I am here to give an updated review on this product. I, as many other, received the incorrect screen resolution. The item had been described as (1920x1080) but I received a (1600x900). After numerous support chats and phone calls over the course of the week, I have successfully gotten amazon to change the description to the correct resolution. As of 2/4/13 I have confirmed all the specs are correct, and you will get exactly as listed. I was very happy with the way amazon got things figured out with my issue (eventually.) Kudos to them for having the best customer support and being able to back up a product no matter the loss to them. That is what keeps me coming back to amazon. Anyone interested in purchasing this item that was scared off by the sketchy reviews, it is now SAFE to purchase. Hope this clears things up.
Now, on to the review. I will try to give an unbiased opinion as I have done months and months of research, comparing and contrasting every modern gaming laptop. I will also try to touch on points not stated by my fellow reviewers. This review will be fairly in depth (Should be for a $1600 laptop), and I will try to be detailed, but also universal in describing details, so that you don't have to know any extreme technical jargon to understand the review as well as giving an up-to-date one. Enough said.
The Build:
First things first the build quality is excellent, and this will be the first thing you notice as you un-box and remove it from its protective casing. I researched for months on purchasing a high-end/Gaming computer, and i have learned very much about numerous modern gaming computers and components. Most of the reviews on amazon and on review websites have stated its build quality is of the highest grade and that it is one of the biggest selling points for this laptop, and for good reason. The laptop feels solid, secured, and a bit heavy (weighs in at about 9.5lbs). In my opinion not overweight considering the amount of components stuffed into this thing. The rubbery matte texture compliments it's sturdiness well, and to me was a great material choice for this laptop as it resists fingerprints rather well and will not show scratches as aluminum or plastic well. Not to mention keeping the laptop light, and relatively cool. I dare you to find a better looking laptop (my opinion) that is more sleek and with better build quality (not opinion) than this one. The reason i put up with the weight over say a Sager NP9170 is that this M17xr4 is the thinnest 17inch gaming laptop with these components i could find. I'll take thinner to lighter any day considering, i will be hauling this in a excellent backpack (Everki Beacon or swiss gear) Where the 1 to 2 pound gain over the NP9170 will not be noticeable. Your port selection is numerous and above average, even for gaming laptops. 4 USB 3.0 ports (2 on the left, 2 on your other left), 1 USB 2.0/Esata combo (right) which is also a sleep and charge port which does just that (allows you to charge your phone, iPod or usb charging device while the laptop is asleep or even completely off). VGA, HDMI and Display port video outs (all left), 2 headphone jacks, 1 mic input, as well as an SPDIF optical out (All left). One cool feature is that the Soundcard software included can be used to configure the audio ports to do anything, For example configure all 4 ports to be headphone jacks, or 2 line -in ports. An HDMI-in (right) (not existent in any other laptop I could find. Trust me, I looked. More on this in "other features" below). Last but not least a 9 in 1 card reader above the optical drive (right) and a Kensington lock (left). The cooling system is well engineered with 3 intakes on the bottom, and 2 exhausts on the back, the left one being for the processor, and the right being for the graphics card. I can't tell you how nice it is having the exhaust shoot out the back instead of the bottom into your lap. You might think you lap will block the intakes but they are almost designed with a peak and valley structure, to allow lap use without block to the intakes. Don't get me wrong this laptop can get warm on the bottom especially during gaming, but it is rare I game on my lap. And when using a laptop pad or cooling pad, you won't notice it at all . The individual laptop exhausts are nice, first they limit noise to 1 fan most of the time, secondly they are effective and accurate at temp detection (i.e. Gaming, the GPU fan ramps up, Heavy app use or multitasking the CPU fan ramps up) not to mention the entire system is silent during basic and medium use.
Components:
I will go into greater detail of the components i have added separately or replaced later in the review. For now, the components it comes with. First off the processor, The Intel i7 3610m is the baseline mobile model for i7 cores in laptops. It is snappy, and has no problem devouring numerous tasks at a time. For gaming an i7 core IS MORE than enough considering most games don't utilize 4 cores to begin with (exception: Farcry 3). In fact you would do just fine for gaming if this laptop had an i5 core and you would not notice a frame rate difference. That being said, Alienware has refreshed their m17xr4 line with the i7 3630m, which is an updated version of the 3610m. Amazon DOES NOT include this processor in this build, where as purchasing from Dell, Xotic PC, and others will most likely get you the updated 3630, the performance differences will most likely only be noticeable in benchmarks and is not really worth it.
On to the Graphics, this laptop uses a combination of AMD Radeon 7970m discrete or dedicated card, in concurrence with an Intel HD 4000 integrated chip. First the 7970m, this is a nasty card that destroys most any game, modern or old. You can comment on this review, and I can test a game you might want me to play and let you know how it preforms. To name a few recent ones it preforms extremely well with that I have played. Black ops 2 (not very difficult for any machine), Battlefield 3 run great maxed out, Arkham city runs great, Farcry 3 runs insane on this laptop due to its great scaling on all 4 processor cores (all though I have had some crashes with this game). I've even played as recent as the Crysis 3 beta which runs great since the new drivers update. I cannot stress this enough, the ability to play such high-end games with such good results, all on-the-go, is a crazy feat to me. I run this laptop to a 27 inch monitor most of the time and it's hard to believe the graphics are coming from my laptop and not a desktop. Comparing it to the GTX 680m recently released by Nvidia, the 7970m in my opinion is on par with it, and even runs certain games better according to benchmarks. That being said in power consumption and cooling is better with the 680m. The biggest difference is the price. When I looked to configure my laptop on Dell or Xotic PC, the price difference is over $350 which is simply not justifiable, even for a Nvidia fan boy. I knew and researched both the 680m, 7970m before I even wanted to purchase here, so seeing that amazon had the 7970, it only pushed me further to buy here. Intel HD 4000 is simply an integrated graphics chip which is used for anything but high-end games and uses MUCH less power. Heck, it will even run older games or less resource hogging ones great. AMD uses "Enduro" technology to switch between the 2 graphics solutions based upon your power source (battery or plugged in) and application (Video game vs. Google chrome) this all can be configured manually, but by default your computer switches to the Intel HD 4000 when on battery power EVEN if you are trying to run a high-end game. But like I said, this can be changed manually with a combination of power and graphics setting changes. All that being said, the drivers are a bit faulty, especially with windows 8. I could not decide whether to install AMD's drivers for the 7970m from their website or Dell's which seemed outdated. I spoke to a few Alienware techs on this issue. All said that it is preferable to use Dell's drivers, but AMD's should be compatible. I noticed some performance loss using Dell's driver version, so I cleared the drivers completely and installed AMD's 13.2 version which had updates for the Crysis 3 beta.
* For your hardrive and standard 7200rpm Seagate 750gb drive. Nothing special here. See my upgrade.
* For RAM you got 6gb of 1600mhz DDR3 ram in one 4gb stick and one 2 gb stick. Fine amount of Ram ,I was going to upgrade anyways so I didn't care.
* Wi-Fi card is an Intel Centrino 2230, great reception, great speeds wireless N as well as 2.4ghz/5.8ghz bands. Not much else to say
* Standard DVD/CD RW that is a slot-load drive. I happen to prefer slot-load over tray load because: one, sleeker looking, and 2 no worrying about having a clumsy tray slide out and hit something, getting stuck, breaking, etc.
* For your sound card you get a SoundBlaster Recon3Di instead of a basic sound card, paired with a pair of Klipsch speakers, it sounds great. Where it really shines is when you hook this laptop up via optical or analog (stereo out) and tweak settings in the SoundBlaster control panel. I found the Rock preset to improve the sound even more. This excellent sound card is a rare and welcome addition to a gaming laptop. The speakers definitely aren't booming loud, but they are crisp, clean and have decent bass and are plenty loud for nearly any use. I think they could have used a slight volume boost in playing music, but with laptop speakers, it's tough considering power provided and space to put them in. The speakers are definitely above average and much better sounding than Sager or MSI laptops alike.
* The screen as stated before is 1600x900, decent colors, so-so viewing angle. Before you write this laptop off for the screen resolution, consider these two things. First, at only 17 inches (yes only) you won't see a ginormous difference between 1920x1080, and 1600x900. You will probably see it. But is it worth 200 dollars extra upgrade? Your call. Secondly, I personally route to a 27 inch monitor for gaming which I display 1920x1080 on. If your majority, or even part of your use is to an external monitor: just another reason you don't need 1080p on the actual laptop screen.
Personal Experience/Other selling points/Tips
The 3 largest selling points that had me choose this laptop over the Samsung series 7 gamer, MSI GT70, and the Sager NP9170 (in my opinion its top competitors) was first the powerful graphics card which beats the 675m and lower cards (670m, 660m, etc.) by a large amount. I was aware of the driver issues with the 7970m but I decided to take the risk, trusting they will be updated (and they have and will continue to be). Secondly the slim profile of this laptop. It beats all 3 mentioned AND has more powerful components. Now this laptop is nowhere near thin at about 1.98 inches but its as thin as its going to get for these components. You want super thin? Razer blade is $2599, and you get less powerful components than this laptop, but the razer blade is super portable (6lb,.88 inches thick). Thirdly, the icing on the cake for me (it might seem strange) the HDMI-input port. Why? The simple fact that being able to hook a console, Blu-ray player, or nearly any device to use this laptop, solely for use of its screen, is genius. Now I understand that some people do not have use for this feature because they do not own consoles or any form of device to utilize this feature and those that could have use for it might say, "Why would you want to hook a console-a less-powerful system--up to the screen of a more powerful system" well I personally have many friends on console and we often have "system link parties" the idea that my laptop could serve as a screen instead of having to haul a TV or monitor to play on is awesome. Not to mention you feel as if you have full control over your laptop to do as you choose and knowing that by the time the computer gets outdated, you could still always use it as a screen! I have used it with my Xbox 360 and it is excellent, just the right size, and the Xbox's sound even routes right through the HDMI and out the laptops speakers (HDMI carries audio and video). Of course it is not the 1920x1080 screen but with a 17 inch screen it's hard to notice that it's not full HD. For comparison HD starts at 720p, this screen is 900p, and Full HD is 1080p. It was a huge selling point for me and NO OTHER laptop has one of these that I have found.
Another cool feature I like is the speaker placement. Since I do use this on an external monitor I prefer to shut the laptop screen when doing that. This might not matter to most, but for me, when I do shut it and just prefer to use the excellent speakers on the laptop it will not block the sound. Why? The speakers on are the front of the laptop (the colored grill looking things). With most laptops you have a sound bar near the media controls and if you were to shut the screen the speakers would get blocked. Being able to use the speakers with the screen closed is a cool feature for me.
Another selling point for me personally, is it came with components that are hard to upgrade in a laptop that I wanted (7970m graphics, i7 processor) and nothing I didn't want (6gb ram, basic HDD). The laptop's accessibility is great. Pop the battery out, unscrew 2 screws, and you're in to most of the system. 2 of the 4 ram bays, HDD bay --which it has 2 of by the way--, fans, even your graphics and your processor can be seen. Again Alienware is giving you nearly full control of the system. Even the Wi-Fi card, other ram bays and optical drive are accessed through a little further, but not too difficult dis-assembly.
Here are the upgrades I have chosen and installed myself easily:
-Samsung 840 250gb SSD (purchased from Newegg for $150 with Farcry 3 Samsung MZ-7TD250BW 840 Series Solid State Drive (SSD) 250 GB Sata 2.5-Inch) an SSD is said to be the single best system upgrade you can make that will grant you the most noticeable performance boost to your system. And after installing one myself, I am a firm believer in just that. Honestly with processors so fast these days your limiting factor comes down to your HDD and good ol' disc drives can only spin to access data so fast. I would even go as far as to say if you don't get an SSD you're missing out on a chunk of your system's performance especially with a processor such as the i7 3610m. Not to mention SSD's silent, cooler, more reliable, and less power consuming operation than traditional HDD's as well as SSD prices dropping like crazy and 1 open bay in this laptop, what have you got to lose? Unleash your processor!
-16gb Corsair vengeance laptop RAM (purchased from amazon for $84.99 Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Laptop Memory (CMSX16GX3M2A1600C10)) I wanted more than 6gb of ram and if you go higher than 16gb its near impossible to stress it. This RAM had great reviews, fast speeds and seems reliable.
-Killer Wireless N 1202, Faster 2.4/5.8 ghz speeds.
-Windows 7 professional OEM (purchased on amazon for $102) I had a feeling I would not care for windows 8 (and I did not that much, not to mention the drivers for the graphics card are nearly unusable on win 8). Bought this fresh OEM copy at a steal price, popped in my new SSD did a fresh install, Used "Sean's Windows 7 installation guide for SSD's" Which you MUST checkout if you do similar configuration as I, with the hard drives. I then formatted my original 750 GB HDD to use for storage space, and boom. My system flies with cold boot times under 18 seconds, and massive amount of storage space. In the future I will definitely move to windows 8 once graphics drivers are updated and the OS becomes more stable. But for now, it's windows 7 professional for me. Your system didn't include Windows 8 recovery disks for when you want to upgrade? No problem. Call up Alienware, and they will 2-day ship you your recovery media on a handy dandy flash drive.
-One of the many accessories I suggest for this laptop is the U3 Coolmaster cooling pad Cooler Master NotePal U3 Laptop Cooling Pad with Three Configurable 80mm Fans (R9-NBC-8PCK-GP). The reason I liked this for my desk set-up is it seems of good material mostly aluminum which is naturally cool without fans! It uses USB power, fits the M17xr4 perfectly, and the fans are even movable, and Removable. I lined all 3 fans up directly with my m17x's, 3 intake vents which really keeps this thing cool. You do not need a cooling pad, just a personal choice for me! A cool system, is a happy system. The compatibility with my system made this one a winner for me, but I do use it as a stationary "dock" at desk, it's really too big to lug around. For more accessory suggestions, Comment!
-Personally I use this laptop for school, web browsing/multitasking, high-end gaming, and a screen for my Xbox . Even though it is heavy, and many will say it is only a desktop replacement. It is still portable and I have no problem using this computer around the house, on my lap, or "docked" at my desk.
For purchasing locations I would suggest either here or Xoticpc.com. I chose here mostly because of the standard price and the partial refund I receive for the screen mess-up issue.
I do highly suggest this laptop, and encourage you to research more sites for yourself to see if it will fit your uses. I only wish it took me less than 3 months to figure that out. But at such a high price I wanted to be 110% sure this was the one I wanted.
Please feel absolutely free to comment with any at all questions, regarding why I chose the upgrades I did, or anything on the system I didn't touch on well enough, Specific Game performance, purchasing options, how to configure anything, component or accessory suggestions, or other laptop comparisons. I will do my absolute best to get back to you. Also let me know anywhere to improve on the review besides grammar (after a few pages I gave up ;). I will update this review with new info, and corrections.
You have reached the end, congrats and thank you for your time if you have stuck with me, and if you did not stick with it, Hey, I don't blame your skimming.
Thanks again.
My Alienware M17x R4 is not the same exact spec as this build, but I can tell you that this laptop is a fantastic piece of hardware. I've had both 17" and 18" laptops and the difference of one inch is so minor to me that going with an M17x was worth it: when you're arm's length away from the screen, it's still generously large.
The body of the M17x is fascinating: it has a very tactile feel that isn't metal, but also isn't slick plastic: it's a grippable rubbery feel with a flat black look to it. The lid hinge is tight and the angular lid creates an interesting look that turns heads. I recommend the Green Onions anti-glare screen protector because the screen is still highly susceptible to reflections. I had to open the M17x to add my own drives and the build inside was clean and easily accessible: two screws and you're in! That said, you wouldn't want to do more than memory or disk drives: swapping out the modular CD-ROM can be complicated and the mSATA port is on the top side of the motherboard, which means a near-total teardown to get to (I'm told it's more accessible in the M18x).
for the R4, POST times are lightning-fast: as in, 5 seconds or less before you see "Starting Windows" on your screen. I'm currently using Windows 7 Professional 64-bit--at the time of this writing Intel has not produced USB 3.0 drivers for my specific build that are compatible with Windows 8. I HATE touchpads and love this one: it has lighted edges, its default sensitivity is perfectly fine for me, and the software can be configured to disable the touchpad when a mouse is plugged in. This last is a nice extra for gaming so you don't accidentally nudge your pointer, camera, or crosshairs in the heat of action.
Battery life is also surprisingly good: the M17x can switch to onboard graphics when on battery and this works well for general computing. I can get about two hours or more with the screen at full brightness and doing random computing while overclocked. However, if you are gaming with graphics enabled, you should still get over an hour of gametime like I do. We've apparently come a long way in both laptop battery technology and software that manages hardware power.
The lightshow on the M17x is lots of fun to play with: it has three separate zones on the keyboard from left to right and I set the colors such that my number pad is a different color from the keys (first two zones green, third zone blue). You can change the colors of the lights on the front but the alien head on the lid is always white now as it is lit by the backlight of the LCD.
If you're looking for a top-of-the-line laptop, the M17x R4 is an amazing piece of hardware. It can get expensive if you go for customization, but the underlying build is of good quality. I'd heard horror stories about cheap keyboards but I've had zero problems thus far. I've also enjoyed a very overclocking-friendly BIOS that lets you use pre-built profiles for increased performance with maximum stability.
Buy Alienware M17x R4 AM17xR4-7526BK 17-Inch Laptop Now
I've been custom building computers for years now, so I know the value of hardware. It's pretty commonly known that Alienware will make you pay a bit more for what you're getting, but now that I actually am typing on one and using it myself, I can see why. The build quality is absolutely top notch on this M17x R4.
The screen doesn't wobble.
It has a beautiful looking gloss coat on the screen that spans the entire panel, so it looks different.
The DVD drive is a slot loader instead of a generic manual tray.
The track pad is large and functional.
The keyboard is easy to type on once you get used to the spacing.
The color profile capability of the computer is really a nice touch, as I've been able to set up my back lighting to go well with my choice of desktop background.
Adding a SSD was easy; just removed the battery and two screws from the bottom and I was able to access the caddy for the second drive. Took a couple of minutes. Compared to other laptops, the process was incredibly pain free.
It's not a light laptop, but it's heavy in the ways that you want it to be. It's solid, sturdy, well made and looks like something that will survive for years to come. Couple that with Dell's support and you've got a great laptop in your hands.
PLEASE NOTE: As of 01/26/2012 the Amazon product information for this item is incorrect. I ordered this laptop and received one with all of the same specifications but a 1600x900 screen instead of the 1920x1080 one that is listed. I contacted Amazon about this issue and received 10% off the laptop as a compensation for my troubles. If I wanted to, I could easily find a 1920x1080 panel for this laptop and just add it myself with the money Amazon refunded me, so thanks to Amazon for looking out for their customers.
Alienware M17x R4 AM17xR4-7526BK 17-Inch Laptop
Read Best Reviews of Alienware M17x R4 AM17xR4-7526BK 17-Inch Laptop Here
The laptop is great. Beautiful screen, beautiful body, fast configuration. Really a top of line.
It is very difficult to see a laptop of this level here in Brazil and the first time that I saw it, I was really impressed.
As others said on their reviews, the body is not metal or plastic coated. It has a rubbery coat that has a great feel. It has a beautiful design and the Alien is very nice.
The keyboard is a really important thing on a laptop for me, and the keyboard of this M17x R4 is really good. The size of the keys and the feel when pressed is better than my last Samsung laptop. The touchpad is big and good as well. The backlights of the keyboard and on the border of the touchpad is really nice to play with. I always get myself playing with it.
Regarding performance, this laptop is really great. It is fast and everything runs like a charm. the only game that I played until now is Diablo III and it runs smoothly with everything on the top.
I did buy 16gb 1600 memory ram (total 22gb at the end) and a 256g SSD. With the SSD, I installed the windows 8pro and it was rebooting in less then 9 seconds. It is really impressive. I had to come back to the official OEM OS because of problems with the HD7970m driver. I don't know what happened but, as soon as it works, I come back here and say what I did.
The battery is really good, what is quite impressive due to the specs of this machine. It can run more than 3 hours on the internet and watching some videos.
The only con that I can tell about the laptop is that it is heavy, bulky but This was already known before purchasing.
So, if you want a beautiful and strong gaming laptop for a relative good price, this is the one.
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I received this laptop the over a week ago now, Let me say I am beyond impressed. It eats all modern games for lunch, I have not found one that I can't run on ultra and pull insane frames. Under full load it runs nice and cool its not to loud (the fan noise even under a heavy load is barely noticeable to me) unlike my desktop.
As for the quality of the laptop it is top notch and very very well built, I'm glad I paid the extra vs the upgraded Asus, Republic of Gamers. And as a former Asus, Republic of gamers owner I must say this one puts the quality of those laptops to shame. Also sorry for not doing a in-depth review but with some of the current reviews on here I don't see need to be.
Again, very nice laptop and the quality is top notch. Very happy that I went with this one VS a upgraded version of my old one. The Quality and performance difference is significant.
Cons: The computer is much heavier than expected, the sound out port is a tiny proprietary plug that only takes the Asus speaker unit (I have not been able to find any adapter units so I can hook it to my external speaker system on the desk), performance is fine but not blazing. The absolute worst feature is that it comes with Windows 8 installed. What an awful Operating System! Any busienss that buys a computer with Windows 8 will regret it from the first time their employee turns it on.. none of my networked scanners are supported, some of my online sites are incompatible with the new Internet Explorer version, etc. I am buying a new license for Windows 7 so I can remove Windows 8 from this computer... resulting in another $400 Microsoft extracts from my company.
