Alienware M17x Review
I bought my Alienware on the 9th of January, it was originally meant to arrive at my house on the 22nd but came on the 14th, using UPS tracking information, started off in China, went to Dubai, onto Germany to my house.
The packaging is big enough to house two desktop computers, there is good padding of the laptop so during the large amounts of transport it will not get damaged and comes with a sleeve which keeps the laptop protected from any minor scratches.
Accessories include Windows CD, drivers CD, another CD, mouse mat (which when using Logitech G3, better than Corsair MM200 mouse mat by FAR), PSU and probably something else I have forgotten
I am not going to waffle on but just get down to the pros and cons of it.
Pros:
• Exterior finish, very well done, soft touch is nice, gives it a premium look to it. The ports are correctly cut out; look as if they have went to some time making them aligned perfectly, unlike a random hole like in many other laptops.
• Hinges feel solid, having used M11x which the screen actually just fell off, these feel a lot better. I have no feeling that these will break on me any time soon
• Screen is very good, I have used a lot of extremely good screens for their colour performance (I have XX) and this screen out of the box looks nice a vibrant, I think a tad too vibrant for my liking but nothing a bit of calibration cannot fix. I see no noticeable slow response rate/input lag, there doesn’t seem to be much trailing of blacks on white and seems to be just as good as my 60 Hz TFT monitor I use. (not as good as 120hz BenQ I have, but not that far behind)
• Keyboard (UK) is very very very good imo the keyboard feels solid, definitely useable for gaming/typing daily. Not as good as mechanical keyboard but still up there. They keys themselves are of a good size, does not feel too crowded. The only problem I have with the keys, if you type by kinda sliding your fingers over the keys a little, you may find say going from ‘g’ when it is pressed in to ‘r’ your finger sometimes gets caught underneath the key. I just need to adjust my typing a little so I make sure I don’t pull a key off.
• The cooling on the system, GPU wise, is outstanding, I haven’t managed to break 72C on the GPU (OC from 850/1200 -> 900/1300) whereas the CPU is not so promising, 3rd day of use managed to get it to 75C, the reason I mention the day is because as the months go on dust is bound so build up, therefore an increase in the temperatures, I have a feeling I might need to be cleaning this laptop out a lot more often (or just stick my thermal paste on, don’t know what Dell use)
• FN+F7, this turns off any other GPU than the one you bought the laptop for, so far with AMD’s Enduro isnt so smart and running every game I throw at it on my Intel 4000, being able to just flat out turn it off is extremely nice.
• Microphone Q, when noise cancelling is turned on (otherwise picks up its own fan noise) is clear. I use a Siberia V2 and I actually prefer the quality the laptop brings compared to the headset. I do need to mention however it picks up external keyboard button pressing when on a desk, the internal keyboard, not so much
• Sound Q, one of the best sources I have heard (best being some Naim thing my fathers friend uses). I am not going to go into explaining it as I suck at explaining anything but its good k.
• Intel N2230 is fine, don’t fret over the thought that it’ll suck I get like 13ping via speedtest over Wi-Fi 3/5 bar (virgin 120mbps)
• The power supply, is really thin for a gaming laptop, something nice to have
These aren't cons, nor are they things I particularly like; I am just mentioning them for the sake of it:
• The speakers are laptop speakers; there are not up to par with my old Toshiba x300 speakers but better than you average pair of laptop speakers. They seem to lack the ability of putting out any bass without the mids and taking a hit.
• Battery life with Enduro turned off is fine for surfing the net, Skype video call. Getting around 2/3hours
• Idle Enduro off temps are around the 50-60C mark, confuses me how its kinda hot idling, but when you throw something demanding at it temps only increase around 10C
Cons:
• Weight, I know I have a 17” and blah blah, but this thing is heavy, like really heavy. I have used gaming laptop(s) before and none have been this heavy. This isn’t a major problem, its going to be sitting on my desk most of the time but if you are thinking of purchasing this and thinking of traveling much thing carefully about it.
• Glossy screen, god I hate them, they might make colour look good but when you have OCD about keeping screens, glossy screens in particular, clean this becomes a nightmare, a large huge annoying nightmare
Overall I recommend this laptop to anyone is who is crazy to spend £1500 on a laptop when you can get two 7970m’s + SSD for cheaper (; (;
Jokes aside, it is a very good laptop; I am extremely pleased with it and if you were like me wondering if I should go for this or a Clevo, I think I made the correct choice.
Feel free to ask me anything you like (apart from benchmarks, it runs FC3 everything Ultra, HDAO 2AA at like 40-50fps, that is the only benchmark you’re going to get out of me at the moment)
-Joseph ‘roughavoc’
I bought my Alienware on the 9th of January, it was originally meant to arrive at my house on the 22nd but came on the 14th, using UPS tracking information, started off in China, went to Dubai, onto Germany to my house.
The packaging is big enough to house two desktop computers, there is good padding of the laptop so during the large amounts of transport it will not get damaged and comes with a sleeve which keeps the laptop protected from any minor scratches.
Accessories include Windows CD, drivers CD, another CD, mouse mat (which when using Logitech G3, better than Corsair MM200 mouse mat by FAR), PSU and probably something else I have forgotten
I am not going to waffle on but just get down to the pros and cons of it.
Pros:
• Exterior finish, very well done, soft touch is nice, gives it a premium look to it. The ports are correctly cut out; look as if they have went to some time making them aligned perfectly, unlike a random hole like in many other laptops.
• Hinges feel solid, having used M11x which the screen actually just fell off, these feel a lot better. I have no feeling that these will break on me any time soon
• Screen is very good, I have used a lot of extremely good screens for their colour performance (I have XX) and this screen out of the box looks nice a vibrant, I think a tad too vibrant for my liking but nothing a bit of calibration cannot fix. I see no noticeable slow response rate/input lag, there doesn’t seem to be much trailing of blacks on white and seems to be just as good as my 60 Hz TFT monitor I use. (not as good as 120hz BenQ I have, but not that far behind)
• Keyboard (UK) is very very very good imo the keyboard feels solid, definitely useable for gaming/typing daily. Not as good as mechanical keyboard but still up there. They keys themselves are of a good size, does not feel too crowded. The only problem I have with the keys, if you type by kinda sliding your fingers over the keys a little, you may find say going from ‘g’ when it is pressed in to ‘r’ your finger sometimes gets caught underneath the key. I just need to adjust my typing a little so I make sure I don’t pull a key off.
• The cooling on the system, GPU wise, is outstanding, I haven’t managed to break 72C on the GPU (OC from 850/1200 -> 900/1300) whereas the CPU is not so promising, 3rd day of use managed to get it to 75C, the reason I mention the day is because as the months go on dust is bound so build up, therefore an increase in the temperatures, I have a feeling I might need to be cleaning this laptop out a lot more often (or just stick my thermal paste on, don’t know what Dell use)
• FN+F7, this turns off any other GPU than the one you bought the laptop for, so far with AMD’s Enduro isnt so smart and running every game I throw at it on my Intel 4000, being able to just flat out turn it off is extremely nice.
• Microphone Q, when noise cancelling is turned on (otherwise picks up its own fan noise) is clear. I use a Siberia V2 and I actually prefer the quality the laptop brings compared to the headset. I do need to mention however it picks up external keyboard button pressing when on a desk, the internal keyboard, not so much
• Sound Q, one of the best sources I have heard (best being some Naim thing my fathers friend uses). I am not going to go into explaining it as I suck at explaining anything but its good k.
• Intel N2230 is fine, don’t fret over the thought that it’ll suck I get like 13ping via speedtest over Wi-Fi 3/5 bar (virgin 120mbps)
• The power supply, is really thin for a gaming laptop, something nice to have
These aren't cons, nor are they things I particularly like; I am just mentioning them for the sake of it:
• The speakers are laptop speakers; there are not up to par with my old Toshiba x300 speakers but better than you average pair of laptop speakers. They seem to lack the ability of putting out any bass without the mids and taking a hit.
• Battery life with Enduro turned off is fine for surfing the net, Skype video call. Getting around 2/3hours
• Idle Enduro off temps are around the 50-60C mark, confuses me how its kinda hot idling, but when you throw something demanding at it temps only increase around 10C
Cons:
• Weight, I know I have a 17” and blah blah, but this thing is heavy, like really heavy. I have used gaming laptop(s) before and none have been this heavy. This isn’t a major problem, its going to be sitting on my desk most of the time but if you are thinking of purchasing this and thinking of traveling much thing carefully about it.
• Glossy screen, god I hate them, they might make colour look good but when you have OCD about keeping screens, glossy screens in particular, clean this becomes a nightmare, a large huge annoying nightmare
Overall I recommend this laptop to anyone is who is crazy to spend £1500 on a laptop when you can get two 7970m’s + SSD for cheaper (; (;
Jokes aside, it is a very good laptop; I am extremely pleased with it and if you were like me wondering if I should go for this or a Clevo, I think I made the correct choice.
Feel free to ask me anything you like (apart from benchmarks, it runs FC3 everything Ultra, HDAO 2AA at like 40-50fps, that is the only benchmark you’re going to get out of me at the moment)
-Joseph ‘roughavoc’
