Alienware 4 Zone Vs Per Key
Tom's Hardware Verdict
A speed demon that prioritizes raw performance, the Alienware m17 R4 puts plenty of pop into a sleek but beefy chassis.
Pros
- +
Unrivaled functioning
- +
Crawly mechanical keyboard
- +
Attractive pattern
At present, RTX 3080 is the fastest laptop graphics card around, merely not all RTX 3080-powered laptops are created equal. Many vendors use Nvidia'due south Max-Q technology, which prioritizes power efficiency and low fan noise over high operation. Alienware's m17 R4, withal, seeks to pump out every possible frame, deploying a special cooling system and eschewing Max-Q to brand its top-of-the-line configuration one of the best gaming laptops. We were able to check the TGP (Total Graphics Ability) of the laptop, which was reported as 165W in Nvidia's drivers — in the "150W+" range listed for mobile RTX 3080 (opens in new tab).
But the Alienware m17 R4 is not simply a speed demon. Starting at $2,106 ($3,586 equally tested), this laptop has a sleek sci-fi inspired design with enough of RGB, an optional 360 Hz screen and a snappy (optional) mechanical keyboard, the first with Red MX Ultra Low Contour Switches. You just have to live with a heavy chassis and the occasional bout of fan noise.
Editor'south Note: We originally published this review in February, but updated in Apr to add our feel testing with Alienware's new, optional mechanical keyboard.
Alienware m17 R4 Specifications
| CPU | Core i9-10980HK |
| Graphics | Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 |
| Memory | 32GB DDR 2933 MHz |
| Storage | 512GB Boot, 2TB (two 10 1TB RAID 0) SSD |
| Display | 17.3-inch, 1920 10 1080 360 Hz |
| Networking | Killer Wi-FI AX1650 (Wi-Fi 6), Killer Ethernet 2.five Gbps NIC, Bluetooth 5.ane |
| Ports | 3x USB Type-A 3.2, 1x HDMI 2.2, 1x mini DisplayPort 1.iv, 1x Thunderbolt 3, 1x microSD card reader |
| Camera | 1280 x 720 |
| Bombardment | 86 WHr |
| Ability Adapter | 330W |
| Dimensions (WxDxH) | xv.74 10 xi.56 ten 0.87 inches |
| Weight | half-dozen.6 pounds |
| Price (as configured) | $3,586 |
Design of the Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4 has the aforementioned sci-fi inspired "Legend" pattern as both its immediate predecessor, the m17 R3, and its sibling, the Alienware m15 R4. Bachelor in "lunar calorie-free: white or "dark side of the moon" (black), the m17 R4 looks like a giant starship, rocketing through space. The body (ours was white) has a black rear end that juts out similar the jet engine on the back of an royal cruiser. The number 17 on the hat appears in a sci-fi font that you might observe adorning a surreptitious warehouse at Surface area 51.
In that location's a honeycomb pattern for the vents on the dorsum, in a higher place the keyboard and on the lesser surface. We can simply assume that Alienware aliens live in some kind of hive where they are all doing CUDA cadre calculations.
And, of course, at that place's lots of RGB lights to burnish the mood in outer space. The standard keyboard has four-zone RGB and in that location are customizable lights on the back edge and in the alien heads on the dorsum of the lid and the power button. However, an optional keyboard upgrade and the optional mechanical keyboard both provide per-key lighting.
The chassis is made from premium materials: a magnesium blend with matte white or black paint, covered past a clear coat for extra immovability. The interior uses Alienware's cryo-tech cooling applied science which has 12-stage graphics voltage regulation, 6-phase CPU voltage regulation and a CPU vapor chamber.
At half-dozen.6 pounds and xv.74 10 11.56 x 0.87 inches, the Alienware m17 R4 is not exactly light or thin, not that would you lot expect that from a 17-inch laptop with a Core i9 CPU and RTX 3080 graphics. By comparing, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G (5.95 pounds, xv.nine ten 10.eight x 1.0 inches) and Razer Blade Pro 17 (6.1 pounds, 15.6 10 x.2 x 0.viii inches) are both significantly lighter, though the Aorus is thicker. The Asus ROG Flow X13, which we're as well comparing to the m17, is much thinner and lighter (2.87 pounds, eleven.77 x 8.74 ten 0.62 inches), because information technology's a 13-inch laptop that gets its RTX 3080 graphics via an external dock.
The Alienware m17 R4 has enough of room for ports. On the correct side, there are ii USB iii.2 Blazon-A ports, along with a micro SD card reader. The left side contains a Killer RJ-45 Ethernet 2.five Gbps port, a three.5mm audio jack and another USB Blazon-A port. The dorsum holds a Thunderbolt 3 port, a mini DisplayPort one.4, an HDMI two.ane connection, Alienware's proprietary graphics amplifier port and the power connector.
Gaming Performance on the Alienware m17 R4
Sporting an Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU and an Intel Core i9-10980HK CPU, our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 is as fast of a gaming laptop as you tin can get correct at present. Thanks to Alienware's stiff cryo-tech cooling solution and the company'southward willingness to include a total version of the RTX 3080, rather than the Max-Q variants in some thinner notebooks.
When I played Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra RTX settings, the game ranged between 61 and 72 frames per second, depending on how intense the action was at whatsoever given time. The frame rate improved to between 85 and 94 fps after I changed to Ultra settings with no RTX. In both cases, the fan noise was really loud by default. Irresolute the fan profile to quiet improved this somewhat while shaving only a couple of fps off, and simply in intense scenes.
The Alienware m17 R4 hit a rate of 120 fps in Grand Theft Automobile Five at very high settings (1080p), eclipsing the Gigabyte Aorus 17G and its Max-Q-enabled RTX 3080 and Core i7-10870H CPU by xx%. The Asus ROG Menstruum thirteen with its Ryzen 9 5980HS CPU and external RTX 3080 dock, was too a good 13% behind while the RTX 2080 Super-powered Razer Blade Pro 17 brought upwards the rear.
On the very-demanding Carmine Expressionless Redemption at medium settings, the m17 R4 achieved an impressive rate of 79.7 fps, besting the Aorus 17G and ROG Flow X13 by more than than 20%. Saddled with final year's card, the Razer Blade Pro 17 was a full 29 % behind.
Alienware'southward behemoth exceeded 100 fps again in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, hit 103 while the Aorus 17G hovered in the mid 80s. On this exam, surprisingly, the Razer Blade Pro 17 came close to matching the m17 R4.
Far Cry New Dawn at Ultra settings as well provided a great example of the Alienware m15 R4'due south dominance. It hit a full 105 fps where its nearest competitor, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G could only manage 92 fps with the Asus ROG Period X13 and Razer Blade Pro 17 were both in the 80s.
To see how well the Alienware m17 R4 performs over the long haul, we ran the Metro Exodus criterion at RTX, the highest settings level, 15 times at 1080p. The laptop was remarkably consequent, averaging 75.half dozen fps with a loftier of 76.2 and a low of 75.iv. During that time, the average CPU speed was 4.xix GHz with a peak of 5.088 GHz. Past comparison, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G, got an average frame charge per unit of just 59.half dozen fps with an average CPU speed of 3.47 GHz and the Asus ROG Flow X13 managed a slightly-higher 65.two fps with an average CPU speed of 3.89 GHz.
Productivity Functioning of Alienware m17 R4
With its Core i9-10980HK CPU, 32GB of RAM and dual storage drives, which include both a 2TB RAID 0 PCIe SSD (2 x 1TB) and a 512GB SSD, and that RTX 3080, our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 tin be a powerful work tool.
On Geekbench 5, a synthetic benchmark that measures overall performance, the m17 R4 got a single-core score of ane,318 and a multi-core score of 8,051, which wa slightly ahead of the of the Core i7-10870H-powered Gigabyte Aorus 17G on both counts only behind the Asus ROG Period X13 and its Ryzen 9 5980HS on single-cadre performance while creaming the Razer Bract Pro 17, which we tested with a Core i7-10875H.
The storage in our review unit came misconfigured slightly, with a 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD as boot drive and a significantly faster 2TB RAID 0 drive fabricated from two 1TB NVMe PCIe SSDs. Dell sells this hardware, but consumers receive units with the 2TB as boot and the 512GB SSD as a secondary, storage drive.
In our tests, copying about 25GB of files, the 512GB drive managed a mediocre 379.7 MBps, but the 2TB drive hit an impressive 1305.5 MBps, which beats the Aorus 17G (869 MBps), the ROG Flow X13 (779.five MBps) and the Blade Pro 17 (925.two MBps).
The Alienware m17 R4 took but 6 minutes and 44 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p in Handbrake. That time is 21% faster than the Aorus 17G, xviii% quicker than the Flow X13 and a full 29% ahead of the Bract Pro 17.
Display on Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4 comes with a selection of 3 different, 17-inch display panels: a 1080p panel with 144 Hz refresh charge per unit, a 4K, sixty Hz panel and the 1080p, 360 Hz console in our review unit. Our panel provided sharp images and authentic but more often than not unexciting colors, forth with smooth, tear-complimentary gaming.
When I watched a trailer for upcoming volcano-disaster-flick Skyfire, the ruddy-orange of lava bursts was lively and the green trees in a forest seemed true-to-life. Fine details like the wrinkles in actor Jason Isaacs' forehead also stood out.
In a 4K nature video of a Costa Rican jungle, details like the scales on a snake and colors like the carmine on a parrot's feathers were as well strong, just not well-nigh every bit strong as when I viewed it on the 4K, OLED panel from the Alienware m15 R4 I tested recently. On both videos, viewing angles on the matte display were strong as colors didn't fade fifty-fifty at 90 degrees to the left or right.
In Cyberpunk 2077, details like the threads on a carpet or the butt of a gun were prominent and colors similar the red and xanthous in the UI seemed accurate but didn't pop.
The Alienware m17 R4'south brandish registered a strong 316.two nits of brightness on our calorie-free meter, outpacing the Aorus 17G (299.six), the Razer Blade Pro 17 (304.4) and the Asus ROG Menstruation X13 (281.half dozen). Co-ordinate to our colorimeter, the screen can reproduce a solid 80.6% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, which is well-nigh on par with the Aorus 17G and slightly behind the Razer Blade Pro 17, but miles alee of the ROG Period X13.
Keyboard and Touchpad on Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4 comes with your choice of two dissimilar keyboards: an first-class standard mSeries keyboard with a snappy feel and a mechanical keyboard that may exist the best of any laptop's. A $176 (as of this writing) upgrade selection, the mechanical keyboard is the kickoff to feature Reddish MX Ultra Low Profile switches.
Providing 1.8mm of travel in just a iii.5mm-loftier packet, the Ultra Low Profile switches have the aforementioned kind of luxurious, clicky experience and and sound you lot'd look from an external keyboard, without calculation whatever heft to the laptop. They require a solid 65 grams of force to actuate, which is a picayune more than Cherry'south MX Blue switches, which they sound and feel like.
Alienware sent united states of america a new review unit merely to test the m17's mechanical keyboard and I came abroad impressed with the feel. Thanks to the robust feedback, I hit a stiff 102 words per minute (slightly above my average) on the 10fastfingers.com typing examination, with a 3 per centum mistake rate and a groovy bargain of comfort. I also establish that gaming in Cyberpunk 2077 was a pleasure. For more details, see my article on going fingers on with the new Cherry MX Ultra Low Profile switches.
With a deep, 1.7mm of travel and some snappy feedback, the default Alienware mSeries keyboard also offers a smashing typing experience. On the tenfastfingers.com typing test, I scored the same 102 wpm / iii-percent error rate every bit with the mechanical keyboard. However, the clicky keys on the mechanical keyboard merely felt a lot more than responsive and pleasant to utilize.
Whichever keyboard option yous cull, you get a full numeric keypad and four customizable macro keys above the pad on the top row. The Alienware Control Center software allows you to set these to launch a plan, enter text or use a pre-recorded set of keystrokes when you lot hit them. I found programming them very unintuitive, however.information technology. Alienware Control Centre also allows yous to set RGB colors or lightning effects for four different zones on the default keyboard or on a per-key basis for the other keyboard options.
The 3.one ten four.one drinking glass touchpad, which uses Windows precision drivers, offers great navigation with just the right amount of friction. Whether I was navigating effectually the desktop or using multitouch gestures such equally compression-zoom or three-finger swipe, the pad was always accurate and responsive.
Audio on Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4'due south sound system outputs sound that'southward loud enough to fill a mid-sized room and rich plenty to dance to. When I played Air-conditioning/DC'southward "Back in Black" with the volume all the fashion upwards, the sound was mostly accurate, but some of the high-pitched percussion sounds were a niggling harsh. Globe, Wind and Fire's bass-heavy "September" sounded great, with a clear separation of sound where instruments such as the horns section appeared to come from a different side of the notebook than, for example, the drums.
Gunshots and the sound of my NPC friend Jackie yelling at me to stay down sounded precipitous and clear in Cyberpunk 2077. However, I had to turn the volume fashion up to compensate for the fan noise when the organization was on loftier performance settings. Even on the "placidity" thermal setting, fan dissonance was quite prominent.
The preloaded Alienware Control Centre app has an audio department that lets you tweak the sound settings and choose among profiles such as Music, Moving picture, Shooter and Office Play. I found that the default "Alienware" profile sounded about the aforementioned equally the Music one, but disabling the sound enhancement definitely made the sound flatter.
Upgradeability of the Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4 has three different Yard.2 SSD slots, all of which are accessible and user upgradeable. The kickoff slot is an short 2230 length and the other two are both the normal 2280 size. Unfortunately, the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard and therefore not replaceable.
Opening the Alienware m17 R4 should be easy: in that location are eight Philips-head screws, some of which come out and the others of which y'all tin can merely loosen, on the bottom console. In our testing, getting the screws loosened was like shooting fish in a barrel past prying off the bottom panel was challenging and required several minutes with a spudger. Once the console is off, all three SSDs are visible, but are covered past copper heat sinks you can hands unscrew.
Battery Life on Alienware m17 R4
Forget about using the Alienware m17 R4 without a ability outlet for any length of fourth dimension. The laptop lasted but just ii hours and 5 minutes on our battery test, which involves surfing the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. That's awful in comparing to all of its competitors equally both the Gigabyte Aorus 17G and Razer Blade Pro 17 lasted for an identical 4 hours and 41 minutes. But this is a 17-inch, 6.6-pound laptop so portability isn't a primary business organization.
Estrus on Alienware m17 R4
The main touchpoints on the Alienware m17 R4 stay relatively cool when yous're not gaming and remain warm just tolerable when you are. Subsequently we streamed a YouTube video for 15 minutes, the keyboard hit a reasonable 35.5 degrees Celsius (95.nine degrees Fahrenehitt), the touchpad was a dank 26.2 degrees Celsius (79.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and the underside was just 36.vi degrees Celsius (97.9 degrees Fahrenheit).
Subsequently running the Metro Exodus benchmark for 15 minutes to simulate gaming, those temperatures were obviously higher. The keyboard hitting 35.5 degrees Celsius (112 degrees Fahrenheit), the touchpad measured 35 degrees (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and the bottom hit 50 degrees (122 degrees Fahrenheit).
When I played Cyberpunk 2077, the area effectually the WASD keys measured well-nigh forty degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit) merely the key caps themselves didn't experience uncomfortably warm to touch. At performance settings, the fan dissonance was extremely loud.
Webcam on Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4's 720p webcam is zilch special. Fifty-fifty when I shot it in a well-lit room, an image of my face was filled with visual noise and fine details like the hairs in my beard were blurry while colors such equally the blue in my shirt and the light-green on the walls were muted. You'll become by with this born camera if yous need to, but y'all'd be amend off springing for one of the best webcams.
Software and Warranty on Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4 comes preloaded with a scattering of useful first-party utilities.
Alienware Mobile Connect allows you to control your Android handset or iPhone from your laptop, taking calls and texts for the desktop.
Alienware Command Center lets you control all the RGB lighting effects, set keyboard macros, tweak audio settings and even modify the performance settings and thermals to go for amend performance or quieter and cooler temps. You can fifty-fifty change the max frequency, voltage and voltage offset for the CPU manually if you take an unlocked CPU and want to endeavor overclocking.
Equally with any Windows laptop, there's also a small corporeality of preloaded bloatware, including a trial of Microsoft Office, links to download Photoshop Express and Hulu and free-to-play games like Roblox.
Alienware backs the m17 R4 with a standard i year warranty on parts and labor that includes in-habitation service (if in that location was already a remote diagnosis). Yous tin can pay extra to extend the warranty up to 5 years and y'all can add accidental damage protection with no deductible.
Configurations of Alienware m17 R4
When you purchase the Alienware m17 R4 from Dell.com, yous can custom configure it with your choice of a Core i7 or Core i9 CPU, RTX 3070 or 3080 GPU, up to 32GB of RAM and upward to 4TB of storage. You can choose white or blackcolor options and you can likewise pay actress to go per-key RGB lighting instead of the standard 4-zone lighting we tested.
You go three different keyboard options. The default mSeries keyboard feels snappy and has 4-zone RGB lighting while a $29 upgrade gets y'all the aforementioned keyboard but with per-cardinal lighting. Finally paying $176 extra (every bit of this writing), gets you lot the mechanical keyboard with Reddish MX Ultra Depression Profile switches and per-key lighting. That's a hefty premium, but if you're already planning to spend more than than $two,000 on a laptop, getting a best-in-class keyboard is a worthwhile upgrade.
You also become a choice of screens that includes 144 Hz and 360 Hz 1080p panels, along with a 4K, 60 Hz panel that promises to striking 100 % of the Adobe RGB color gamut. If y'all value image quality over fps, we recommend the latter, because the color on our 360 Hz panel was ok, but not exciting.
Our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 currently goes for $iii,586.79. For that price, you get the Core i9-10980HK, RTX 3080 graphics, the 360 Hz brandish, 32GB of RAM and a combination of storage drives that includes two, 1TB M.2 PCIe SSDS in RAID 0 and a 512GB M.2 SSD by itself for a full of 2.5TB of storage. Dell lists the RAID drive equally the boot bulldoze in its shop but our review model came with the 512GB drive as boot and the 2TB RAID bulldoze as storage, which seems odd.
Bottom Line
At this betoken, it's hard to imagine someone making a gaming laptop that's significantly more than powerful than the Alienware m17 R4 we tested unless they utilise desktop parts. The RTX 3080 is currently the fastest mobile GPU around, especially since Alienware didn't opt for Nvidia'due south more power efficient Max-Q technologies.. Using a strong cooling system, pairing information technology with a Core i9-10980HK, and you have performance that's frequently 20% faster than competitors that likewise use RTX 3080s.
In add-on to its strong operation, the Alienware m17 R4 offers a best-in-form mechanical keyboard or an nigh-as-expert standard keyboard, along with a uniquely attractive design that'due south all its own. The 360 Hz screen is more than capable, simply unless y'all're a competitive gamer, you lot can go with the default screen or, better still, go for the 4K console which promises much richer colors.
The biggest drawbacks for this epic laptop are those which are kind of inherent to any 17-inch laptop which turns the operation book up to eleven. It's heavy, has brusque battery life, emits plenty of fan noise. Information technology's also quite expensive. Information technology would exist nice if, for this price, you got a better-than-awful webcam, merely most laptop webcams are terrible.
If you want to salvage a few dollars or you need a little more battery life, consider the Gigabyte Aorus 17G, which goes for $2,699 with similar specs (but just 1TB of storage) to our Alienware m17 R4. The 17G lasts more than than twice as long on a accuse and weighs 0.65 pounds less than the m17, but its gaming operation isn't as expert.
If you lot don't feel attached to the 17-inch course gene, consider the Alienware m15 R4, which has the same design and keyboard options but is much more portable, albeit hotter. It also has an optional, 4K OLED panel which has incredibly vibrant output. All the same, if you lot desire the ultimate 17-inch gaming rig right now, the Alienware m17 R4 is your best choice.
Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/alienware-m17-r4
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