Alienware 17 r5 Review

 Alienware is an iconic name when it comes to gaming. These notebooks have always aroused attention with their out-of-this-world design and top-notch hardware.

Now, in our labs, we have the latest iteration of the Alienware 17.asus i7 3517u With its 4.42 kg (9.7 lbs) weight it's hard to say that the notebook is easily portable but that's the price you pay for having the latest and greatest hardware inside.

The Alienware 17 R5 comes with the new Core i9-8950HK - a CPU unlocked for overclocking up to 5.00 GHz. dell xps 13 9365 docking stationThe Alienware 17 R5 is all about overclocking and getting maximum performance. Even the GPU inside is factory OC - something you rarely find in notebooks.

The biggest concern is if the cooling system is going to be able to sustain this hardware.asus x550ld xx082d Let's find out the Alienware 17 R5 Excellent and defect .

Design

Though the 17 R4 was certainly big and heavy, I liked the design. Clearly Alienware did as well, because it's back for the R5.

The Alienware 17 is mammoth.acer chromebook cb5 312t It¡¯s an obsidian goliath in a new coat of paint that¡¯s handsome and slightly refreshing. While this model retains the same basic shape as versions from previous years with aggressive angles and a spaceship theme, the laptop¡¯s aluminum frame is all-black, giving it a serious aesthetic that means business. 130w power adapterThere¡¯s also more RGB lighting zones than ever before, with 13 areas that can be programmed in the Alienware Command Center, including both sides of the screen, several zones on the keyboard, microsoft 1769and two Alienware logos. The lid is all-black and is where you'll get the most of the spaceship motif. Alienware's logo is there in silver, and yes, it lights up.asus zenbook pro duo ux582 Lifting the lid reveals the 17.3-inch display surrounded by a thick bezel. The deck surrounding the keyboard is covered in a soft-touch material that feels luxurious to lay your wrists on, though I wish the keyboard were slightly further forward.hp cq61 Like many Alienware models before it, the chassis has a section that juts out the back with for extra cooling and few more ports.

The whole thing feels built like a tank. While Alienware doesn't make any drop-test claims, the aluminum is paired with steel reinforcements, and this thing feels like a luxury device when you¡¯re gaming and when you¡¯re just carrying it from room to room.

Ports

The Alienware 17 R5 probably features every port you can ask for. In a manner typical for high-end gaming notebooks, a15 120p1athe majority of ports is located at the back of the device which makes connecting peripherals more comfortable than having cables sticking from both sides.

Starting with the left side, you can find a USB Type-C port, a USB 3.0 port, and two 3.5 mm jacks - one for a microphone and one for headphones.

The right-hand side is home to only a single USB 3.0 port.

The back of the notebook is densely populated. There you can find the DC charging port, the Alienware?Graphics Amplifier Port which lets you connect an external GPU, another USB Type-C port with Thunderbolt 3 support, an HDMI, a Mini-Display Port, and a Gigabit Ethernet port (Killer Networks e250000).

Display quality

Alienware 17 R5 features a Full HD IPS panel manufactured by AUO carrying a model number B173HAN01.3 (AUO139D). Its resolution is 1920 X 1080 and its diagonal - 17.3 inches (43.94 cm). This translates into a pixel density of 127 ppi. The screen ratio is 16:9 and the pixel pitch is 0.1995 X 0.1995 mm. dell inspiron 2330 all in oneThe screen becomes Retina when viewed from a distance greater than 27 inches/ 23 cm (from this distance the human eye can't tell apart individual pixels).

Alienware 17 R5's screen provides comfortable viewing angles.We offer images at45 degree to evaluate image quality.

The measured maximum brightness is reasonably high-340 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 330?nits (cd/m2) average across the surface of the display with a maximum deviation of 11%.?The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6780K- almost in line with the optimal 6500K temperature for the sRGB standard. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 6670K.

In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from uniformity perspective. sony kdl 32w706b standIn other words the leakage of light from the light source.

The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits)-in this particular case at 36% Brightness (White level = 140 cd/m2, Black level = 0.1 cd/m2).

Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color sensitive work. The contrast ratio is good¨C1350:1(1250:1 after profiling).

Performance

Armed to the teeth with an Intel Core i9-8950HK, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, a 512GB PCIe M.2 SSD, a 1TB, 7,200-RPM HDD, our review configuration of the the Alienware 17 can handle productivity tasks with ease. The 30 Chrome tabs I had open, including a Twitch stream and a 1080p episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver ± on YouTube were a joke to this machine, which kept running without any lag at all.

On the Geekbench 4 overall performance test,sony sa 3 the Alienware earned a score of 20,890, falling below the Aorus X9 (25,915, Core i9-8950HK), but within range of the Titan (22,754, Core i9-8950HK) and Eon (21,273, Intel Core i7-8700K) and still beating the premium gaming category average (17,150).

Why is it scoring lower than competing laptops with the same processor It's hard to know for sure, but by using both Alienware Command Center and CPU-Z and HWInfo to track performance, 9360we noticed that, especially when overclocked, the internal temperature would spike, and that the processor often didn't reach the 5GHz Alienware Command Center promised (even though it passed the app's tests). It's possible that better cooling would lead to higher performance scores.

It took the Alienware 9 seconds to transfer 4.97GB of files, a rate of 565.5 MBps. That ties the Eon but is ahead of the premium gaming laptop average (505.3 MBps) and the Aorus X9 (424MBps). The Titan was even faster at a blazing 727 MBps.

On our Excel macro test, it took the Alienware 42 seconds to pair 65,000 names and addresses, two seconds ahead of the average (0:44) but falling short of the Aorus (0:31) and Titan (0:34).

When it came to video editing, it took the Alienware 9 minutes and 10 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p on our Handbrake test. That's speedier than average (10:04) but and lags behind the Aorus (8:15) and Titan (7:41).

Keyboard and Touchpad

While most laptops, gaming or otherwise, have gone with a chiclet keyboard, Alienware continues to hold out with a more traditional style. And it feels great. With a deep 2.1 millimeters of travel and keys that require 79 grams of force to actuate. On the 10fastfingers.com typing test, I hit 102 words per minute, which is in my usual range, with my average 2 percent error rate.

The keyboard features nine programmable macro keys and a number pad. acer notebook chargerYou can customize the macro keys and its keyboard backlighting in the Alienware Command Center.

The 4X2.3-inch touchpad is a little short for my taste, and features two mouse buttons. Still, it??￥s responsive, and supports gestures like swiping up with three fingers to open task view and tapping with four fingers to see the action center.

Battery Life

Gaming laptops don't tend to last long on a charge, and this one didn't either, though it lasted slightly longer than others. Our configuration had a 99 watt-hour battery, an upgrade from the 68 Wh battery in base models.

On our test, which browses the web, watches videos and runs through graphics benchmarks continuously at 150 nits, the Alienware 17 lasted 3 hours and 47 minutes.dell chromebook 11 3180 That's higher than the premium gaming average (3:33), as well as the Titan (2:54), Aorus X9 (2:20) and Eon (1:52).