This is a great laptop overall, but this really should have been released as at least a 144hz screen for the asking price. My previous laptop, also an Alienware 13R with OLED screen, has much better resolution, and obviously much better black levels by far and viewing angles. This screen is only 1920x1080, which would be ok, but includes a fairly powerful RTX 2070 Max-Q mobile processor, capable of way over 60 frames per second at the laptop resolution for most games. So if you game off the actual laptop screen, you will see screen tearing, as the display only runs at 60hz (60hz, basically means it can only display about 60 frames per second). This really isn’t all that bad, as just about all games have a function called “V-Sync” and it will bascially cap your video card from passing 60fps, and keep away that screen tearing. I understand they were trying to keep the price down on this laptop offering, but this is really a shame, as there are other manufacturers of exact same CPU, and GPU configurations that do have higher refresh rate monitors, and at least one of them, at a higher resolution to boot. This is a big laptop, but really not as heavy as you would believe. You probably wouldn’t want to lug this thing around everyday, but weight wise, it is not very heavy, only a bit heavier than my Alienware 13R with OLED that does not contain a hard drive. This laptop configuration, has a 512gb SSD for the boot system drive, and a hybrid 1tb+8GB hard drive. This is a great setup, as you will quickly fill up a regular 512gb SSD alone, as I did with my previous gaming laptop. I use Adobe Creative Cloud, mostly Premiere Pro, and After Effects, and this laptop runs both fantastically! The 17” screen has been fantastic, even if running a lower resolution. The build quality of this laptop is absolutely stellar. This is built like a TANK!! Love it. Love the looks. I can get away at freelance jobs bringing this in and be ok with it. The only thing I do not like, are the huge screen screen bezels. These not only give the laptop a cheap feel, but they put the ALIENWARE logo type right underneath it. It just makes an otherwise great looking laptop look a bit low budget. The screen itself is not too bad, but definitely not a OLED screen in terms of black levels, however, you will not have to worry about potential burn-in like I do on my older alienware OLED model. Ok.. so, now on to how it games. I installed Resident Evil 2 remake, and had a few issues setting it up, as many people did, but it is not the fault of this laptop. There apparently bugs related to the game not starting because of it being confused as to which video processor to use at launch, and the game will hang and not begin. I followed directions directly from Capcom, on the Steam Support forums, and I did finally get it working. It basically involves going to the NVIDIA Control Panel, and adding in a custom option to force the Resident Evil 2 .exe file, to always use the RTX 2070, and prefer performance over battery life. You should always game while plugged in, not just for performance, but also you will not get alot of gaming time on any gaming laptop running off a battery for modern games. Once I got it working, I pretty much maxed out all my settings, per a great youtube channel, Digital Foundry, and gaming right on my laptop screen was great! Nice frame rate, no tearing with V-Sync on, at default resolution of 1920x1080 on the laptop screen. So on to a bigger test. I recently got both a 65 Sony 4K tv and Sony Dolby Atmos receiver. I have an Xbox One X that looks great on it, especially with HDR compatible games. After a bit of noodling around, I was able to get my TV as my gaming display, including getting Resident Evil 2 to display HDR!! Looks great. At first, I setup the game to run at my tv’s default 4K resolution, but the frame rate was very unstable. Playable, but not great. It would fluctuate a bit. To get your m17 to display HDR, you definitely need a HDR capable TV, set windows display settings by right clicking on your desktop to “Display Settings” and make sure it is set to play games in HDR color. I did this, but the game would not allow me to turn on HDR itself! I could see the HDR mode on my Windows desktop, but when I would start Resident Evil 2 it would go back SDR. Again, after some googling, what you need to do, in addition to setting Windows 10 display settings to HDR mode, is to make the laptop only use one display, your HDR display. Don’t extend or use your laptop as 2nd monitor. It confuses games, and the HDR settings. You also, and this is a big one, need to go back into NVIDIA Control Panel, and change the color settings to use HDR mode!! Otherwise, it seems windows only thinks the non gaming optimus video card is the one using HDR. There is a customize option, where you can set this up, and change the bit color depth, and I was able to do this here. Once I did that, rebooted, and ran Resident Evil 2, bingo, I was able to get the HDR mode option turned on, when connected to my TV as the only display! Gaming was great this way. I had great frame rates, very steady, and looked about the same as my Xbox One X, even though I had to lower my resolution to 1920x1080, vs. full 4k. The resolution difference was not noteable! But the HDR mode was. Much better in HDR if you have a 4K HDR tv. Even surround sound passed thru to my amp from the laptop! I got in maybe 4 hours of game time with my TV this weekend. I use a xbox 360 wireless USB adapter on the laptop, and game from about 8 feet away with it. I also had a chance to install Call of Duty WWII. This game also supports HDR modes, but I was not able to get it to work, and it looks like no one, can get it to work, as evidenced by Steam forums for the game. This game I was however get to run a a very high and steady frame rate, with just about every option maxed out, at 4K resolution with no issues at all. Surround sound pass thru also worked great. I setup Alienware Mobile Connect on this laptop, as it will suggest you do it. This allows you to get all your phone notifications direct on your laptop. This is great, and is something Mac computers have been doing for years. Just a heads up, when gaming, set this to “Do Not Distub” otherwise if you get a notification, the game will minimize, to show you the notification. Speakers on this laptop are also a plus. They just sound great, considering they are in a laptop. I will always use headphones while gaming off the screen, but for other things, they sound really good. While gaming, this machine get hot. I mean really hot. You will not be able to game on this thing on your lap. Even on a table, you will feel the heat off this thing, not only blowing out of the sides, but also on the bottom. While gaming, I would advise people to either get a laptop cooler pad, or even something like a engineering scale, to lift the back of the unit up a little, to allow for better ventilation. In my testing, my computer never shutdown, from overheating or anything like that, but heat will degrade your battery life over time, and I did not use anything to lift it up, but will be ordering a laptop cooler very soon. USB transfer speeds were also great. Connected up 2 different USB hard drives, and they both were copying files to and from each other around 160mb/second. Not bad at all. Overall, since I mostly will be gaming directly on my 65” living room TV, with occasional laptop gaming for some games, I am VERY happy with this as a gaming laptop, but also as a video editing machine! Very recommended as long as you aren’t exclusively gaming all the time on the laptop screen. And even then it might be ok for most people after turning on V-Sync.

BUILD QUALITY: Pulling the m17 out of its box, it’s kind of surprising that it isn’t substantially heavier than Dell’s G-series laptops. The top has a grained texture that is nice to hold and doesn’t feel slippery. The edges of the laptop feel smooth without any sharp edges, and it’s overall a pleasure to hold, despite its larger size. Both the top and bottom of the chassis are made of metal and have excellent rigidity to prevent flex. Opening up the laptop to show the keyboard, it’s clear that Alienware spent some time to ensure that the build quality of this machine was a main priority. The keyboard has zero flex, but the soft touch material may be controversial among consumers. Personally, I’ve found that soft touch material can get greasy over time, so it’s advised that you wipe down the surfaces on a more regular basis—otherwise, you’ll find that the material may show its wear over time. I was actually surprised that I was able to fit it into a Solo Duane Hybrid Laptop Backpack / Messenger bag, even though the bag only recommended use with 15.6” laptops. That being said, this is really just an exception with this particular bag, and none of my other 15.6” laptop bags or backpacks were able to fit the m17. EXPANSION/UPGRADES: To access the motherboard, you can unscrew the 10 screws on the bottom of the laptop and the 2 screws on the rear. This laptop has quite a few easily upgradeable parts including (1) SATA port for a 2.5” hard drive or SSD, (2) m.2 slots for PCIe NVMe SSDs (I was pleasantly surprised to see that), (2) SODIMM slots for DDR4 memory, and a slot for the Wi-Fi card. Upgrades to the CPU and GPU might be possible, but sourcing the parts is rather difficult, so I won’t speak much to that. DISPLAY QUALITY: The display on this 17.3” laptop is a modest 1080p IPS panel at 60Hz. Inspecting the monitor in HWiNFO64, I determined that my model uses the LG Philips LGD05C3 with a manufacturer name of 173WF4. The display was supposedly manufactured in 2017. According to online docs, this display should reach 300 nits of brightness, and I found that to be good enough for most of my scenarios. At 57% AdobeRGB and 86% sRGB coverage, you should be able to do some color-sensitive work on this display, but it definitely shouldn’t be your reason for buying this laptop. At this premium price, I do find it disappointing that Alienware didn’t opt for a nicer 1440p or 4K display or a 1080p panel with a 144Hz refresh rate and G-Sync support. This is one component that’s very important to gamers, and Alienware definitely left me scratching my head at the exclusion of these features for this price. Instead, they are using a panel that’s often found on older Inspiron laptops. Even the Dell G7 that I reviewed used the AUO63ED which I was able to overclock to achieve a stable 100Hz refresh rate. That laptop has been seen on sale for 1/3rd the price of this Alienware. Unfortunately, I was not able to overclock the display on this Alienware. And while I think the image quality of the LGD05C3 is better than the AUO63ED, I think that many gamers would appreciate the higher refresh rate—especially at this price. KEYBOARD: The keyboard on the m17 is decent, but not great. The key travel is low-profile in comparison to other laptops that I’ve reviewed, but overall, I found that it is consistent across the keyboard. I think this another area that Alienware could improve upon, as there are premium 2-in-1 laptops that are nearly half the price and have a stronger emphasis on the keyboard experience. Gamers are looking for a more tactile feel, and these keys really do feel more low-profile and stealthy, as though Alienware expected consumers to use the m17 in a library environment where sound is an issue. As I type this review, I find myself making more mistakes simply due to the lack of key travel. As mentioned before, there is no keyboard flex, so the structural integrity is satisfying. And while the RGB backlighting has 4 zones, that isn’t nearly as much customization as previous iterations of Alienware laptops. This keyboard just really seems like a step backwards for Alienware fans, and it’s these types of compromises that can really convince gamers to walk away from these products. I can’t say whether or not Alienware chose to make these compromises due to engineering challenges to reduce the thickness of the laptop, but if that happens to be the case, I’m not sure if that compromise is worth it for the typical demographic of Alienware consumers. TOUCHPAD: While the keyboard has left me with mixed feelings, thankfully, Alienware has opted to use Microsoft’s Precision Touchpad drivers for the m17. The trackpad is large enough for my liking, and I didn’t find any issues with its sensitivity. Some might prefer dedicated mouse buttons rather than the 2 integrated mouse buttons in the trackpad, but these days, I usually use a mouse with my laptops whenever I’m doing serious productive work or gaming. Regardless, for just light browsing and such, I found that the trackpad was easy to use and didn’t cause me any frustration. SOUND: As an audiophile who owns expensive audio equipment, I can appreciate great sound quality. And while the m17 isn’t going to win any awards, it can deliver adequate audio performance over its integrated speakers or headphone output if you reduce the majority of the post-processing that is being applied. Simply open up the Alienware Command Center application, then under the Audio Profiles, I recommend that you create a profile with Audio Effects and the Equalizer completely disabled. From there, the only thing I could really suggest adding is the Bass Boost or modifying the Equalizer if you have any idea what you’re doing. I listen to a lot of music, so this profile is a good starting point for a better listening experience on the m17. Gamers might consider enabling the “Alienware 7.1 Virtual Surround Sound” if they do not already have headphones that utilize 7.1 virtual surround software, but most variants of such software have typically left me dissatisfied, so I usually prefer to go without it. Out of the box, the amount of post-processing really detracts from a high-fidelity audio experience, but applying some tweaks can deliver a better experience over both the integrated speakers and headphone output. The speakers get decently loud without introducing distortion and other artifacts, and that’s more than a lot of other gaming laptop brands can say. I/O: The m17 is equipped with a decent range of ports including (3) USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports, Gigabit ethernet, a combo headphone/microphone port, an HDMI 2.0 output, a Mini-DisplayPort 1.3 port, a Thunderbolt 3 port over USB-C, and the Alienware Graphics Amplifier port. I think it would have been reasonable to include an SD card slot of some sort for this price. There are much smaller laptops with SD card slots, and while I can understand that not everyone will use such a feature, providing more features in a laptop of this price doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request. Despite this, I do think that the port selection on the m17 is competent. Most laptops these days only have one display output, but the m17 has 3 (since USB-C and Thunderbolt can support DisplayPort output). PERFORMANCE: Benchmarks of the specific components can be found in my Userbenchmark run here: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/15589919 These scores matched or exceeded benchmarks from other users running similar hardware. I was able to achieve the following scores in 3DMark Time Spy 1.0 without any changes to the hardware or modifications to voltages or using more aggressive fan profiles: 3DMark Score: 6932 Graphics Score: 7018 CPU Score: 6485 Graphics Test 1: 46.17fps Graphics Test 2: 39.91fps CPU Test: 21.79 fps I was also able to achieve an overall score of 9616 in the Unigine Superposition benchmark at the 1080p High Preset with the following scores: FPS: Min | Max | Avg 57.69 | 91.04 | 71.93 GPU (°C): Min | Max 47°C | 78°C Here are the results of my benchmark in Shadow of the Tomb Raider with the latest Nvidia driver updates: Preset: High Resolution: 1080p Exclusive Full Screen VSync: Off Nvidia RTX DLSS: On Ray Traced Shadows: Medium FPS | CPU Game | CPU Render | GPU Min | 40 | 51 | 52 Max | 116 | 213 | 137 Avg | 77 | 107 | 75 95% | 57 | 72 | 57 If you’re interested in VR, you’ll be pleased to know that I had no performance issues playing games like Windlands 2, Contractors VR and Eleven: Table Tennis VR at high settings. I’ve yet to find something that the m17 cannot handle. While most prospectors would consider picking up the m17 for gaming purposes, it should also be mentioned that it can handle workstation tasks and professional workloads, if you have demands for such capability. BATTERY: Battery is definitely one of the weaker aspects of the m17. You will definitely find yourself needing the wall charger quite often due to the power draw of this machine. Even with all RGB lighting turned off and the display brightness turned down, setting the computer to Battery Saver mode in Windows suggested a yield of under 4 hours with bare minimum usage. I did find that turning the RGB lighting back on caused a substantial enough power draw to lose an additional hour or more of battery life from the m17, so I advise that you disable the lighting, altogether, when you need to extend the duration of the battery life. CONCLUSION: Overall, the m17 is quite a competent, well-built laptop, but it has quite a few shortcomings that make it hard to recommend at this price. Given that last year’s laptops have similar performance and can be had for much cheaper, the m17 doesn’t really make a compelling statement for itself. It has a great build and specs, but at a price that doesn’t live up to the premium name.

Alienware m17 is a very impressive laptop that is very capable of gaming and work. For gaming, playing various games the graphics are smooth and fast. The modern i7 works really well with the Nvidia 2070 graphics card. Games such as Fortnite and Apex Legend is an amazing experience. It put consoles to shame. For rendering apps such as AutoCAD and Sketchup, large projects will render smoothly and fast. The screen is incredibly clear at 1080p and it feels like it is clearer than any of our TVs. The only thing I feel is missing is more USB ports. Using a wired mouse, wired keyboard, and wired usb headset, I had to invest in a USB hub. During gaming, the laptop does get pretty hot in the back, but that is expected. Therefore this probably will not be a used on the lap computer. The backlit keyboard is nice and the webcam is very clear. It is amazing how thin and light this gaming laptop is for the power this laptop possesses. I do wish that another power supply and some sort of dock was included. All you get is the laptop and a power supply. All in all this is an awesome gaming laptop with excellent build quality and will be enjoying using this laptop for productivity and gaming.

Was so excited to unbox my new Alienware M17. Box not sealed and laptop wasn't seated in it's foam. The screen had what looked like a lot of dust and cardboard particles. A quick puff of duster fixed that up quick. Checked the ports, no sd card slot (i have a drone and DSLR). Powered unit on, checked for dead pixels, passed inspection. Setup windows (sadly it is the home version). Immediately the bloatware started updating software. Computer at this point semi usable. All the bloat made this laptop feel like a 10 year old laptop. For no apparent reason fans blowing hard and noisy. I had nothing running. Tried to switch into task manager and froze up then lagged into task manager. something had cpu at 100%. Downloaded Apex legends, Fortnite, and Passmark. Apex legends took a total of 20 minutes to download and install. I have 100Mbps download ISP. The killer Wi-Fi was only downloading at 2-5mbps. Tried updating driver but none found. Restarted laptop. For a minute finally got near my purchased download speed. Moments later it dropped back to 2-5Mbps. Tried 2.4Ghz connection. speed was at 40Mbps. Switched back to 5Ghz and slow. Will solve this later. Passmark froze up laptop on first run. Reset laptop and finally completed. Per passmark laptop was at 97% percentile. Both CPU/GPU higher than average charts (won silicon lottery). Fortnite and Apex Legends ran smoothly on highest settings. CPU in high 80s and GPU in high 70s. Not bad IMO. Thermals: I was idling both CPU/GPU in high 50s. Not good. Maybe liquid cooling or vapor chambers could of been used. The alien logo was smoking hot by the keyboard. Remember to take plastic shipping wrap off the keyboard. I think the top portion has vents. Screen: 60hz on a high end laptop. So sad. Screen is bright but off angle viewing I could quickly see color shift. I hope this isn't the same screen used on the G5/G7 with brightness boost. I am so used to my Samsung S4 OLED screen that this laptop screen looks dull. Keyboard: Had no issues typing with the keyboard. It's a little shallow but feels good. Trackpad lacking, but I really don't like track pad to begin with. Software: Bloat is installed. At this level Dell needs signature series no bloat installed. Windows 10 Pro should be standard to turn off all telemetry. Build: Excellent build. I didn't see any flex. Not a fan of shiny plastic around screen. Makes laptop look cheap. Hardware: Outside the processor and gpu, Dell uses Hynix ssd, ram, and a 5400 rpm hardrive. Hynix fine for the G3 line but doesn't belong in a high-end gaming rig. At minimum Samsung EVO 970 NVME should be used. Oh yeah power supply almost as big as my old Nexus 7 tablet. About 4x thicker than it too. As an owner of HP omens, Dell gaming laptops, msi gaming laptops, and Acer gaming laptops; Alienware has always been the BMW of gaming laptops. Hands down this Alienware has far superior build quality than them all. As with most laptops, the software experience out of the box is always bad. Once I throw a fresh Windows 10 install, I have no doubt this laptop is going to be a beast of a gaming rig, video production unit, and office production champ. Forgot to mention speakers are loud and sound rich. Be aware on first boot because Cortana is loud. It's good to see the Alienware line grow up. But the competition is catching up and dell needs to step their game up and offer faster refresh rates, higher brightness, and better components.

======= Summary ======= The Alienware m17 is a high-performance gaming laptop that looks & feels great, is powerful and speedy, and is relatively light & thin. It has top-of-the line specs, fit-and-finish is great, and the cooling system is efficient. The m17 completely fulfills its raison d'être - playing games at their max visual settings with high & smooth framerates in a portable package. Very well done, Alienware~! _______ Pro's: 1. Crisp 1080P IPS display with great viewing angles and colors. 2. Relatively light (~5.9 lbs) and thin (23 mm) for a high-performance gaming laptop. 3. Excellent fit-and-finish, build materials, build quality, and attention to detail. 4. Excellent keyboard for both gaming and regular productivity tasks. 5. Smooth & accurate Precision touchpad. 6. LED lighting customizations available. 7. Good variety of ports. 8. Excellent performance in all scenarios. 9. Easy to open up & upgrade. 10. Great cooling design. 11. Non-gaming battery life is good (4-5 hours). 12. Supports the Alienware Graphics Amplifier for future-proofing. ________ Cons: 1. None ==== Design & Build Quality ==== Unboxing & handling the Alienware m17 was a pure pleasure. The m17's blend of magnesium alloy, steel, and polycarbonate materials look and feel premium and the attention to detail Alienware has put into crafting the m17 is readily apparent. The fit-and-finish is excellent, it feels tough and durable as a tank, and I find the design to be attractive and not over-the-top. It is amazing how far gaming laptops have progressed throughout the years. You can now have powerful desktop-class gaming components inside a laptop that weighs less than 6 lbs & less than an inch thick. Easy 10 out of 10~! ==== Display ==== The 17-inch 300-nit 1080P IPS display of the m17 is bright, crisp, and vibrant. It is perfectly suitable & satisfactory for my PC gaming, multimedia, and multi-tasking needs. Coming from 13- and 15-in laptop screens, I truly enjoyed having a larger screen real estate that allowed me to have several windows open at the same time without feeling cramped. Some may bemoan the fact that the display isn't a 144-Hz unit. If one is a pro-gamer or into competitive shooters, then it would definitely be a legitimate concern. But I think for the majority of gamers out there, this 60 Hz display will be a non-issue. It certainly wasn't an issue for me when playing the latest games such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Far Cry New Dawn, and Metro Exodus. The games ran smoothly and looked fantastic without any visual anomalies. 9 out of 10. ==== Speakers ==== The speakers on the m17 delivered loud and clear sound with a little bit of echoing at its default sound profile setting. I used the Alienware Command Center software to adjust the sound characteristics more to my liking. Many preset sound profiles are offered - Racing, Role Play, Strategy, Shooter, Com, Movie and Music. Custom user profiles can also be created with control over the Equalizer settings plus additional audio effects such as Bass Boost, Treble Enhancer, Voice Clarity, Smart Loudness, Reverb, and 7.1 virtual surround sound. Although the speakers are decent, I recommend that most use quality headphones when playing games for an extended amount of time due to fan noise that can become distracting. For doing all the other stuff, the speakers of the m17 were adequate & satisfactory. 8.5 out of 10. ==== Network & Connectivity Options ==== The m17 offers a plethora of excellent networking options - Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet, Killer 1550 AC Wifi (2x2 MIMO), and Intel Bluetooth 5.0. I experienced no connectivity or speed issues and everything was peachy. 10 out of 10. ==== Ports ==== The m17 offers a variety of useful ports - 1x USB Type C/40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 port, 3x USB Type A Gen1 (one with Powershare), 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x Mini-Display Port 1.3, 1x Audio Out, and 1x Alienware Graphics Amplifier Port for an external GPU enclosure. I absolutely LOVE not having to use a dongle on the m17 to plug in my older USB flash drives and I applaud Alienware for being both forward-looking and backward-compatible at the same time. 10 out of 10. ==== Performance ==== My favorite part of the review! The m17, with its powerful components, blew away my expectations of what to expect from a gaming laptop & impressed me deeply. I own other gaming laptops but they are nowhere as powerful as my m17 (my second most powerful gaming laptop only has an nVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti). With an 8th-Gen Intel Core i7 hexa-core CPU, 16GB of DDR4, a 512GB NVME SSD from SK Hynix, and a 1TB Seagate hybrid SATA-3 SSHD, the m17 performed supremely at everything I demanded of it - Chrome browsing with >25 tabs open, photo & video editing with Cyberlink PowerDirector, general multi-tasking, and of course, PC gaming. I'm playing 3 games right now on the m17 - Metro Exodus, Far Cry New Dawn, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. All of them played and ran very well with all the eye-candy settings turned on to Ultra/Highest except for Metro Exodus. Here are some benchmark numbers: On Geekbench 4.3.3, the m17 scored 4797 Single-core & 20,789 Multi-core. In Geekbench 4 Compute, the m17 scored 222,483 (30% lower than my desktop RTX 2080). On CrystalDiskMark 6.0.2, I got 2704.5 MB/s Sequential Read & 1283.7 MB/s Sequential Write. In the Far Cry New Dawn in-game benchmark at 1080P, the m17 scored 43 FPS minimum, 56 FPS average, and 81 FPS max. When compared to my gaming desktop with an nVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 at the same resolution, the m17 scores were 67% (72 vs 43), 86% (104 vs 81), and 96% lower (159 vs 81), respectively. In the Shadow of the Tomb Raider built-in benchmark, the m17 scored 60 FPS minimum, 98 FPS average, 170 FPS maximum, and 78 FPS 95% percentile. My desktop RTX 2080 at the same resolution scored 94 FPS minimum (+57%), 121 FPS average (+24%), 204 FPS maximum (+20%), and 99 FPS 95% percentile (+27%). Playing Metro Exodus on the m17 was a fun and smooth experience as well. I did have to dial back some graphics settings, however, such as Ray Tracing and Texture Quality to High instead of Ultra. As for the thermals and noise level, I found both to be highly adequate and working well as advertised. Alienware claims good results from its Cryo-Tech 2.0 thermal management technology with its dual-intake/dual-exhaust cooling system and I experienced no overheating or worrisome CPU and GPU temperatures. The real test will be during the summer months here in California. As mentioned earlier, I highly recommend playing games with some quality headphones. Over extended gameplay, the fans will kick in and become distracting eventually. All in all, PC gaming on the Alienware m17 is a supremely enjoyable and fun experience. 10 out of 10. ==== Keyboard & TouchPad ==== Typing on the keyboard & operating the Precison Touchpad are delightful. The buttons are tactile, responsive, and have great key travel (1.4 mm). Having full-size arrow keys as well as a Number Pad are great. 10 out of 10. ==== Battery Life ==== For a big gaming laptop with a 17" screen, the m17 surprised me with its stamina from its 60 WHr battery. When using the m17 as a regular productivity machine, I experienced uptime between 4 to 5 hours. When using Chrome heavily, a known battery eater, my battery life ranged from 3 & 1/2 hours on the low end to 4 & 1/2 hours (>75% brightness). When watching just movies & videos, it lasted longer. I didn't play my games on battery that much because I didn't want to sacrifice CPU and GPU performance (the m17 operates in lower performance mode when on battery power). If I cranked up the power profile to Performance and ran the games anyways, I would expect about 1 to 1 & 1/2 hours of uptime. Upgrading to the optional 90 WHr battery to extend my uptime is tempting. 8.5 out of 10. ==== Software ==== The m17 came preloaded with the latest Windows 10 version 1809, Dell/Alienware apps, & the usual assortment of bloatware from Microsoft and its third-party partners. I counted 18 Dell/Alienware apps. Removing these apps, as is usual for Windows 10, is easy to do from Settings. My favorite Alienware apps are the Alienware Command Center & Alienware Update. With the Command Center app, I'm able to customize & adjust the LED lighting options for the power button, keyboard, and the Alienware head logo on the lid. In addition, one can activate different preset sound profiles or create a custom one. Other notable features include managing system overclock, custom CPU and system fan settings, and choosing and/or creating a thermal profile. As its name suggests, the Alienware Update app is used to check for system updates such as BIOS & driver updates. Good stuff! 10 out of 10. ==== Upgradeability ==== The m17 is an easily upgradeable machine. After removing the bottom cover, one has access to the memory, the battery, the M.2 Wifi module, and the hard drives (SATA HDD, NVME HDD). One can also purchase an Alienware Graphics Amplifier, put an nVIDIA or AMD GPU inside of it, and connect it to the m17 to add additional GPU power when the need arises in the future. It is a nice future-proof feature. 10 out 10. ==== My Verdict ==== The Alienware m17 - with its premium, rugged, and tank-like design - is an excellent gaming laptop. It has fantastic build materials and quality, great-looking design, slim & lightweight formfactor, superb keyboard & touchpad, powerful internals for high-definition PC gaming, plenty of ports, good thermals, and very decent battery life for a gaming system. All in all, Dell/Alienware has crafted a fantastic, powerful, and portable gaming laptop that is thoroughly enjoyable and delightful. Love it~!!