I have read alot of reviews complaining about problems galore with their Alienware laptop. However after recieving mine I'm happy to report that there was absolutely nothing wrong with mine, maybe I'm lucky or maybe they other people citing problems were overclocking or doing other things that risk damaging their laptop. I inspected my laptop closely and found no dead or bright pixels, no scratches or blemishes anywhere. And when i turned it on there were no problems booting, or bugs or crashes or slowness (do note my order was fulfilled by amazon). The only funny thing i ran into is that Star citizen was not recognized by nvidia so Star citizen would use intel graphics resulting in really low frames. To fix this just go into the nvidia control panel and add the game in the right pane, then in the dropdown box select "High-Performance NVIDIA processor" after doing this star citizen runs awesome on this laptop.
anyhoo for the actual review.
The chassis:
I was immediately impressed with how solid this laptop felt in my hand, it felt like a macbook. The outside is aluminum and the finish is superb, second to none. The hinge feels solid and I haven't experienced any flexing or creaking. The unit is hefty but not particularly heavy when in my backpack, after cleaning out a little junk in my backpack it feels great for carrying around. I wouldn't carry it long distances in a briefcase but a messenger bag would be fine. The interior is relatively tame with flat plastic on both sides of the interior. This isn't regular plastic but instead that soft almost rubbery feeling plastic (it's not grippy like rubber though). The keyboard feels excellent and has a little more actuation force than my mechanical keyboard with Cherry switches but it's not too hard to press that I think I will wear myself out typing alot. The trackpad is gorgeous and the best trackpad I've ever used (I haven't tried other high end computers trackpads but this is leagues better than other mid to low end laptops).
The Backlighting on the keyboard is really cool and really useful at night. During the day you can turn off the keyboard backlighting because the keys are white print during the day so you can read them like any other keyboard.
Performance:
This pc's performance is amazing. I was able to run star citizen on the highest settings getting 35-50 fps @ 1080p and this game isn't even that optimized yet. All my other games run at the highest settings @ 1080p no problem. it does produce alot of heat but the fans aren't too loud and they have a good sound to them (not an annoying whine but a calm whooshing sound when they ramp up). Games like league of legends dont even get the fans going and not playing games this computer is silent as death, you literally can't hear it when your not playing games.
The hard drive that came with this computer is unacceptable for such high end hardware and i recommend you get a Samsung 850 EVO when you buy this computer. I was able to replace this computers harddrive with a solid state and did a fresh install. The process i took that had no problems is as follows.
1) go to [...] and use that to make a bootable usb drive
2) swap out the old hard drive with a solid state (i used a 2.5" sata instead of m2)
3) power on the computer and follow the normal windows installation
4) go to [...]=drivers and download and install the drivers, the general principle is first install the chipset drivers, then install the networking drivers (Lan and wifi), then sound driver and video drivers (i got my video driver from nvidia.com instead). Then last but not least the alienware specific programs (command center, airplane switch, onscreen). Windows will automatically activate so you dont enter a product key (the product key is fetched from the motherboard automatically)
after doing this I had this baby purring like a kitten, no crashes, no bsods, no problems. then i just installed some games and they ran fine.
display:
This display is pretty good, i got the 1080P one. The colors are clear and accurate and the matte finish is good to reduce glare. The viewing angle is reasonable, just so so. It gets quiet bright and should work excellent in an office setting, and better than average in daylight (due to matte screen). I personally recommend getting the 1080p version instead of the 4k because windows has poor scaling and 1080p is about the highest resolution that you can do no scaling and see everything fine. Instead buy an external 4k display so you can get a nice large one. However I have read good things about the model with the 4k screen.
Sound:
The speakers are by Klipsch and it has two speakers on the front and a subwoofer on the bottem so it's a 2.1 system. The sound is great for a laptop, the woofer adds base but isn't dubstep by any means, the front speakers are clear and can get reasonably loud but they aren't a bose stereo system. However the real gem in this machine is it's Creative X-FI sound card, THIS IS A BIG DEAL! I've used creative sound cards before and they are the best when it comes to a sound card, realtec is nothing compared to creative. The number one feature of creative is their "crystalizer" what this does is restore sound fidelity lost due to compression, I like to turn this thing up to 100% but you can tweak it to anything inbetween. The crystalizer feature makes music and sound go from sounding like it came through a telephone, to sounding like your really there at the stage, or by that person. To experience this get nice headphones or earbuds with the standard 3.5mm connector NOT USB, if you get usb then the sound will be through their driver and you'll miss out on the ear heaven that is creative X-FI. Also I recommend turning ON the 3d surround when using the laptop speakers but TURN IT OFF for headphones when your listening to music.
also the creative sound card filters out background noise if you turn that feature on and I say turn it on. My room sounded like a warzone off my speakers, but all my friends hear out of the built in michrophone is my voice, nice and clear. The built in microphone is superb but if you want an external microphone make sure it is 3.5mm standard connector and not usb for the same reason as stated above.
Battery life:
This thing has crazy good battery life, which is unheard of with gaming laptops. Mind you if you play games on this you may get 2-3 hours depending on how demanding the game is. Where the battery life really shines is when your using the intel graphics instead. You can expect 6 hours (or maybe even a little more) doing things like web browsing, watching 1080p moves, programming, word documents email etc.
conclusion:
I'm a computer science major and I got this laptop because although i like small ultralight pc's I hate having a slow computer and moreso I hate having a tiny screen when most of my day is spent writing and reading code. This screen is excellent for this purpose because I can do a split view where my code editor is on one side and google chrome on the other (all coders are google addicts lol). I also have to run a linux virtual machine so i can test that my code compiles on it and this computer works great with vmware (I wouldn't recommend trying to boot linux as the host operating system because of not having drivers for this hardware). I also like playing games and this baby does that too. All in all i think this computer works great for my uses, the battery life is great, the hardware is top notch, and the quality and aesthetics make you smile when this is what you get to use for your day.
| Standing screen display size | 17.3 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Processor | 2.6 GHz core_i7 |
| RAM | 16 GB |
| Memory Speed | 2133 MHz |
| Hard Drive | 1 TB SATA |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 4 |
