Alienware M17
No ”out of this world” jokes, please
ALIENWARE’S BEEN AROUND for a while, cranking out premium gaming hardware for almost as long as this reviewer has been alive. The M17 series of gaming laptops has been available ever since the company was purchased by Dell in 2009— high-end systems with 17-inch displays, and the latest in internal hardware. This new model of the M17 doesn’t buck the trend: a recognizable design, top-notch components, and Alienware’s signature branding plastered all over it.
As gaming laptops go, we have to admit that we like the design of this M17. The screen bezel is thin and black, and beneath it the speakers and fans sit below a hexagonal honeycomb mesh. It’s surprisingly lightweight, too, and has quite a small profile when closed, as the screen hinge is mounted an inch or so into the base of the chassis from the rear edge, as opposed to on that edge.
The external hardware is hard to fault; the full-size keyboard is comfortable and responsive, with addressable RGB lighting for each key. The trackpad is perfectly fine, although plugging in a mouse makes more sense. In terms of other physical features, there’s a port for a Dell-approved Noble Lock antitheft device, and some natty RGB lighting on the rear of the screen. The power button is, of course, a glowing alien face.
It’s all about what’s hidden inside that chassis, though. Four copper heat pipes and cooling fin stacks serve a 9thgeneration Intel i7 CPU and a GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card—the slimmer, slightly less powerful Max-Q version, to retain the M17’s slender profile. Two fans with liquid-crystal polymer blades channel air in through the top and bottom of the unit, then expel it through the rear and side vents.
Heat management isn’t something this system does very well, though. The fans are quiet, to be fair, but the whole unit gets pretty hot after extended use, even for straightforward gaming. The six-core CPU frequently runs at around 50 C when the system is just idling, and leaps into the high nineties during complex rendering tasks. This is all the more confusing when you consider that the M17 apparently utilizes a handful of sensors for dynamic temperature control. It’s a bit concerning, although the temperature spikes didn’t lead to any noticeable performance issues in our testing, and this system isn’t designed for workstation tasks.
Joining that RTX 2080 is 16GB of DDR4-2666 memory and two 512GB M.2 drives set up in RAID 0. As you might expect, the gaming performance is excellent (although those drives aren’t particularly fast). The M17’s display is a straightforward 1080p FHD panel; the maximum brightness is good, and the refresh rate goes up to 144Hz. It’s a shame that this otherwise powerful system is limited to 1080p gaming, but it does provide a certain guarantee of performance by limiting gameplay to that resolution, and the screen is one of the better 1080p displays we’ve seen on a gaming laptop. The hinge, however, is a bit weak, making the screen feel flimsy.
There are virtually no games that this laptop can’t run at 1080p ultra. Yes, some particularly GPU-battering titles might not be able to quite hit 60fps at those settings, but for the most part, this is an extremely competent gaming laptop. It packs an HDMI port and Thunderbolt 3 support for daisy-chaining higher resolution monitors, if you want to push its capabilities a bit further, although the hardware isn’t quite good enough to reliably play games at 4K ultra settings.
This version of the M17 is a solid product; it isn’t going to set the world alight, but it’s a reasonably powerful piece of hardware, dressed up in an aesthetically pleasing chassis. Those familiar with Alienware’s wares will know that you do pay a certain premium for its hardware, though, and the M17 is no exception—this model costs $2,700, a steep but not unreasonable price for what you get. Similar-spec laptops from the likes of MSI, Asus ROG, and HP Omen are a little more affordable, but there’s a certain amount of style and promise provided by the Alienware brand. If Alienware has treated you well in the past, this laptop will only preserve your opinion.