From the R4 to the 17, my review :) ( with pics )

Good morning / afternoon all,

So During the course of my R4 technical issues Alienware offered my a new 17 so I thought I would do a review with some pics.

Old Specs of the R4
i7 3630QM
16gb DDR3
2 x 500GB 7200 drives in raid, changed to an OCZ 128GB SSD and 1 500GB drive for storage upon receiving system.
1920x1080 WLED
BluRay DVD-RW
AMD 7970M

New Specs of the 17
i7 4800MQ
16GB DDR3L
2 x 750GB 7200 drives in raid with an 80GB caching drive. Changed to the same setup as above with the exception of a 750gb for storage now and the Caching drive is going to run a few games as another SSD.
BluRay DVD-RW
Nvidia 780M


Upon overall first impression, I am going to miss the old design of R4 but I will get into why during the pics and what not....

Looking at the two of them from the front there is a little less of an aggressive look to them IMO. The grills are there but are actually aimed back instead of slanted forwards and of course the LED's inside them are gone, replaced by the lighting strip that goes from the front all the way around the laptop to the back. The new lighting system is really nice, I really like it and it really makes the laptop pop in a room with the lights off, although you don't see them much when the lights are on but that is common of pretty much any LED.


Better look with the LED's and no flash so that you can really see the difference. While I really like the new strip, I am going to miss my speaker grills so I am kind of toren...ultimately this is going to come down to personal preference and you are either going to like it or not...I do like the new design but I also like the old I just can't be pleased.



Top view of the 2 machines with a very obvious color difference, which makes it look a lot more silver then black. I have to go with the new design on this as I much prefer it to the old, especially with the 2 LED lines and the alien head that now changes color again! (never understood why they dropped that ) .



Opened up, and immediately you can see the color differences. Although they are both still black , the R4 clearly has a more glossy finish that although looks nice I usually found was just a dust and fingerprint magnet so I don't think I will miss the glossy interior surfaces all that much. The new 17 also looks a lot lighter in these pics due to the flash then it actually does with me looking at it beside me right now so take that into account. The one thing that I am immediately noticing is that I am not a big fan of the new anti glare screens at all...although you can't tell by looking at the pictures there is quite a large difference between the 2 color wise and contrast wise. I am not saying it is a bad screen by any means, in fact when I plugged avatar in on Blu-ray it looks fantastic but I def miss the old screen. I have already been in contact with my tech support rep and he is looking into possibly swapping it for the trulife variant...I would have pushed for that if I knew it was this much of a contrast but oh well. Again, it isn't a bad screen, it just isn't as nice as the one i had.



Right hand side with your USB 3.0 / Ethernet / Card Reader and Blu-Ray drive on the 17 and for the R4 you have HDMI in / USB 3.0 / ESata USB 2.0 combo port / Blu-Ray drive and Card Reader. Not much else to say here except you lose the ESata USB 2.0 combo port which was good if you used a lot of USB devices but overall not really a lose as I never use ESata for anything.



Left hand side of the R4 has your HDMI out / USB 3.0 ports / Speaker and headphone ports / Ethernet port / VGA port / Laptop lock hole? whatever it's called....and your mini HDMI port. The new 17 you will find your power plug (formally on the back of the R4 , which i really liked and will miss) / more USB 3.0 ports / Laptop lock hole.. / HDMI in and out combo port / mini HDMI port and your speaker/headphone connections. The only beef I really have with this is as stated above I really like the cord going into the back of the laptop as I prefer to not see it at all but it is a very minor gripe and really does not affect much, in fact now you can see the LED on the power cord which you never could before.



New vs old keyboard and I have to side with the old keyboard on this one although the new one does have a quieter sound when your using it, the R4 sounded at times like a desktop keyboard. I really liked the outline around the keys of the R4 and feel like the new keyboard feels more like just a stock LED keyboard from any other number of manufacturers although the new Alienware TactX keys are a nice touch ( Above the keypad ) . I am also not a fan of getting rid of the media bad and integrating those features into the function keys, I liked having my volume accessible without having to reach for the function key. This will probably really come down to personal opinion again and I am sure there are many people that prefer the new keyboard to the old ones



Pic of the bottoms of both machines , and it is pretty hard to argue that this is not an upgrade as there is just so much more grill for airflow. They nixed the customized nameplates as many of you know but the new nameplate bears your assembly date, and the specs of the machine which is still kinda nice, not a really big lose at all just a little less personalized but as not all areas where able to get the personalization I can understand why they may have chosen to nix it.

The goods! And the more interesting stuff haha.....


The bottom covers both still come off quite easily and with 2 screws the cover slides off although the new one will actually slide the opposite way and seems to fit much snugger then the R4 :thumbsup: and the screws are quite a bit smaller, you will need a small headed Philips to get them off without stripping them. I didn't get to far into the system as I was just swapping drives but I must say I did prefer the old drives in the R4. The new 17 contains more screws holding the HDD bays in there and one of the 2 drives attaches the caddy on top of the drive vs the sides but this is more just a time thing then anything else as there were a few more screws. The screws that were used if I remember correctly were all the same size and they are all pretty small so you will need to be careful not to drop any as they would not be fun to find. You may not be able to see it but you can get at the wireless card in the new 17 without removing the media bar and keyboard! This was quite an exciting feature for me as I replaced the 2230 Centrino card in my R4 almost immediately as it was not dual band and it is quite a pain to get at, especially if you need to send the machine in for service and need to replace all the stock parts. The battery seems to be an unpopular option on the new ones as it is built in and you have to remove the bottom cover to get at it but it really does not bug me all that much as I never took my battery out unless I was taking the bottom off the machine. My only concern would by static shock on this new one if you don't unplug the battery as there could still be juice in the system. The DVD drive is much easier to get at this time around as well, the R4 had it buried so far into the system that you had to pretty much take the motherboard out to get at it lol...There is a larger heatsink pipe on the GPU although I don't know if this if for cooling performance or not. They also painted the heat sink/pipes to better match the rest of the system I presume. Both the CPU and GPU are still just as easy to get at and therefor repaste or change if you ever wanted to.

Better pics of the insides...

New 17


R4


The backs of the laptops, not much to say here except you can see that the R4 has a power plug on the back where as the new 17 does not. The new 17 does look a little more streamlined and less blocky? for lack of better terms. Overall the new 17 has more curves to it.



All in all I really like the new design, although there are certain aspects of the R4 that I will def miss such as the speaker grill LED's and the screen. I have not had a chance to do much with it yet as I have had it less then 24 hours although so far, it runs almost identical to the last one including temperatures on both the CPU and the GPU. The overall feel is quite a bit more sturdy which was to be expected due to the difference in construction materials which have gone back to metal instead of plastic, not that the R4 ever felt cheap or overly plastic to begin with. The new design also looks and feels smaller? although I admit I have not broke out a tape measure so I can't say for sure. I do miss the Creative sound card that came in the R4 , I just felt that the R4 has a little bit better sound overall , not that the new 17 has bad sound in any way. I didn't take any pictures of the track pad but I actually don't mind the new one, which is actually a 180 from how I thought about it before I physically used and saw it, I used to hate the looks of the whole thing lighting up but I actually don't mind it now.

Overall it seems like a much cleaner look vs a really futuristic out there look. While these new machines still very much look like Alienware's, mostly due to all the LED, I think they also present a much more professional look at the same time which IMO is welcome.

I am happy with the new machine and hope for many trouble free years with it

Thanks for reading.

 

a well written and much appreciated review. I completely agree with you on the review "cept the glossy display of the R4, i would prefer a matt option meself. The GPU of the 17 over the R4's (i have the 7970M...& well there is no comparison is there ) , and the ease of access to critical components...are the only pro's to buying the 17 over the R4.... infact if they had kept or slightly modified the old look, and the spy pictures had reveled that i'd have stayed my purchase of the r4

apart from those considerations...

i prefer the R4 over the 17
"looks"
"lighting"
& "le-sound card"


edit..is it just me or the bezel adjacent to the hinges look "thicker" than the R4

 

Nice review, but which screen do you like better? Can you put a black wallpaper in both of them and tell us which one looks more black? I would really appreciate that.

PS: Do you have the matte or 3D screen?

 

Hey Cryzer,

I have the matte screen on the 17, but I am looking into replacing it already as I don't like it TBH. With 2 black backgrounds I much prefer the screen from the R4 so glossy? provided there are not other differences aside from the 3D. As soon as I started the new 17 up my first thought was .... oh crap this screen isn't as nice.

I have also found a slight defect with it , it seems that someone got a little over zealous with a screw driver on the GPU heatsink and broken the screw and stripped the head right off of it....so Alienware will be sending me a new heatsink to swap out and get that right.

I do also notice that the GPU fan ramps up almost all the time on this one when gaming. The R4 while sitting on my Cooler Master U3 almost never ramps up unless under heavy load.

 

Thank for the review now im sure i want one i used the alienware m17x r1 of one of my friend the build quality is better than the r4 if i remember well and you says it feel stronger and side by side they both look awesome

 

Pretty good review. You can definitely tell the difference between the two laptops, and I can't help but feel like the new lineup is an upgrade to the previous generation. I have also owned both the AW 17 and M17x R4 and have to say, while they are both excellent machines, the AW 17 still pulls ahead in build quality and performance. With that being said, there are a few details about the R4 I miss, such as the AlienHead power button and the dedicated media keys. But, all in all, the new and improved Alienware 17 is a beast, and I definitely recommend it to anyone in the market for a gaming notebook.

I honestly can't wait to see what Alienware does next year...especially now that Dell is going private!

 

It's a honest review, and love to read it when you put a lot of side by side picture to compare......

Good job, +1 Rep

 

that's hard work +1 for the effort. Thanks for taking the time to share it with the community.