OLED Gaming Laptop

XeNoNF50

XeNoNF50

XeNoNF50

Soldato
Joined
11 Jan 2016
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Surrey
In all honesty I've been playing much more single player games recently and am about to be travelling a lot for work so need something thin, light and powerful with a good display to bring with me. Been looking at the 4k OLED gaming laptops as the displays seem awesome, especially since I'll be working on the laptop too - but they seem pricey and there is not much choice!

Seems there is the following:

Razer Blade 15 with 2080maxq for £3150
Gigabyte Aero 15 with 2070maxq for £2500
Dell Alienware m15 r2 with 2080maxq for slightly < £2500
Dell Alienware M15 R2 with 2070maxq for slightly < £2150

Or could go none OLED and get a ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX531GX with 2080maxq and i7 8th gen and 144hz IPS and is the thinnest powerful laptop I can find for £2150.

My max budget is £2500, was generally leaning towards the gigabyte aero and waiting for black Friday for it to drop a little closer to £2000 before I got it. Didn't think a 2080 oled laptop would be in my price range but turns out right now it is and am leaning closer to that

In the context of my requirements that dell with 2080 seems good right? The R2 version actually makes me consider it since the R1 was thick in comparison to the rest.
 
You have to consider how well a platform like this is going to perform at 4K in games. If you are always having to drop the resolution to get the fps then its not really worth it. I have the previous generation Aero 15x with 1070max-q and it throttles constantly even at 1080p due to cpu heat. I know they have improved the thermals in the latest revision but there is still a limit as to how much heat you can dissipate from such a thin chassis.

If you want a great screen for media consumption and gaming is a secondary consideration then the OLED panels look like an amazing choice. I think the on paper gaming potential is hampered in real life by the capability of the package.
 
Brok said:
You have to consider how well a platform like this is going to perform at 4K in games. If you are always having to drop the resolution to get the fps then its not really worth it. I have the previous generation Aero 15x with 1070max-q and it throttles constantly even at 1080p due to cpu heat. I know they have improved the thermals in the latest revision but there is still a limit as to how much heat you can dissipate from such a thin chassis.

If you want a great screen for media consumption and gaming is a secondary consideration then the OLED panels look like an amazing choice. I think the on paper gaming potential is hampered in real life by the capability of the package.
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I'm very well aware it won't game in 4k on pretty much any game - will likely be dropping down to 1080p or 1440p dependent on how demanding the game is. But in that scenario I will still benefit from the overall vividness, brightness and accuracy of the oled panel when gaming as well as the HDR (even though the implementation isn't great on windows it works well enough). Like I said I am more of a single player gamer nowadays (think assassins creed, metro exodus etc) and when using it I will still be due to hotel wifi connections etc.
 
Bought the Dell 2080 oled in the end. Managed to get it at £2405 as some cashback tracked too. Pretty good when you consider similar spec razer is £3150 and gigabyte is £3400. Looking forward to it arriving now - been really impressed playing on my LG OLED tv which makes my ultrawide VA on my desktop and previous 144hz IPS laptop pale in comparison so maybe this will have a similar effect.
 
XeNoNF50 said:
Bought the Dell 2080 oled in the end. Managed to get it at £2405 as some cashback tracked too. Pretty good when you consider similar spec razer is £3150 and gigabyte is £3400. Looking forward to it arriving now - been really impressed playing on my LG OLED tv which makes my ultrawide VA on my desktop and previous 144hz IPS laptop pale in comparison so maybe this will have a similar effect.
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Arrived yesterday. All I'm going to say is... WHAT A MACHINE!
 
XeNoNF50 said:
Arrived yesterday. All I'm going to say is... WHAT A MACHINE!
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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
 
Brok said:
You have to consider how well a platform like this is going to perform at 4K in games. If you are always having to drop the resolution to get the fps then its not really worth it. I have the previous generation Aero 15x with 1070max-q and it throttles constantly even at 1080p due to cpu heat. I know they have improved the thermals in the latest revision but there is still a limit as to how much heat you can dissipate from such a thin chassis.

If you want a great screen for media consumption and gaming is a secondary consideration then the OLED panels look like an amazing choice. I think the on paper gaming potential is hampered in real life by the capability of the package.
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I don't see how dropping the resolution is really an issue. I mean sure, you're not using all the pixels but you'll still benefiting from infinitely better contrast, true HDR support, beautiful blacks rather than the shoddy piece of crap excuse that laptops have...! And with the upscaling functions of the nvidia cards + nvidia sharpen, I feel like cleaning up a 1080p image has become quite easy.

Sure you'll never use the 4k screen to its absolute potential and that is a bit of a bummer... whilst you'll likely use a 1080p/144hz to its potential most of the time... but if you prioritise the image quality over the smoothness of gameplay.. then an OLED is the obvious choice. and 60hz oled feels fantastic tbh. If you need proper competitive play, we all know you need a monitor + a proper kb + m.


this is coming from someone whos playing on their FALD TV at 1440p + nvidia sharpen for a lot of his more demanding games like KCD and it looks beautiful. the fact is the difference between screen techs is HUGE too. Its not like we have TV-level displays in our laptops or monitors. Our displays in the PC world from an LCD perspective are pathetic.

Its funny how my ipad screen looks like it was sent from the gods whilst my old monitors and makes alienware lcd monitors and samsung va monitors look like crap.
 
What can we expect from Black Friday ? I have around £2k to play with.

Any ideas? Would like 144hz without max q gfx
16gb ram
 
aoaaron said:
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
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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).


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.
 
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Angerer said:
What can we expect from Black Friday ? I have around £2k to play with.

Any ideas? Would like 144hz without max q gfx
16gb ram
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Think the 2060 is the full fat 2060 whereas 2070 and 2080 are maxq. Seems like a good compromise. There's usually good discount codes, I assume as we are getting close to black Friday they will appear towards the end of the month.
 
XeNoNF50 said:
Think the 2060 is the full fat 2060 whereas 2070 and 2080 are maxq. Seems like a good compromise. There's usually good discount codes, I assume as we are getting close to black Friday they will appear towards the end of the month.
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what are the FPS differences of the 2060 vs 2080 maxq? i think thats what really matters.

i think with laptops its wise to just get the best you can given you can't upgrade
 
aoaaron said:
what are the FPS differences of the 2060 vs 2080 maxq? i think thats what really matters.

i think with laptops its wise to just get the best you can given you can't upgrade
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I wouldn't know to be honest. I would check out difference in firestrike scores on a 2060 laptop, 2070 max-q laptop and a 2080 max-q laptop. I think between 2060 and 2070 max-q there isn't much difference - as I was originally looking at 2070 max-q Gigabyte before the 2080 max-q entered my price range of £2500 with the discounts on this laptop. But yeah my thing was to make sure I could get the best I could for the money considering the inability to upgrade. On this Dell the only thing you can upgrade is the SSDs, everything else including wifi card and RAM are soldered and cannot be changed which is a bit rubbish.
 
XeNoNF50 said:
I wouldn't know to be honest. I would check out difference in firestrike scores on a 2060 laptop, 2070 max-q laptop and a 2080 max-q laptop. I think between 2060 and 2070 max-q there isn't much difference - as I was originally looking at 2070 max-q Gigabyte before the 2080 max-q entered my price range of £2500 with the discounts on this laptop. But yeah my thing was to make sure I could get the best I could for the money considering the inability to upgrade. On this Dell the only thing you can upgrade is the SSDs, everything else including wifi card and RAM are soldered and cannot be changed which is a bit rubbish.
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when i checked, they were quite significant for the 60fps threshold from memory.
 
Chadd said:
@XeNoNF50
What’s the OLED display like on the m15r2?

A few users on Notebookreview forums complaining of banding on grey screens.
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I just used a dark grey screen and even light grey screen and I see no banding on mine. My panel is great and looks excellent too.

As a side note, with the issue that I mentioned in the review with the trackpad a Dell engineer has already come out and replaced it and I now have absolutely no issues with my Alienware laptop. On-site repairs as part of the warranty service for this is brilliant in all fairness.
 
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