- Over the years, I've developed
a pretty good nose for (beep),
and one of the smelliest things around
tends to be mechanical keyboards on laptops.
From Asus to Acer to Gigabyte to MSI
and probably Alienware at some point,
every laptop with a mechanical keyboard
has sucked for one reason or another.
I mean, some of them are okay for certain tasks,
but not a single one of them has been better
than a quality membrane keyboard.
Which is why when Alienware said
they had collaborated with Cherry
to make a mechanical gaming keyboard... (coughs)
Excuse me, sorry. I threw up a little bit in my mouth.
I prepared for the worst.
But as it turns out, this thing feels exceptional.
(sniffs) Is that rose petals?
- Wow! Oh yeah! - Wow.
Well, according to my writing staff, anyway,
it's really good, but I have yet to touch it.
So best of luck, Alienware and Cherry.
And best of luck...
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The development of this keyboard started three years ago
when Alienware approached Cherry
and asked if they could design
a mechanical keyboard for their laptops
with the smallest of requests, like:
"Give users the experience they wish they had,"
and, "Provide mobile users the true feel
of a mechanical keyboard."
"It has to be good for gaming and for typing."
"Oh, and by the way, you have to do it
without using up any more space
than the existing membrane key switches do."
Now, how exactly did they do?
Apparently I get a single sentence now
to give you my thoughts.
I can only type a single sentence on this?
- [Alex] Yes, one sentence,
then we're swapping it out for a bit.
- [Linus] Aw, okay.
- [Alex] Choose a good sentence.
- I'm gonna go with "quick brown fox."
- [Alex] You're not gonna try and plug
LTT Store or something?
- Um, no. I'm gonna type the...
I gotta evaluate this thing in one sentence.
I got work to do here. Okay.
(keys clicking)
Am I allowed to backspace and retype things
if I make a mistake? - No.
(keys clicking)
- I feel a bit like a wine reviewer right now.
It's got a strong, tactile feel,
heavy at the front end,
and a pleasing mechanical sound,
save for the slightly twangy end note.
Is that what you expected to hear?
- [Alex] That's actually pretty accurate.
- Now, this has been billed as the world's first
Cherry MX ultra-low-profile mechanical keyboard,
which is true, but there have been laptops before
featuring Cherry MX switches.
Like this paragon of practicality.
This right here is the Acer Predator 21X,
possibly the most (beep) crazy laptop to ever exist.
- [Alex] Oh, just a second, you need the wrist rest
for the full typing experience.
- Right, you're right. Sorry, my bad.
It's got features that even today you can't find,
like a 21-inch curved ultrawide display,
two GTX 1080s running in SLI,
more I/O than probably just about any laptop today,
and, of course, a fully mechanical keyboard.
Of course, this isn't here so I can talk about
the room-filling sound, tasteful lighting effects,
and integrated Tobii eye tracking.
It's to talk about using Cherry MX Browns on a keyboard
And this is...
Well, you know, you joke about it,
but this is a pretty good solution
to the otherwise- - It works really well!
- Wrist-breaking difference in height
between your table and the computer.
I mean, it's really better
than any other keyboard on a laptop.
Because it's full-on Cherry MX Browns.
And get this.
They weren't even using low-profile keycaps or anything.
Acer went full-fat. They saved absolutely no Z height.
Of course, saving space wasn't really a priority
when Acer was designing a product like this one.
This is not really a laptop. It doesn't go on your lap.
This is a desktop replacement, and for a number of reasons,
this is a product category that has mostly evaporated
over the last three to four years.
A big part of the reason is that you can fit
the same kind of features and performance,
not to mention even things like mechanical keyboards,
into much slimmer designs.
Take this Asus Strix Scar 17 G733.
This is probably the closest competitor to the m17,
with matching core specs:
360-hertz panel, RTX 3080 graphics,
and an eight-core Ryzen processor,
with the big draw here being that it is just $3,000.
Because somehow that's a bargain
compared to the Alienware's casual $3,600 price tag.
One key difference, though,
is that the Strix comes with an opto-mechanical keyboard.
Those are actuated
by blocking a laser beam as the key is pressed down,
for apparently some of the best response times possible.
In practice, though...
Ooh, man, this thing does not feel amazing. (squawks)
(snorts) No, no. I will give it some more time.
I will give it some more time.
- [Alex] Go to boot up "Doom Eternal" or something.
I think it's not too bad for gaming.
- Yeah, I'll give you that, Alex.
It doesn't feel nearly as bad for gaming.
But what it doesn't feel like is...
Mechanical.
Now, to be clear, "mechanical" doesn't mean anything
other than the method by which the switch actuates,
and you can can have mechanical switches
in all shapes and sizes and sounds and feels.
It's just that, in the context of computer hardware,
people have an expectation that a mechanical switch
is Cherry MX-like in some way.
So you've got a longer travel
or you've got a tactile bump
or a more satisfying consistency
in the feel or the sound, right?
So it might be mechanical in its way of operating,
but it doesn't feel very good.
- [Alex] So I think I know why it doesn't feel very good.
I made this graph here.
- Ah! The force curve.
So this is how far we have pressed down
and this is how much force we're applying.
So it goes from actuation to really quickly bottoming out
because you have that much force on it to actuate it.
That makes a lot of sense. It's too nonlinear.
- [Alex] Well, but I think the problem also is
that it's too linear.
Like, you don't know where the actuation point
is going to be.
- Wait, so the actuation point doesn't require more force?
It's just there, you mean? - Well, just press it.
You can feel there's a click in the middle.
(key clicking)
It doesn't really make any sense.
- Yeah...
Yeah, so there are a couple of problems here.
Number one is that this doesn't really feel like much.
It feels really soft.
Then you get to this actuation point. This is the click.
So down, down, down...
(key clicks) Click.
Click! It's a really strong click.
And by the time you've applied this much force,
you're basically gonna jump straight to here
because it's not like you can ride it out
by applying just a little bit more, a little bit more.
And then this is a big problem too,
because your bottom-out feels extremely mushy.
So you've got mush here, this really strong click
that on paper might seem nice and sounds nice,
and then you've got this kind of mushy bottoming out,
and the whole thing just doesn't feel very good.
You combine that with the inherent small amount of deck flex
that you're gonna have in any laptop
that isn't just made out of a solid,
machined piece of aluminum,
and it contributes even more to the mushiness.
- [Alex] Yeah. So now you finally get to use this again.
- Okay, let's go back to the Alienware.
This is a very cute little chart that you made.
Thank you, Alex.
It's those extra little bits of effort
that set you apart from the other Alexes.
J.K. Prime, you're great too.
- [Alex] He also does nice little bits of extra effort.
- We ran out of desk pad space.
Fortunately we have these super wide ones, lttstore.com.
Before I give any more impressions,
I want to actually game on this thing, though,
because a good typing experience does not necessarily mean
that it's a good gaming keyboard.
And...
I prefer it,
but I don't know that I can objectively say it's better.
I just tend to prefer that...
Well, more desktop Cherry MX feel.
With typing and gaming impressions under my belt,
I can say with confidence that I like these
a lot better than these.
But these aren't necessarily my favorite style of switches
for either typing or gaming because, if you look closely,
they're quite stiff at the top of the keystroke.
I can press on it quite a lot before...
There, it goes. Right? (key clicks faintly)
Can you hear that click, Brandon?
Or is the whoosh of the fans too much?
- [Brandon] I can hear it.
(key faintly clicking) - There it is.
The bottom-out is much more satisfying,
not nearly as mushy feeling,
but I do tend to prefer a tactile bump
that's somewhere below the very top of the keystroke.
And actually,
Alex has a force chart that I can share with you guys.
So you can see that's exactly what...
Yeah. Man.
I have typed on a lot of keyboards over the years.
So you're pretty much putting all the force here
and then it falls away on you.
But the good news is that when it bottoms out,
it doesn't have that same kind of mush to it.
From a strictly performance standpoint,
if all I did was game,
I would probably have to take these, but if I was me,
and I know that I actually do type sometimes as well,
I would absolutely take these first.
Now let's talk about how these work,
because while I have used kind of front-loaded,
heavier switches like these,
I've never used these ones before
because they are brand new.
We've got a little tester here from Cherry,
number 39 of 80 apparently,
that gives you a really good look,
both with some clear keycaps over the top of them
as well as an exposed one.
So it's actually a butterfly-style mechanism that,
if you look at our microscope footage,
we can see there's a little piece that slips off and...
There it is. That's where you get your click.
Then the spring in the middle brings it back to rest.
So you could easily, that's actually interesting,
you could easily adjust the tension on this thing
by adjusting that spring.
That's kind of a cool thought.
Not that you would want to.
Cherry always impresses me with their attention to detail.
Are these steel? - Yeah.
(key clicking)
- 15 million clicks.
And if Cherry rates it for 15 million,
you better believe it.
As good as a key switch might be, though,
as I touched on earlier, (clearing throat)
I can easily be let down
by a chassis that is not stiff enough.
And we saw a great example of this
in the Galaxy Book Pro on ShortCircuit about a week ago.
Fortunately, Dell/Alienware has done a great job of this
with a unibody magnesium CNC chassis.
But it is something to keep in mind,
especially as these switches start to show up
on other laptops as an option,
because they're gonna cost you about $150.
Another challenge for Dell/Alienware
is that they already had some of the best
mobile key switches on the market
before this collaboration with Cherry.
Can they possibly be worth that kind of money?
Oh! Wow, look at this.
We are so prepared for this video!
To find out, I've got an m15 R3 on hand!
This is still not my favorite style of keyboard
because I type a lot,
and that front-loaded actuation curve is not ideal for it.
But if you like that style,
and for gaming, a lot of people do,
the Cherry version is definitely better.
If it's $150 better, that's more up to you,
but for a lot of people a good-feeling keyboard
is absolutely worth that kind of money
and this is definitely a lot better-feeling.
My notes just say,
"Somehow use the OLED screen to segue into the fact
that a keyboard is attached to a laptop
and the rest of the laptop has to be good
for that to matter," ah, yes.
So the m15 R3 uses an OLED display.
Oh, inky blacks! So good!
Whereas (clears throat) the m17 R4 does not.
As far as I can tell,
it's using the same 1080P, 360-hertz IPS panel
as what we had in the Asus Strix Scar.
Now, you might think 1080P, 360 hertz
doesn't make a lot of sense in a laptop with an RTX 3080
because you're gonna be CPU-limited in basically everything.
You might say, "Oh, it probably makes more sense
to get a 3070 and save a couple bucks,
or better yet, go for a 1440P display."
But if you are primarily planning
on playing competitive shooters
and then just occasionally
want to turn RTX on in "Cyberpunk," this?
Not a terrible config.
What's really impressive about the m17 R4, though,
is just how freaking powerful it is, especially the GPU.
With 165 watts of power on tap,
this is the fastest mobile GPU we've ever tested,
and in games it wins against the Scar every single time.
For productivity, the Core i9 Intel processor
does hold the Alienware back a bit,
with the Ryzen 9 in the Strix pulling ahead,
but in the coming weeks we're expecting Alienware
to be launching an AMD version of the m17
that should be the fastest gaming laptop
on the market, period.
Now, of course, with power like that
comes cooling responsibility
and also airflow responsibility.
So when you're using the m17,
expect the fans to always be on,
and during gaming, well,
don't even think about using the speakers,
however good they might sound,
or open-back headphones.
But what Alienware has done
with cooling here is still impressive,
even if the CPU regularly gets close to 100 degrees Celsius.
I mean, look. It's not even that thick.
Also inside we've got an 86 watt-hour battery
and Alienware did warn me that this system
was not optimized for battery life,
but holy crap, I thought the days of gaming laptops
with around two hours of battery had finally ended.
Not here.
Maybe the AMD version will be a little bit better,
but my hopes aren't super high.
Which means that even though it doesn't look
as clunky as its predecessors did,
this is still the modern-day equivalent
of a desktop replacement.
And you know what? I kinda like this future.
You still have to be plugged into the wall
pretty much all the time, but dang.
You got a lot of I/O.
They even worked in their proprietary
external GPU dock thing, which is freakin' awesome.
You can, of course, go Thunderbolt
if you prefer that sort of thing.
Wired Ethernet.
Dang impressive.
If you have $3,600 to spend, of course. Mind you!
Mind you, that pricing looks downright reasonable
compared to what the Predator 21X costs.
What was this thing, like 10 grand?
- [Alex] Yeah.
- I don't know. Something-something...
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If you guys enjoyed this video,
maybe you'll also enjoy checking out...
You know what?
Go check out our original review of this thing.
It truly is an utterly unique device.
Anyone wanna buy one?
- [Alex] No! We're not selling it, Linus.
- Put it on Craigslist. - No, never.
- But it's useless. - It's beautiful.
- It belongs in a museum.
Should donate it to someone. It takes up so much space.
I mean, look at this. Remember this?
The trackpad, you could flip it around to be a number pad.