The Alienware M17 R4 is one of the laptops that shows that big immobile laptops are still here to stay despite the lighter and thinner trend of many laptops. This laptop, built with better and faster innards, combined with a 360Hz display and Nvidia’s ampere architecture, is a gaming laptop that you can be sure to give you a solid performance.
Although the M17 R4 is a little more expensive than most gaming laptops, it is a small price to pay for the several premium specs that come with the best Alienware laptop right now.
Design
Even though the design of the M17 R4 isn’t exactly new, it still feels like the beautiful aesthetic gaming laptops that have always been around, like the M17 R3 and M17 R2. It comes in white colour and has the RGB Alienware logo and number 17 on the lid. There is also an RGB lighting strip and a black vent giving it a unique look.
Ports on the laptop include an USB-a port, a combo 3.5mm audio jack, an ethernet on the left side, a USB-a port, and a microSD card reader on the right side. There is also a mini DisplayPort, HDMI, Power, Thunderbolt Between the vents at the back of the laptop.
Display
The display of the Alienware M17 R4 is exquisite. It is connected with Nvidia’s G-Sync software, making the GPU sync with the display, and making the display awesome for your gaming experience. This laptop has a 17.3-inch, 1920 x 1080- pixel display with a 360Hz refresh rate.
The laptop carries an averagely 316 nits of brightness, outshining most high-performance gaming laptops. With the Nvidia g-sync technology, the screen refresh rate is smooth and fast, providing a fantastic graphic quality that makes the gaming experience accurate. The M17 panel hit about 80.6 % of the DCI-P3 color gamut on the color reproduction.
Performance
As much as it is one of the most expensive gaming laptops around, The Alienware M17 R4 gives the best performance you can get on a gaming laptop. While trying the metro exodus on this laptop, it played at 90 fps with RTX off and 78 fps with the RTX and DLSS ON. Every other game that was played on this great laptop was able to 70 fps even with maximum settings.
The laptop comes with 32GB of RAM, an intel core i9-10980HK, and an NVidia GeForce RTX 3080, giving it a superfast performance. However, this could be the reason it gets so loud.
Keypad and Touchpad
The keyboard of the Alienware is a uniquely shaped gaming laptop with a reasonably good travel distance. It is easy and suitable for typing but not as technical as other gaming laptops such as the MSI GE75 Raider. The M17 comes with customizable keys on the top row, above the keyboard, and a full numeric keypad.
The 3.1 x 4.1-inch glass trackpad is arguably one of the best in a gaming laptop. Notwithstanding the size of the computer, the trackpad looks small for it. It gives excellent clicks, however, and gets the work done.
Configuration
Dell decided to add new configurations to the M17 R4, unlike the previous generations of the M17s. The best part of the Alienware m17 R4 is the ability to customize its designs. You can change its processor up to 4TB of storage and 32GB of RAM. It is also possible to choose the screen you want, including 360 Hz and 144Hz panels coupled with a 60 Hz, 4k panel that can get to a hundred per cent of the Adobe RGB color gamut.
Battery Life
The battery life of the Alienware M17 R4 is not exactly superb. This could be due to its high performance. There is little or no improvement over the last previous Alienware M17s. The M17 R4 lasts for an average of 2hours at a standard game rate and just a tad bit more for video and movies.
Final Verdict
The Alienware M17 R4 is a fully-packed, premium gaming laptop that serves a great deal of purpose for gamers. It has a superfast performance rate and is perfect for all kinds of things you might want to do on your laptop. It is also a great choice if you prefer desktop gaming. If you want it you can sell old laptop to us and use the cash for a new one.
However, the downside to this laptop is its heavyweight, the inability to move it around, how expensive it is, sub-par battery life, and the loud noise from the fan due to its superfast processor.
