I’ve always preferred more portable laptops and not so much the bigger beefier ones out there. Alienware has had a warm place in my heart though, especially since I was a longtime owner of the m11x. Of course the m11x was still considered very portable at the time, but over the years, I’ve had less and less interest in laptops over 1” thick.
I’ll admit that I’ve always been a little envious of 17-inch laptops though, but I’ve been hung up on three things: low dpi screens, size and cost. Fix two of those three issues and I might be interested. That’s why when I recently found a heck of a deal on the new Alienware 17 R3, I just had to try it.
The model I got and tested in this post includes a Skylake quad-core processor, Nivida GTX 980M graphics, NVMe storage and a 4K screen. Minus a better CPU option, this unit is pretty much the most you can put into a laptop. After a couple weeks of using it, I’ve gotten to know it quite well and all I have to say so far is that I’m really liking it.
Check out why in the sections below.The specs sheet
Dell Alienware 17 R3
Screen 17.3 inch, 3840 x 2160 px resolution, IGZO IPS, matte, non-touch
Processor Intel Skylake Core i7-6700HQ CPU, quad-core 2.6 GHz, 3.5Ghz turbo
Chipset Intel HM170
Video Integrated Intel HD 530 HD+ Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M 4GB
Memory 16 GB DDR4 2133 PC4-17000
Storage 1x 256 GB M.2 SSD NVMe+ 1TB HDD 7200rpm
Connectivity Killer N1535 Wireless AC, Killer E2400 ethernet, Bluetooth 4.0
Ports 3x USB 3.0, 1x USB Type-C(Thunderbolt 3) HDMI 2.0, RJ45, Alienware graphics amplifier, mic, earphone, SD card reader
Baterry 92 Wh
Operating system Windows 10
Size 430 mm or 16.93”(w) x 291.9 mm or 11.49”(d) x 34.4 mm or 1.354”(h)
Weight 3.78 kg or 8.33 lb
Extras Multi-colored keyboard backlighting and accent lights, backlit trackpad, HD cameraDesign and exterior
Let’s be clear on this first – this is not a very portable machine. But it is quite a bit thinner and lighter than the old m17x I remember seeing in stores a few years back. Weighing just over 8 lbs and being nearly an inch and a half thick, I struggled a little bit picking it up with one hand. It’s certainly possible to do though and I’m a little more at ease now that I’ve had to lug it around my house for the past couple weeks. This is something I could certainly live with.
Overall, the build quality is pretty good – about as good as I remembered with the m11x. It’s mostly plastic, but the lid is made of aluminum. The plastic they chose to use was good quality though and feels like it could take a beating over time. I can certainly see this machine staying clean for the most part, with exception to the palm rest. During my short usage it was obvious to see when my palms were sweaty. Being plastic though, it was very easy to wipe up and get clean again.Keyboard and trackpad
Dell certainly keeps up their good track record with keyboards(at least from my experience) with the Alienware 17. The keys are laid out very well and are properly spaced apart. There’s plenty of space to have proper sized keys, such as the right shift and arrow keys, which I really appreciate.
I was immediately able to adapt to it and type naturally. After using it for only an hour, I scored a 47 wpm on a typing test, and I typically score 50ish on the keyboards I’m used to. The keys have excellent feedback and good travel. Touch typists should have no issues getting used to this one.
Like all previous Alienware keyboards, it is backlit and you have the ability to control the color of the backlighting. It’s not like on Razer or MSI devices where you have millions of color choices out of the box, but Dell gives plenty of options to choose from and the colors look even throughout the keyboard. Oddly enough, Dell removed white from the color choices, possibly because the trackpad looked a little pinkish. But if you’re comfortable editing the config files with a text editor, you can pretty much choose white and any other color by editing the color hex codes.
Unfortunately they neglect something that pretty much every other gaming laptop has – the ability to disable the Windows key. It’s kind of comical because I literally have had that feature for a few years in the laptops I’ve owned, but have never needed it…until now. For some reason I just can’t stop pressing it on the Alienware 17 and it drove me nuts enough to download Autohotkey to disable it.The only other notable feature of the keyboard is the hotkeys placed above the NumPad and on the left hand side. You can map each of these to do pretty much whatever you want. On top of that you have a quick switcher on the left hotkeys that changes their color and switches between profiles. Until you get used to the keyboard, you’ll probably hit that switcher key in place of the Esc a lot. Luckily it doesn’t do anything except switch profiles, but if you’re trying to pause in a hurry, you may fail.
The trackpad is nothing special really. It’s not bad, but definitely nothing to brag about. For starters, I found it kind of small – especially considering there’s so much space for something larger. The buttons are also kind of mushy, but they work good enough to do what you need to.
It’s a Synaptics touchpad so the drivers and gestures were pretty familiar and I was able to optimize the settings to my liking. I’m used to buttonless trackpads and I was still able to use it as if it didn’t have buttons(two finger taps for right clicks work fine). I did appreciate the buttons on long drags though, so it’s a plus to have them.
My biggest gripe with the trackpad is the texture. They could have gone a little smoother on this one as it’s a little too cheap feeling for my taste. I was able to track properly and initiate multi-touch gestures pretty well for the most part, but only after I updated the drivers and meddled with the sensitivity settings a lot. Long story short, I could live with it.
One added feature, pretty useless in my opinion though, is the trackpad’s backlight, which glows whenever you touch the surface. You can set it to any color, just like you can on the keyboard. It’s cool to look at for a few minutes but I just don’t see any practical use for this other than showing off. The trackpad is so recessed into the palm rest that I could not imagine not being able to find it without the backlight on.Screen
The model I received has a 17.3-inch 3840 x 2160 px resolution panel, made by AU Optronics(part number B173ZAN). Let me come right out and say it – this screen is absolutely beautiful! Not only is it an IGZO IPS screen with excellent viewing angles, it’s also full gamut, covering 100% of the sRGB spectrum. The colors look absolutely amazing and I officially take back all of my prior opinions on full gamut screens being overkill. This is my new favorite panel.
Looking closely, I couldn’t find any dead pixels or even a hint of backlight bleed. That’s not to say it’s not possible though, because a couple of buyers on the forums have complained about minor bleed in the corners. The screen is so darned bright though, so I can imagine some that are overly sensitive to it would complain a little.
It’s hard to complain about anything else though, but if I had to pick anything to improve, I guess it could the matte finish. It’s not as bad as on other Dell monitors I’ve seen in the past but it’s still pretty thick. Not as bad as where the image becomes distorted or anything – so don’t worry about that. It’s more like it’s at the high limit of my comfort zone.Hardware and performance
My Alienware 17 came with an Intel Core i7-6700HQ quad core CPU and an Nvidia GTX 980M GPU. The 980M I received has 4GB of VRAM, which is plenty enough for me. But if you want more, rest assured because the newer units sold all have 8GB of VRAM. My unit also came with 16GB of DDR4 2133 Ram, so there’s little need to upgrade it any further. If you wanted to though, this laptop supports 2 x 16GB chips according to the forums.
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Also equipped in my unit was a 256GB M.2 SSD and a 1TB 7200rpm HDD. The SSD I have is a Samsung PM951, which is NVMe, but not the fastest when it comes to write speeds. There’s also an empty M.2 slot in there so you can add extra storage if you desire. I’m told the 1st bay is x4 and the second is x2 but they are both SATA compatible as well, so you have a lot of storage options available – including putting two SATA drives in RAID.
internals
I ran all the typical benchmarks to test both the CPU and GPU on this unit. The only surprise was the PCMark score, which was actually lower than previous Haswell models I’ve seen. But other benchmarks actually lined up as expected. Here are my results:
3Dmark 11: P11294 with CPU at 67°C and GPU at 58°C;
3Dmark 13: Cloud Gate – 18463, Sky Diver – 20353, Fire Strike – 8148;
PCMark 08: Home Conventional – 2764, Home Accelerated- – 3183;
CineBench 11.5: OpenGL 47.88 fps, CPU 7.43 pts, CPU Single Core 1.44 pts;
CineBench R15: OpenGL 62.95 fps, CPU 680 pts, CPU Single Core 129 pts.
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I also tested out a couple games and was very happy with both how they performed and how cool the Alienware 17 stayed while under load. I’ll discuss the cooling in more detail in a little bit, but here were the gaming scenarios and my results:
Fallout 4– Ran from one end of the Commonwealth to the other, constantly looking and shooting all over the place.
Ultra settings, Max AA and AP 1080p – Solid 60fps with occasional drops to 55fps. Solid performance!
Default high settings at 4k – 25-33fps.
Default medium settings at 4k – 30-40fps
Peak CPU temp 72°C, peak GPU temp 64°C
Crysis 3– Played through the opening scene for 10 minutes
Very High settings, no AA 1x AF, 1080p – 46-58fps
High settings, no AA, 1x AF, 1080p – 60fps with minor drops to 55fps
Medium settings, no AA, 1x AF, 4k – 25-36fps
Peak CPU temp 78°C, peak GPU temp 72°C
Dragon Age: Inquisition – Walked around one of the first camps and got into a battle. Played for about 10 minutes for each session.
Default ultra settings at 1080p – 35-40fps
Default high settings at 1080p – 60fps
Default high settings at 4k – 20-25fps
Default medium settings at 4k – 30-35fps
On battery: Ultra 1080p settings – 20-30fps
Peak CPU temp 74°C, peak GPU temp 66°C
As you can see, the 980M in the Alienware 17 is fully capable of handling even the most demanding games at 1080p resolutions. At 4K though, it’s barely enough to be considered “playable”. This is what I expected though as I still don’t think we’re ready for 4K gaming on mobile devices.
I was also able to monitor the VRAM in the games I played. The most usage I saw was only 3GB, so for most of you the 4GB model would be enough. 8GB is certainly overkill, but makes this machine highly futureproof though, so if you’re a modder or one to keep laptops for many years, the 8GB model might be the model for you.
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