Are the Alienware laptop issues over?

So I tried to buy an Alienware 13 with OLED screen 6 months or so ago and lot of people on this forum objected saying how there were heating issues and design flaws that made these laptops fail!

6 months later, Are things better? Can I buy an Alienware 13 now because I want to game on that OLED screen. Thank you for any info!

 

no

 

The issues will not be over anytime soon. Since Broadwell Intel only make BGA CPUs for their mobile line, which wouldn't be as big of an issue if the GPU wasn't BGA as well. You can live with the same CPU, but soldering the GPU is only done to make it needlessly thin and to make you pay through the teeth to repair it when it inevitably fails (or just replace the whole laptop). The poor cooling is also unacceptable. If they advertised the laptop as an ultra-portable I wouldn't have an issue, but to advertise their soldered components, crappy cooling and RGB visual aids as a gaming laptop is an insult. Asus, Razer, Acer, Gigabyte et cetera are no better either.

 

Wow. So what do you recommend then? Who is "better"?
Someone recently told me that Dell went with the route of having an awesome warranty program rather than having awesome design and manufacturing and how that is a lot more profitable. Basically, it's cheaper to replace the laptop and exchange parts than to design and manufacture a good one.

 

Depends what you want: if you actually need something portable then you will have to settle for something like that Alienware (or something with a Max-Q GPU). If you don't need portability build a desktop - or go for a laptop that can at the very least have a GPU upgrade (some MSIs or Clevos pretty much).

I wouldn't be surprised if that was true about Dell, and to be fair their warranties are usually good. But their warranties were also good even when they actually made good Alienwares (M15X, M17X, M18X etc).

 

Asus Zephyrus with the MAx-Q design was interesting but needed more resolution than FHD.

Another reason to buy the Alienware 13 is that I'm pretty sure there won't be any more OLED screens in the future. A while back, Dell pulled back ALL OF THEIR Refurbished 13 R3 with OLED screens from the outlet. The new 8th gen Alienware 15 and Alienware 17 is already out but no word on the "New Alienware 13"

I was fortunate to use an R2 with OLED screen for a while and two things stood out to me - How the processor sucked and how the screen was literally the most amazing thing I have ever laid eyes on this good Earth. I eventually gave the laptop away but I'm determined to own a decent OLED gaming laptop before production ends forever!

I'm gonna have to bet on their Warranty programs.

 

this hasn't changed and will not change. this is the nature of soldered CPUs and inadequate cooling (the cooling system itself is fine, but the thermal pads and paste used are of terrible quality)

 

Interesting. so what about third party resellers that do repasting and change thermal pads for you? Would going through them be a better idea?

 

Take your time and do it yourself. It's not hard, just go slow and read through the process. iunlock has a guide for it just follow as he did.

 

It looks like Alienware released new versions of the 15 and 18 models with upgraded internals but the Alienware 13 remains unchanged. Probably due to the shortage of OLED screens. They probably can't find a good enough screen that comes close the OLED.