Alienware - Redeeming themselves - My review of the new generation - Alienware 17

Hello all
I'm writing this because when I went looking for useful info about the new Alienware 17 vs M17xR4 a few weeks back, I just couldn't find the answers I wanted no matter how many articles I read.

My background... after a long long battle, dell decided to finally agree to replace my R4 with a new 17. This hardware failure, poor service and long battle left a very sour taste in my mouth that was hard to wash out.

Today my Alienware 17 finally arrived so I could do some real hands on comparison with my R4

I hope to fill in all the blanks about longer term annoyances that none of the reviews really cover properly

The exterior design:
WIN:
The aluminium exterior is wonderful to look at and to touch.
The lighting is (in my opinion) way more mature and tasteful (dont take me as a hater, I did love my R4 also.. but Im getting old)
The SHAPE is glorious for a few reasons.
Firstly, it wraps underneath instead of jutting out like darth vader's face mask and thus sits so much more nicely on a desk without feeling like it takes up way more real estate than it should.
Secondly, it is sooooo much more comfortable to pick up, hold and carry. The awkward edges of the R4 just pissed me off constantly.
The alien head lights up in colour again )))
The rear feet seem to be much more raised now, eliminating the need for bottle caps under the back to increase cooling. And those grills are awesome
LOSE:
Nothing.

The ergonomics:
WIN:
It feels more ergonomic to separate the screen from the base when opening. Whatever they've done, I like it.
The front edge of the laptop is far less complicated in its shape which my wrists appear to be very happy about.
The power plug goes in the SIIIIDE. You dont know how happy I am about this. The 17 / M17X is so damn heavy that I like to pick up from the front but never could out of fear of putting pressure on the dumb rear power socket.
No glossy finish around the screen means easy to open without leaving blindingly obvious fingerprints
LOSE:
Again, nothing

The screen, touchpad and keyboard:
WIN:
The screen is anti glare. Finally. This is the best improvement yet. It may not look quite as awesome as that big glossy panel but I ceased to care how good that looked once the reflections began to ruin my experience.
The screen panel is recessed into the body. Why does this matter? previously the screen was flush as one big glassy panel and the light ring around the touch pad was raised very slightly. The end result was that I'd constantly end up with marks on my shiny shiny glossy screen from where the glass would rest or flex onto the touchpad light when closed. After a while I just stopped even cleaning it off. It made the computer feel very cheap and under tested.
The keyboard feels nice and the key shapes seem comfortable
The lighty up touchpad is growing on me too, I like it. And people are wow about it
LOSE:
I feel sad that the keyboard no longer lights up like a Christmas tree. It used to set it apart from other premium laptops. Now the keys just have light up letters like the competitors. But I'm not sad, the rest of it more than makes up for this.


Other notes:

Opening this one up felt far less special than the R4. The box wasn't this huge affair with mouse pad and hat and special cloth sleeve and stickers and fireworks and dancing babies. It makes me feel annoyed with all the people who whine that it costs more than a clevo. Now that the cost of an alienware has closed its gap to the competitors to be much more similar than in times past, I bet its those same people who are whining that it doesn't come with the special sleeve and other things anymore.

Anyway, The mouse pad sucked (I use razer).. I wouldn't be seen dead wearing that hat, and I never reused the sleeve. BUT.. it did feel real special opening it up. Now its just a normal 17" laptop sized box and has lost its grandeur.

So concludes my comparison!! I'm sure performance is nice, not worried about that. I feel this has been a massssssive improvement and dell have really listened to the complaints about the previous generations design. Well done dell.

-Tristan

 

Now its just a normal 17" laptop sized box and has lost its grandeur.

But its not a normal laptop in that box..:thumbsup:
Liked the review.

 

I love the new styling myself and in the office we all think they look very nice, styling is always going to be a very subjective thing though.

 

I agree with all your points!

I would like to add to this. I just got my 17 this week and comparing it to the m17x-r3 the first thing I noticed was the structural rigidity of the laptop. The thing feels like it was made more precisely, it is hard to describe but the new one feels like a tank.

 

I agree with this. People complain about AW's prices. Cheap manufacturing in Chinese factories, locked-down configurations, and no accessories are the results. If AW upped the price $200 and improved quality and durability, offered more bonuses, or loosened its grip on configurations, I would not mind. If AW keeps trying to compete with Clevo on price, we might see generic ODM chassis in a few years...

Nice to read your opinion of the 17.

 

Yeah. Same here. I kinda miss the beanie and mouse pad etc etc.

The product is still amazing, but you know whatever... AW is still about bling, so why ditch the epic stuff?

 

Great review. I'm not that on board with the design still but probably will have to see one in person. I love my R4 because well...check my sig and DDR3L removes some RAM OC options which may be a deal breaker for me.

 

Hey widezu, I know you a real performance changer and your rig runs super fast but I was wondering, why did you choose it over the 18?

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2

 

Well I've never been the biggest fan of dual cards. Not every game works that well and the price of upgrading is double that of the m17x or 17. I can get almost all the CPU performance out of m18x out of my rig. Plus the 120Hz display really is amazing, can't go back to 60Hz anymore.

 

Nice review. Gotta say I'm in love with this machine.

 

ahhh, yeah I kind of miss my 17... i liked the lighter/smaller size. But I hear you on he upgrade cost. with a single card its easier to upgrade every to new hardware ... 2 cards.... 1400 1500 dollars... its much harder..

 

What kind of refresh rate can you get out of the 18 inch display? 90hz?

 

If you don't mind me asking, what was wrong with your R4 that they offered you a replacement?

 

Offered? I wish they offered.

I'll rant my story. It started going all fuzzy on the screen. Sort of like in the old days when your monitor plug would get half kicked out and some pins wouldn't contact. Still useable but definitely faulty

They sent a repair technician out to me four times to fix it... including replacing the screen three times, the graphics card twice, the keyboard and the mainboard once each. During this time, my laptop was scratched externally by the tech twice, constantly assembled badly with panels not clicked in, my screen hinges were broken and screws were left loose or missing inside the laptop.

After the fourth visit, the screen problem was finally fixed but my keyboard no longer worked (despite being replaced) which I attribute to them using 'refurbished' parts.. particularly the replacement mainboard (which is what ultimately fixed the graphics problem)... and the laptop would constantly blue screen when installing AMD 7970 drivers even on a fresh windows install.

After rendering my laptop even less able to be used than before repairs began (had to carry around a spare keyboard everywhere!), they went on to tell me that my laptop was no longer under premium warranty and I would have to personally drive a 2 hour round trip to deliver the laptop to the repair centre for the 5th attempt at repairs (delivery to the same company who consistently assembled it wrongly and damaged it on site) and then drive that trip again to pick it up after repaired. All this despite the original fault and complaint was lodged when the laptop still had months of warranty remaining, and it was never fixed to a point where everything worked.

Anyway, after that I lost my calm and yelled bad words down the phone for about 90 minutes.. I was one maaaaaaad cookie. But still they refused to do anything to help me, only reiterating that my laptop was now out of warranty. They put me on hold for a long time to let me cool down... and I made use of that time seeking legal advice. After coming back off hold I informed them of my pursuit of legal advice and that I'd rather use my 4 hours of driving time to instead submit a consumer complaint against dell... and they finally agreed to send a replacement.

This whole ordeal went for 3 months (thanks to waiting a long time for replacement parts and poor service in losing repair requests)... hence why I was just about ready to print some Alienware logo toilet paper.

Probably more of an answer than you were asking for but my rants only come in one size

**********************

Cheers for the nice comments everyone!
Still loving the new 17. The whole keyboard area feels and looks so much nicer and less busy. I re-pasted the CPU and GPU with arctic silver... though the factory paste jobs seemed nicely done anyway.

After new drivers and vbios and a little overclocking, this machine has blown the R4 away in benchmarks. Impressive! P8280 in 3dmark 11 with almost no effort.

The contrast of the screen feels inferior to the R4 and the definition between light greys and whites deteriorates very quickly when looking at different angles. I wish it was an IPS panel. But I have used them for a day side by side and still much prefer the anti glare screen even if it does look inferior.

 

It looks like my R4 is showing the same problems as yours was! your story is not reassuring!!! I actually had just renewed my expired warranty the other day and now I don't even know if i should contact Dell. By the way you make it sound, they'd probably sooner cancel my warranty than fix my laptop!

 

Good luck
I don't think they can just cancel an extended warranty if you've paid for it?

 

Am I the only one that misses the old power button and keyboard? I am sad that they took out the Alienhead as the power button and replaced it with just some generic button, it just gave the laptop a nice little feel to it that you own something special. And with the keyboard, the lighting does not have the same "in-your-face" look to it, because they removed the outlines on each key, so only the letters/numbers/symbols light up now. The keyboard may appeal more to other people, but really, when we buy Alienware we want to flash it and such, otherwise we would just buy a plain Clevo or Sager lol. The older Alienware model's keyboards did that so well, but I do love the light up touchpad in this =D

In my opinion the perfect Alienware 17 would be this:

Keep the nice metal look of the current gen, just add the alien head power button and original M17X keyboard back. Also, bring back dual graphics, I have missed that so much since they took it out of the M17X R3 =(..... or imagine, dual XEON CPU's! Alienware would be the first laptop with dual CPU's!

 

Yeah I miss the keyboard and button. Other people do too

If you got your wish, it would also be the first laptop to require a power brick that was heavier than the laptop itself There are all sorts of reasons why a 600W laptop are not a good idea but its pointless to discuss

 

Ha, from what i've read.. Alienware/DELL can do whatever they damn well please!

 

Thanks for the post. I might have missed it but how long did it take you to get your replacement from when they said they would ship it?

I'm in a very similar situation, I've been without a usable laptop for months and am still waiting for my replacement.

I'm a little less excited about getting this new 17 and I'm hoping that when I get it I will be pleasantly suprised. I thought the R3 looked awesome. I loved the old one piece glass screen and the look just gave it that 'hot rod' appeal. But I'll judge when I get my new one.