If you’re in the market for a gaming laptop, Alienware has you covered.
One of the most recent additions into the lineup is the Alienware X17,
a powerful yet thin computer substitute. Intel Core i7, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080,
and two SSDs are included in the super-duper setup. Is there anything else you’d like?
How about a Cherry MX keyboard, strong speakers, and a 17.3-inch 4K display?
DESIGN Styles are diverse
when it comes to top gaming laptops. However, many prefer the classic black-and-red scheme,
and some go all out with the RGB lighting. Some gaming laptops have become more delicate and
sophisticated than they were earlier; this is the latest standard in the industry. If Alienware’s
latest offering is anything to go by, it may be perhaps the most understated and sleek to date.
Visually, the Alienware x17 features softer corners and more connectors on the back,
but this isn’t all that’s changed. Among other things,
Dell has developed a unique thermal interface substance and a new quad fan cooling system.
Despite its lack of radical aesthetic changes, the Alienware x17 R1 has
one unusual feature that immediately catches the attention when turning it on.
Previously, the trackpad was only a black rectangle. Now, it’s a colorful RGB quad.
Even though this does nothing to help your gaming experience, but it feels pretty.
In general, 17-inch gaming laptops are large, hefty, and designed primarily for performance
beyond aesthetics. The Alienware x17, on the other hand, strives to be either slimmer and thus
more capable beyond its competition, yet keeping a design that implies that it’s exclusively prepared
for the advanced gamers. It is 0.84 inches in diameter, although it contains an Nvidia GeForce
RTX 3080 and an 11th Generation Intel CPU, perfectly managed in one sleek construction.
DISPLAY The X17 R1 comes with a few different screen
options, as outlined above. On review here is the 4K/UHD panel. It's crisp, wonderfully colour rich,
and generally easy on the eyes. We found various games looked fantastic on this screen.
One inevitable downside is that 4K gaming is fairly hard to drive,
even with the RTX 3080 graphics card this machine sports.
There's more of the physical build left to discuss beyond the thermals,
so let's touch on the screen next. Our review unit's 17.3-inch panel combines
4K resolution (3,840 by 2,160 pixels) with a 120Hz refresh rate. The clarity of 4K is great,
as you'd expect, and we've moved past the days when 4K screens peaked at 60Hz.
However, this resolution is still very demanding for gaming, even with the latest GPU hardware,
and it's my opinion you'd be better served with a lower resolution. Fortunately, the x17 has two
full HD or 1080p screen options—one at 165Hz, and the other at 360Hz with Nvidia G-Sync.
PERFORMANCE
We found that Control ran at around 20fps on max settings, for example,
but managed over 50fps with DLSS turned on. The Battlefield 2042
beta ran at 40fps with everything set to maximum and dynamic resolution turned on.
Rainbow Six Siege, maxed out, achieves around 60-70fps. It looks great in 4K, of course,
but you'd get a higher and more consistent frame count with a Full HD panel and lower
resolution settings - you'd need that to make the most of the 120Hz refresh rate.
A base model of the x17 costs $2,199.99, a pricey proposition no matter how you slice it.
For that expenditure, you get an Intel Core i7-11800H processor, 16GB of memory,
an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, a 256GB solid-state drive, and the full HD 165Hz display.
As for our review configuration, it's an eye-watering $3,680 with the same Core i7 CPU,
32GB of RAM, an RTX 3080 GPU, a 2TB SSD, and the 4K 120Hz display. That's steep by any measure,
though at least you can see where the nearly $1,500 price jump comes from, since every
component except the CPU is significantly kicked up. The faster graphics and massive increase in
storage account for most of the hike. We'll see how the GPU fared in our performance benchmarks,
but no testing is required to conclude you can fit a lot more games on that SSD.
BATTERY Battery life doesn’t seem
to have been a high priority for Alienware since the X17 is primarily aimed at fast desktop-class
4K gaming performance while plugged in. But it’s not the worst we’ve seen,
averaging almost four hours of mixed use with the workload that I mentioned above. It’d be
tough for me to find a justification for lugging this heavy laptop away from its charger, though.
It weighs about seven pounds, and its 330W charger is almost the size and weight of a
literal brick. The good news about the power supply is that it recharges the X17 quickly,
taking just over an hour to go from about 10 percent to full capacity.
COOLING Alienware
points to new thermal solutions to combat the heat issues that arise with a smaller chassis,
so it's not as if the topic didn't occur to the engineers. The X Series uses an updated version
of the company's Cryo-Tech cooling technology, with new quad fans and smart fan controls,
as well as a new thermal material dubbed Element 31. The latter is a gallium-silicone
matrix that's exclusive to Alienware and only available in RTX 3070 and 3080 configurations.
The firm claims a 25% improvement in thermal resistance over the previous generation,
and while head-to-heads are hard to judge. Despite its noisy fans, the Alienware x17 R1 is a beast of
a gaming laptop that will serve as an ideal desktop replacement for any serious gamer.
KEYBOARD For the keyboard, the X15 gets
a rubber-dome keyboard with 1.5 mm of travel and per-key RGB lighting. The secondaries are not lit.
The X17, on the other hand, gets Dell’s CherryMX optical-mechanical switches, arguably the best
such switches currently available on mobile products, with 1.8 mm of travel and excellent
feedback. They’re also per-key RGB, except for the non-lit secondaries. That aside, both the X15
and the X17 are available with an optional RGB clickpad (on the 3080 configurations),
a reminiscence of past Alienware models. Not my thing, but might be yours.
There are some grills flanking the keyboard on both model, and I was thinking maybe
they’ve put speakers there, but I think those are intakes for the side heatpipes,
and the audio-only fires through the front lip. One more thing sacrificed for that cooling?
PORTS
Port options are mostly the same as on last year's Alienware m17 R4 but with a few important changes.
The rarely used proprietary Graphics Amplifier port, for example, has been dropped in favor
of a more handy second USB-C port. There is also one less USB-A port to work with this time around.
Otherwise, all other ports have returned albeit rearranged along the rear of the
chassis to be generally harder to reach and see than on most other laptops.
Note that both USB-C ports support DisplayPort and Power Delivery but only one
is actually compatible with Thunderbolt 4.
BOTTOM LINE Overall,
All told the Alienware X17 R1 is a great gaming package. There's plenty on offer here, including
great specification and visual design, in a slim-yet-powerful package that does little wrong.
We only have a few minor complaints about the setup - some of which could
be combatted by just ensuring you make the right choices in terms of the spec options.
That 512GB drive, for example, is far too small for most modern games.
The Alienware X17 R1 continues the company's trend of releasing cracking gaming laptops.
It's out of this world.