Can you posty a review mate?
People talk about OLED vs LCD 144hz but at the end of the day, I'd take the OLED everyday for proper HDR support for games which IMO is a lot more important than the extra hz given the OLED has very decent responsiveness already.
Also 1440p+Nvidia sharpen on a 4k OLED panel I imagine looks awesome.
Could you update us?
You made totally the right decision on the alienware btw! Customser support alone and warranty wise... its way superior to the razer. The only issue I have with AW is they don't have OLED for the black model
Sure. First things first, I absolutely love the machine. The OLED screen is beautiful. I was playing the outer world's and with the colours in that game it looked stunning, despite no HDR support on the game. This screen is a proper experience. I much prefer this to having a high refresh screen, what's the point pumping out insane visual settings if you're not going to get to see it at it's fullest.
I've got the 2080 maxq with i7 9750h. It's a powerful combination. Pretty much any game at 1080p is real easy to get over 60fps. Below is an fps test with ultimate settings on breakpoint, for example. Very demanding settings, a lot of other games sit at high 70s (shadow of tomb raider for example) and others can be over 100 (F1 2019).
https://youtu.be/VzHZXOQDe_4
Generally feels very smooth despite the lack of high refresh monitor.
Sadly DSR isn't a thing on laptops so I can't set a game to render at 1440p 100% of the time but this can be achieved by setting 1440p as desktop resolution. I tend to avoid doing that and go straight for 1080p in most games and 4k in less demanding games. Can't really tell the difference in a screen of this size.
On full speed thermal profile, obviously the fans go relatively loud, though not intolerable. For me the CPU barely throttles on this mode, sits near 100 degs but still get 3.7GHz minimum in most games, but mostly sits at 4GHz which is brilliant. No undervolting or repasting yet. GPU is cool, don't think I've ever seen it above 70, usually doesn't get above 65. GPU speed sits at 1400MHz minimum in most scenarios but generally tends to sit between 1400-1550 range with no overclock.
I mostly use the laptop on my lap. I was pleasantly surprised that despite the temps on the CPU at full load it gets warm but doesn't burn my leg off. Other laptops I've had in the past would.
You can also play in quiet mode, this throttles the CPU to keep it cool (runs CPU in the lower range above 3GHz) but you get barely any noise and don't lose too much performance at all, particularly in less CPU intensive games. GPU performs as usual.
I've had one issue with my laptop, the trackpad isn't seated correctly (top right corner is raised higher than the top right corner, so much so I can feel the lip of the corner on the palm rest). Luckily with Dell's warranty support they will send an engineer to me to fix it (still on the process of booking it). That's preferable to a full return and refund (as I love this machine and got hefty discounts) and also having to send it off to be fixed.
HDR support on windows is a bit rubbish in all fairness. You turn it on and you lose a lot of saturation on things that are SDR, but HDR looks fantastic. Essentially you need to flick the switch from SDR to HDR only when you plan on using HDR content. A slight annoyance but it's mostly down to windows, not the laptop itself. Another thing is the only HDR that doesn't seem to work for me is Uplay games, not sure entirely why. Steam games and windows games etc all work.
The last thing is this laptop feels really premium. Build quality (aside from the issue) is great. Love the materials and the design too (even though I was initially looking for something more understated). The whole package and experience of using it, I understand why this Alienware would cost more than say the cheapest laptop with same specs. Love the thinness (was a major factor for me) and how surprisingly light it is.
Fwiw I got it on a 15% discount code + £80 cashback from a site which meant I got it for around £2400 in the end. Black Friday would probably yield similar if not slightly more.