Alienware 17 R3 Laptop Review 4k 2016 Ports
The Alienware m17 R3 (starts at $1,649.99) is a premium gaming laptop aimed at hardcore enthusiasts. With no core functionality differences, it's quite simply a big-screen version of the recently reviewed Alienware m15 R3—like with the Razer Blade 15 versus the Blade Pro 17, only a pick of display size for high-finish, hardcore gamers. The m17 R3 maintains the brand'south unique sci-fi styling, and the power of our pricey $3,409.99 configuration tops the charts in this price tier. With many configuration options and the avant-garde features that gamers are looking for, this is one of the all-time 17-inch gaming laptops bachelor. Only the cost of its pinnacle models and our test unit'due south disappointing bombardment life keep information technology from challenge an Editors' Pick honor like its m15 R3 kin did.
Yous Alienware It Well: A Signature Sci-Fi Blueprint
In terms of blueprint, this is simply a larger version of the Alienware m15 R3 in every way. The design language is identical, as are the aesthetic flourishes and layout of the display and inputs. It boasts the same mod styling as the m15 and the Alienware Aurora desktop, with a black-and-white (officially named Lunar Calorie-free) color scheme and some honeycomb ventilation.
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The rear thermal and port hub is ringed with a customizable LED low-cal, while the private keys and ability push besides offering customizable lighting. The overall effect is a laptop that looks like it's from the futurity, or at least the gear up of a sci-fi Television receiver show.
Non everyone will like this very mod, stylized take, but I adopt it to many gaming laptop designs. Information technology'south at to the lowest degree unique, with a clear design vision that doesn't go over the pinnacle for me.
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Of grade, the Alienware m17 has a bigger footprint than its downsized counterpart, measuring 0.88 by fifteen.7 past 11.6 inches (HWD). That'south not likewise beefy for a big-screen laptop, though its 6.five-pound weight certainly limits its portability. Information technology's not incommunicable to have on the route, simply y'all won't desire to arrive a daily driver—you'll definitely observe it weighing downwardly your pocketbook. It's heftier than the slim Razer Bract Pro 17 (0.78 by xv.6 past 10.2 inches, and 6.i pounds), but trimmer than the monstrous Acer Predator Helios 700 (ane.half dozen by sixteen.9 by 11.8 inches, and 10.6 pounds).
Equally for the build quality, the body is fabricated of a soft-impact plastic that, while not metal, feels sturdy and high quality. The keyboard quality is solid—the keys lack any satisfying feedback or click, only aren't mushy despite a decent amount of travel. The RGB backlighting looks specially squeamish against the white chassis as well. The touchpad is similarly good, only nothing to write abode about; its drinking glass surface ensures smooth tracking, only information technology'due south on the smaller side.
The included ports offer plenty of options. The left flank of the laptop includes one USB three.1 Type-A port, a headphone jack, and an Ethernet jack, while the right side hosts two more USB-A 3.one ports and a microSD card slot. The rear holds the remainder, including the power connection, an HDMI port, a mini DisplayPort connectedness, and a USB-C port with Thunderbolt 3. There'southward also a proprietary port for Alienware'south external graphics amplifier.
Roomy 300Hz Screen Exterior, Top Components Within
Next up is the brandish, which again mirrors the m15 R3. The bottom display bezel sits at the top edge of a tall hinge, and so the actual display begins a few inches above the keyboard deck. The bezels are glossy black and all thin, which contributes to keeping the laptop's overall footprint relatively pocket-size. A 720p webcam sits in the center of the superlative panel, which seems like a given, simply several contempo Asus gaming laptops have lacked this basic feature.
The 17.3-inch screen itself provides total Hd (1,920-by-one,080-pixel) resolution and a 300Hz refresh rate, making information technology a great match for gaming. The resolution is much less demanding than a 1440p or 4K screen, so, even though the components in this organization could play at those college resolutions, playing at 1080p will permit for much higher frame rates.
That pairs well with the 300Hz screen, so you tin can actually see triple-digit frame rates in games where that's possible. But less visually demanding competitive multiplayer games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, and League of Legends will see frame rates that push the limit of the screen, but that'southward a large chunk of the market. Single-histrion AAA games can still benefit from the greater-than-60Hz screen, merely frame rates are likely to exist "simply" between 100fps and 200fps. (Come across exactly how this laptop performs in the testing department below.)
Before we get in that location, though, let's take a expect inside this system. The $one,649.99 starting price for the m17 R3 nets you lot an Intel Core i7-10750H processor, 16GB of RAM, an AMD Radeon RX 5500M GPU, a 256GB solid-land bulldoze, and a total HD (1080p) display with a 140Hz acme refresh rate.
Our configuration, though, is much pricier at $iii,409.99 (though a sale on Dell's site knocked it down to $3,018.39 at publish fourth dimension). For that, yous go a Core i9-10980HK processor, 32GB of retentiveness, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super GPU, and 1.5TB of solid-state storage—two 512GB SSDs joined in RAID 0, plus a third 512GB M.two drive. Our model also has the 300Hz display and per-key-programmable instead of zonal RGB keyboard lighting.
Alienware offers plenty of other configuration options in both prefab and customizable models. Our unit of measurement is certainly on the high end, near fully equipped (it lacks the 4K screen option and even more than storage), but yous are getting a lot for the price. Let's run across how these premium parts perform.
Testing the m17 R3: A Nautical chart-Topping Gamer
To test the performance of all of our review systems, we run a suite of standardized criterion tests. I gathered the Alienware m17 R3'south results into the charts beneath, along with the scores from four competing rigs. You can see their names and basic specs in the tabular array hither.
Earlier the results, I'd like to note that the default CPU performance in the Alienware Control Center software is set up to an automatic boost. I left it on this setting, letting the computer automatically determine the correct overclock and using that for this tests. This is the default setting out of the box, and what the software recommends without manually pushing everything to max. Fan speeds got much louder at fully boosted performance, and the gains weren't worthwhile.
Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and eight are holistic performance suites adult by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 examination we run simulates different real-world productivity and content cosmos workflows. We use it to assess overall system operation for role-centric tasks such equally word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, spider web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system's boot drive. Both tests yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better. (See more about how nosotros exam laptops.)
The m17 R3 was the winner in PCMark 10, posting a much amend score than the rest. It shares the nigh stiff processor in the group with the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17, then that is to be expected, even if PCMark doesn't push CPUs to their limits. This translates to very fast everyday operation, with absolutely no problem running many browser tabs and multiple programs at one time. As for PCMark 8, the SSDs in all of these systems ensure speedy boot and load times.
Side by side is Maxon'southward CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 exam, which is fully threaded to brand use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The effect is a proprietary score indicating a PC'south suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
Cinebench is oftentimes a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing trial, some other tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on exam systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute prune of 4K video (the open-source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file. It'southward a timed test, and lower results are better.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Deject version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test paradigm. We time each functioning and add up the full execution time. Every bit with Handbrake, lower times are meliorate hither.
These media tests push the processor much farther than PCMark 10, but the m17 R3'due south chip nevertheless excels. (Having 32GB of retention doesn't injure, either.) It ties or trades wins with the other Core i9 system, but other than that, it's a step in a higher place the residue. If y'all're interested in using this machine for needs beyond gaming, such as media editing (and for those shopping at such a high price point, it's non uncommon), this laptop is up to the job. If you're just interested in gaming, a Core i9 is mostly overkill, and you could save money for very like performance with a Core i7 CPU.
Graphics Tests
On to 3DMark, which measures relative graphics musculus by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Heaven Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to unlike types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, merely Sky Diver is more suited to midrange PCs, while Burn down Strike is more demanding and fabricated for loftier-end PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores.
Next up is some other synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes. In this instance, it'due south rendered in the eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario for a second stance on each laptop's graphical prowess.
This is where we get into the core purpose of this system—raw 3D power. The unfettered GeForce RTX 2080 Super soars in this laptop, comfortably beating the downtuned Max-Q version of the RTX 2080 and the step-downward RTX 2070 in these synthetic tests. These are better measures of pure 3D capability than gaming frame rates, only of class we have those likewise...
Real-World Gaming Tests
The constructed tests above are helpful for measuring general 3D aptitude, but it'south hard to trounce total retail video games for judging gaming operation. Far Cry 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider are both modern, high-fidelity titles with born benchmarks that illustrate how a arrangement handles real-world gameplay at diverse settings. Nosotros run them at 1080p resolution at the games' medium and best image-quality settings (Normal and Ultra for Far Cry 5 nether DirectX 11, Medium and Very High for Rise of the Tomb Raider nether DirectX 12).
Fortunately for this laptop, those results interpret very well. It's at the elevation of the heap hither, with average frame rates well over 100fps fifty-fifty at maximum settings. You'd await no less from an RTX 2080 Super, granted, but you are getting what you pay for. There's a clear jump between GPUs in the hierarchy, making the Alienware'south an appealing if expensive option for shoppers prioritizing top-of-the-line performance. The most demanding AAA games volition encounter dips from these heights, especially if you enable ray-tracing in compatible games, but you tin still look 60fps minimum.
Meanwhile, less strenuous competitive multiplayer games (particularly at medium or low settings) will see much higher frame rates, which should capitalize on the 300Hz brandish. To exam this, I ran Rainbow Half-dozen: Siege's built-in benchmark, and it confirmed that this machine is an excellent performer for these scenarios. On the maximum settings preset (with one change, turning render scaling from l% to 100% at full Hd), the system averaged a blistering 262fps. On the lowest settings, which are unremarkably chosen in these types of games to maximize frame rates, the m17 R3 averaged 324fps, a rare instance of frame rates fifty-fifty exceeding a 300Hz brandish. This is wild overkill for many, but highly-seasoned to the enthusiast competitive crowd.
In general, the fans get fairly loud while gaming, but that'south hardly out of the ordinary. Given the operation and relatively slim chassis (despite the fact that the GPU isn't a Max-Q version), Alienware seems to take done a overnice job on the thermals.
Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, nosotros prepare the machine in power-salve mode (as opposed to counterbalanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown examination. (We besides plow Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop in airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the same Tears of Steel short nosotros use in our Handbrake exam—with screen brightness ready at l percent and book at 100 percent until the system quits.
Battery life is a definite weakness of this laptop. The 15-inch version didn't fare much amend, and the beefier components hither tuckered power fifty-fifty faster. A 17-inch laptop isn't one you expect to travel with much (nobody this side of Lou Ferrigno would choose this as an platonic daily commute companion), and a gaming rig even less so, and then poor battery life doesn't conflict with the machine's core purpose too much. Still, it can be frustrating if yous like to take your laptop to your couch for a couple of hours.
The Best in Ability and Style...If You Tin can Afford It
The Alienware m17 R3 configuration nosotros received is a total powerhouse, posting meridian marks across the board. That'southward to be expected at this toll and with these components, just Alienware conspicuously put together an effective system.
Beyond that, the laptop is nicely designed, both physically and aesthetically, and highly configurable. Non all models need to be as pricey as ours, so we won't complain also much about the cost—the arrangement is aimed at elite gamers, after all. Much similar its xv-inch sibling, the m17 R3 stands out from the pack with its design, offers many options, and actually merely lacks in bombardment life.
Withal, even if you don't wait that hard, you will see some strong competing 17-inch rigs out there, making the Alienware a bit less of a standout in its class than its smaller analogue. Given that notebooks in this course aren't very portable, you lot may prefer a slightly heftier but more novel pattern such every bit the Editors' Option-accolade-winning Acer Predator Helios 700, with its unique sliding keyboard. If you prefer a more than traditional laptop build, the Alienware m17 R3 joins the Razer Blade Pro 17 every bit a strong option, just neither innovates quite enough to cop our top award.
Alienware m17 R3
Cons
The Lesser Line
The Alienware m17 R3 is a uniquely styled gaming laptop with an farthermost high-refresh screen for hardcore players. It'due south a pricey merely top-quality package with the chapters for colossal power and enough of configuration options.
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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/alienware-m17-r3
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