Question about alienware quality

for a while now I've been thinking about buying an alienware m15x laptop. While reading about them I've come across quite a few reviews and stories where the laptop either came with some sort of faulty hardware or shortly after getting it they had some problems. I was just wondering if there really is a big problem with quality control for the m15x or if this is just most of the people who got screwed over getting mad and writing about it.

 

People only write when theres something wrong - I cant see many people starting a thread saying OMG the laptop came without a fault! Yay!

TBH the chances of getting a problem from factory are slim, and the worst possibility if you need to upgrade a driver. In all honesty theres no more quality control issues than there is with apple or sony... its just the market Alienware is in (Gaming/High performance) is more picky, and more likely to write about it on a forum and push everything on the PC to the limits.

Honestly, dont worry about it!!

 

the build quality is great!, most of the time only people with issues come to these forums. to be honest i had an issue with my first M15x and got it quickly resolved. so don't worry, its a great laptop.

 

im siding with blaze the people who write on this forum are a diffrent kind of grp and not your normal consumer. There really into tweaking things and such and come here to work out issues when they start having problems if you stick with the default drivers dell recommends for there hardware and sure you can dable in the GPU's manufacturers drivers you wont have a problem. Dell is already in the works of a new bios to aleveate the hiccup in the first batch of R2s so i gaurantee ur pretty much safe.

 

The problems are also exaggerated because new people post new threads about the same problems rather then use the search. If they have a problem they google, and the first thing to pop up for a lot of them is NBR. But on average, if there is a large problem, it's widely known here. Even the smaller issues. I never had a problem with my M17X that I could live with. Had a battery issue, but was otherwise very happy with it. If people don't have a problem, they don't feel the need to search the internet for a solution, so they never find NBR. Thats why here you might see a lot of little quirks with the system.

 

well the m15x had a hinge problem where the hinge would bust open...

but AW seemed like they learned from their mistakes and shown that in the M17x and the M15x so the quality should be very good now. considering the M17X is aluminum that thing is a tank.

 

.... I miss my M17xR1...

 

Me either

 

I have a several year old M1710, with a 7900Go chip from ages passed. It has been on (left on and available for folks to use) so many years of it's life it's scary. There are easily thousands of hours of on time with this machine.

I replaced the CPU with a 2.33.
I replaced the hardrive and installed Win 7.

Other than that I've not needed to make any changes. I do use a laptop cooler most of the time, in case that matters for what comes next.

It has needed 2 service calls in 4 years. The first after 3 years, the video card died. Service came to work and in 20 min in a conf room, had replaced the card and left me with a working machine. I handled the "tech call" before the service via a chat which was easy to go through, but took 45 min of testing. However, I was able to do other things (because we were on chat) while the tech did any checking he needed to do. All in all, it was an easy and very commendable process.

3 months later, that video died. Then I was unhappy. But I let them come one more time and replace the video card. This time, they replaced it with what the service guy and I could tell was a completely brand new part and I got a 7950 out of the deal as well. That also took 20 min to replace and I was back up and running. That part has run nearly a year, again with very long hours on the machine, without any incident. I may well extend the warranty to 5 years for one more year of assurance, but this notebook has served very well.

There is no guarantee that the M15x behaves this well for so many years. But I thought it would be worth hearing from someone who got a lot of years out of an older XPS gaming laptop, to give you at least some indication that these machines are built very well. I do not overclock this machine. There is no need to, as it's fast enough. However, now 4 years have gone by, and it's time to get a new M17x R3 and move this machine to general family use.

Hope that helps.

 

Like any mass produced product, there are defects expected to surface in units shipped. That said, AW build quality is probably the best you will find in the computer industry outside of Apple.

 

alienware far surpasses anything ive ever used

that includes (except dell and dell xps)

apple macbook pro
gateway fx (best bang for buck and i LOVE these laptops for their 3 hour 30min+ batery life)
sony vaio (heat issues)
compaq
acer
lenovo

 

LOL - any question you could possibly have about quality can be answered by a quick glance of this forum.

Maybe you don't like the answer you are seeing.

I'd still get this M17x if I had it all to do over again. I paid a lot less for mine than everyone else around here though and that tempered my expectations.

 

Well it was more like on many sites with reviews such as cnet there are just a large amount of reviews saying that the laptops broke or came broken. From what you all have written it seems that this is just a loud minority more than any problem on Dell's part.

 

Exactly.

Alienware build quality is IMO the best among pc laptop builders. It's why I own an m17x vs a sager or asus.

 

90% of the people on cnet do not own the M15x, they most likely had a previous generation Alienware which were pretty notorious as far as quality. Though, ever since Dell acquired Alienware, their new products have been insanely better.

Personally, I just received my M15x 2 days ago and I love this thing. No issues what so ever. Played Team Fortress 2, Bad Company 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and World of Warcraft. They all ran perfectly fine on High settings.

 

I ordered my M15x last Oct/Nov (09) and have had zero issues with it since I've had it. I did have to upgrade my DVD playing software for the blu-ray player to work properly, and I was fortunate enough not to update to the A03 upgrade before folks figured there was a problem with it.

The thing to remember, I think, is that this was pretty new tech when released (i7 laptop, pretty powerful graphics, blu-ray, etc), so there was a potential for growing pains right from the start.

Like others have said, I would buy Alienware again (and, in fact, might once the M17x issues are sorted out and I can find a buyer for the M15x). The only other "gaming" laptop I've owned for comparison was the Dell XPS1710 with the GTX7950, and this one doesn't get near as hot as that one did!

 

Well it seems that overall nobody has had much trouble with alienware so far as quality goes. Anything else I should know before getting one?

 

get diapers cuz when the package finally arrives youll mess yourself!

 

The same for me here. I've ordered my M15x about a month ago. Then, after reviewing the NBR Alienware forum, I started being concerned. People reporting performance and quality control issues. Did I do a bad mistake? Finally, I told myself that I should go through and see myself how is that M15x. I'm glad I haven't cancelled my order. I own a Macbook Pro and to me, that M15x is really well designed and built (as far as PC's go). I've updated the drivers and installed many latest action games. All of them ran flawlessly with maximum or high settings. I'm very happy with my setup. My only complain is that battery life is short (less than an hour) and that thing is really sturdy. I'm going to travel with it shortly and lugging it and using it on an airplane (even in business class) might be difficult. But once at destination, that "puppy" will rock for sure! So, bottom line, I'm really happy with my purchase and I believe Alienware laptops are a notch or two above mainstream laptops.

 

lol MBP swaped straight with an M17x lol

@ OP: I asked exactly the same question before pulling the trigger on my R1. And it happens that me, Lewdvig, masterpace etc... all had or are having a MB which is considered having best build quality.

That said, you can count on our words

 

So when you say the battery life is short, just how short are we talking? Is this an hour playing games or just surfing the web or what? Also how well does the stealth mode feature work to extend battery life?

 

Yup. I agree with Joker and the the other folks here. I've owned a bunch of laptops over the years. Many, many of them Apples. Until I got this AP M15x I would have told you that there isn't a laptop running Windows (Apple/Bootcamp doesn't count) that has the build quality of an Apple machine. Alienware proves that opinion of mine wrong. My M15x is outstanding. It's built like a tank. No bad pixels or scratches. Overall it just "feels" right. Almost as good as holding a Unibody MacBook Pro. And if you're into geek-pr0n like me, the unboxing of an Alienware product is such a freakin' turn on! Just like opening a shiney new Apple product. Enough of my fantasies. Get an Alienware. They're awesome!
-joe-

 

Haha... For me unboxing my M17x was much more exciting compared to unboxing my MBP. The AW is like a gem inside a lot of protection. You dont see it until you get to the last cover (the black sleeve) Unboxing a MBP is so boring. You lose all your excitement because you see it straight away after opening the first and the only box

 

^^This sums it up. Love my M15X, game with it during lunch and break at work, and get all kinds of drools, plus it's ran every game I've thrown at it so far.

 

I will be unboxing mine as soon as it gets here