backed with 2GB of dedicated memory each) running in SLI mode, the Nine X7200 outperformed every notebook we’ve seen to date. It even left some very good desktop gaming rigs in the dust, which comes as no surprise considering that it uses a desktop processor rather than one of Intel’s mobile chips. We ran FutureMark’s PCMark Vantage benchmark test to measure the Nine X7200’s overall system performance, and it turned in chart-topping scores of 19,747 on the 64-bit version of the test and 18,280 on the 32-bit version. Our previous notebook leader on this test, the MALIBAL Satori, scored 13,283 and 11,981 at 64 and 32 bits, respectively, and it was powered by Intel’s Core i7-920XM, a mobile CPU that runs at 2GHz and contains four cores. In addition to a more powerful processor, the Nine X7200’s 12GB of RAM (the Satori uses 8GB) and SLI graphics solution (the Satori uses a single graphics chip) helped propel it to the top.

The Nine X7200’s multimedia prowess was also league-leading. On our Cinebench 10 rendering test, which utilizes all processor cores to render a 3D model, its score of 26,565 was the highest to date from a laptop and bested the Satori by more than 600 points. The same goes for our iTunes music-encoding test, in which the test machine converts our 11 standard MP3 files to AAC format; the Nine's time of 2 minutes and 23 seconds took first place and was more than a minute faster than average for a desktop-replacement notebook. And while its time of 1 minute and 54 seconds on our Windows Media Encoder 9 video-encoding test lagged behind the Eurocom D900F Panther by a mere 6 seconds, that is still almost 2 minutes faster than the category average for this test.

On the 3DMark Vantage synthetic Direct X9 (DX9) 3D-gaming benchmark, the Nine X7200 once again led the category with a score of 18,472 on the Performance level test, swiping the crown from theAlienware M17x (which scored a "mere" 12,037). And on our Company of Heroes real-world gaming test, it managed a speedy 233 frames per second (fps) under DirectX 9. The next closest score was 151fps, which came from the Eurocom M980NU Xcaliber.

DirectX 10 performance was equally impressive; the Nine X7200 scored 109fps on our demanding Far Cry 2 gaming test, while our previous leader, the Eurocom D900F Panther, churned out 66fps. On our Company of Heroes DirectX 10 test, the Nine X7200’s score of 59.2fps was just 2 frames shy of the Alienware M17x’s score, which maintains the highest score to date.

Seeing as this is not your typical notebook—and given the fact that it uses a desktop CPU—we wanted to see how the Nine X7200 stacked up to a recent Editors’ Choice-winning gaming desktop, theDigital Storm Black Ops Assassin, which is equipped with an overclocked (3.2GHz) Core i7-930 quad-core CPU, dual GeForce GTX 480 graphics cards, and 6GB of DDR3 system memory. As it turns out, the Nine X7200 beat the Digital Storm on our PCMark Vantage tests by more than 3,000 points on both the 64- and 32-bit versions of the test, which makes sense given the notebook’s six-core CPU and robust memory configuration. However, the Digital Storm held the advantage in the graphics arena. Its 3DMark Vantage score of 35,844 blew the Nine X7200’s (18,472) away, as did its Far Cry 2 frame rate of 182fps at 1,920x1,200 resolution. (The Nine X7200 scored 110fps at 1,920x1,080.) The fact is, even though Nvidia’s mobile graphics chips are more powerful than ever, they just can’t match the raw performance of their desktop counterparts—at least not yet.

Typically, battery life for a desktop-replacement laptop is somewhere between one and two hours, with few exceptions, such as the Dell Inspiron 17R, which lasted 3 hours and 28 minutes on our DVD battery-rundown test. Unfortunately, the Nine X7200 is also an exception, but in the wrong direction; it lasted just 35 minutes, which is abysmal. However, we doubt that a notebook of this size and weight will see much travel time. If it really concerns you, you can purchase a second battery for $195.

Dual 80GB solid state drives set to RAID 0 (for performance) complement the X7200’s other top-drawer components. The drives come with Windows 7 Professional, BisonCam Webcam software, PowerDVD, and a 60-day trial version of Microsoft Office. MALIBAL includes a black carrying case as part of the deal, as well as a warranty that covers parts for one year and labor for three years. You can upgrade to a three-year parts-and-labor plan for an additional $269, but we think that should be the default plan considering this notebook’s incredibly high price.

Clearly, the Nine X7200 is not for everyone. It’s big, it’s heavy, and it’ll cost you more than $5,000 to have it configured with all of these premium parts. And it's unusable far from a power plug, given its super-short battery life. That said, it is simply the fastest notebook we’ve ever laid eyes on, and it offers a wealth of features. As such, it earns our Editors’ Choice award among high-end desktop-replacement and gaming laptops. Whether you’re a gamer with deep pockets or a graphics professional looking for a (barely) portable workstation, the Nine X7200 is as good as it gets.