Dell Alienware m17 R2 Laptop Review: Making Core i9 Worthwhile

[Redaktion]

The redesigned Alienware m17 R2 crams both a Core i9-9980HK CPU and GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q GPU in the thinnest chassis yet for the venerable series. We had anticipated lukewarm performance to keep thermals in check, but the system surprised us with its faster-than-average speeds even for a high-end gaming laptop.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Alienware-m17-R2-Laptop-Review-Making-Core-i9-Worthwhile.454427.0.html

[joe]

My god, what a piece of overpriced trash. How did this get 84%, i wonder? Soldered RAM, s*** screen, s*** termals?

[Silva]

Bad company, this manufacturer Dell, does not support devices with 5 years of manufacture, they simply leave and abandon. These customers are left without any support, and the device becomes junk mail.
Bad investment to buy a device of this brand. .
I have my useless device here in Brazil.

[DF]

Wifi "standards" change or get updates every 2 years, sometimes less.  Soldering the wifi card when there was plenty of room for a M2 slot in that location was just plain up stupid.  Wifi 6 for example will become Wifi 6e by the end of this year and it was only the end of last year that it got ratified as Wifi 6 in the first place.

Soldered memory on a machine marketed (and priced) to enthusiasts?  And then, if you were going to do that, only 16GB again to the same market segment?  In this case I understand it was to save space, but really it was a bad choice for the intended audience.

4K/120 screen that is already on the Razer needs to be adopted yesterday.  Oled 120 would be better if it could be obtained.  This is 2020, not 1999.

Why Tobii eye tracking (widely reviewed as close to useless) is installed yet helpful modern features like Windows Hello or at LEAST a fingerprint reader are ignored is again, just unbelievable at this price level.

Trackpad is actually better than the 51m with buttons.  That's good.  CPU performance good albeit a bit warm (maybe they should have a few more fan options that offer some more balancing of power to heat levels rather than just 3).  GPU performance is excellent - the way it should be done.  Battery life is good for this size of machine.

So some things they did well.  But some things were so poorly decided on a machine that is far from cheap that it boggles the mind.  Razer offers touchscreen, Hello face recognition, 4k/120hz, eGPU connection along with M2 slots for wifi, memory slots and similar battery life for the same or cheaper $$.  And Razer offers Intel wifi because, well they "get it" and apparently executives at Dell are married to Killer and haven't realized that "drivers" that mess with Wifi settings are an instant path to network problems.  ALL their business machines know better (as do their customers) and offer only Intel WAN solutions.  Do they think gamers aren't also engineers?  Silly.

If Dell wants to be worth the thousands they charge for this thing they need to grab a box of clues, keep the good things they've done, and remove the numerous bad decisions.  Solder is for ipads - get a grip.  Biometric authentication is being recommended by security experts all over the globe.  Get with the program.  You want to sell dimestore devices?  Fine no problem.  You want someone to hand you a couple grand for a piece of silicon and plastic?  Better make it good.

[Lakshay Kakkar]

In the stress test section, the amount of power the CPU was pulling is not shown in any test. Otherwise one can also think that Alienware sent a Silicon Lottery binned CPU for review, to make sure that it doesn't tax the cooling system.

[_MT_]

So, they sacrificed SO-DIMMs to shave off 2.5 mm. Awesome. And also managed to ditch 2.5" bay while reducing battery capacity. They do employ some geniuses. Asking €100-150 for 8 GB of RAM is also not nice. That's my biggest gripe with soldered RAM.

I guess you base your 40 % loss claim for the 9750H on the m15 R2, right? It's performance in Cinebench was pretty lackluster. In this laptop (with the same cooling and power budget), I would expect over 1200 sustained. Question remains: would it actually deliver? That was a pleasant surprise. The temperatures not so much, but to be expected of Alienware.

Problem is that, for example, in Germany, compared to the 9750H, the 9880H costs extra €400 and the 9980HK is another €270 I believe. That's €670 extra over the 9750H. Yeah, not great.

When I saw the keyboard layout change, I was excited and hoping other laptops outside of Latitude/ Precision lines, like XPS, would adopt bigger cursor keys. Next, they could try perhaps grouping function keys so you can orient yourself better by touch. I really miss the keyboards of the olden days. The XPS 13, however, disappointed in this regard. At least they went with an 8:5 aspect ratio.

[Reader]

No SD card??? Although I can see empty space in the chassis exactly where you would put it. USB-C only at the back... (same empty space question)
No idea about everyone else opinion but mine is that there are much better uses than 1*, 2*, 3*, 4* keys in the real estate of any keyboard.
Soldered WiFi -  what if we want one with much wider OS driver support than "Killer"?
And of course the soldered RAM and the no 2.5" HDD slot...
I can live with +2 mm thickness but all those minuses above are a no go. Also, Razor have proved that it is completely possible to put a 2.5" HDD in a <21mm chassis.

Good article, though. Thanks.

[Denis]

What a wonderful idea, let's solder the 16GB RAM and WLAN on a gaming laptop with an i9-9980HK and RTX 2080 MaxQ? I wonder if that genius still has a job at Alienware?

[Bradd Baldwin]

Still waiting with a premium support onsite repair contact for them to replace a bad card they diagnosed Feb 15th. It's now March 8th and still no replacement date in site. Original case opened early February. Once you purchase don't expect much. Computer is only 3 months old. I will never purchase anything from Dell again.