Got the laptop on a $100 discount, which was perfect because it only comes with 500gb. Used the savings to buy a Samsung 970 EVO plus for the second nvme slot for games and videos. I was worried about the 8GB RAM, but the laptop seems to handle everything without a problem. I use the laptop for games and streaming. I stream on 720p 30fps using this laptop with no problem (PS: do not blame the laptop if your upload speed is only 2mbps or lower, do not expect you can stream on that upload speed) CoD Warzone on High settings no problem, when streaming I tone it down to normal, though I have not experienced any problem on high settings. Apex Legends on all Ultra settings while streaming no problem Cons: - Thermal is terrible, if you are planning on using this as your main gaming device buy a cooling pad to help your intake fans. Or, just buy a cooling pad, thermal is terrible. - heavy and bulky for a 15’ laptop. - battery is terrible, only around 3hrs - design.. well its personal preference - if you are sensitive about fan noise, this is slightly louder than a razer laptop. The AMD SmartShift technology is what makes this laptop a very capable budget laptop. My only suggestion is, wait for this to go on sale again.. Dell laptops tend to go on sale very often.

Been using Dell gaming for a while and been very happy with it. Always buy open box for savings. Few options of this machine are new to me and quite a delight. Backlight changes color, C type port and hdmi port on the left side. Upon upgrading the memory, had some difficulty due to number of screws and ability to find to area to push up cover safely. Performancewise, nice machine. Not tested yet with gaming as my primary use is not for gaming. Hard drive a bit small for needs so supplementing with external drive. Only thing I am not sure yet is that seems to get hot too fast when I am not even gaming but just working. Long term that is concerning and this is the reason I do not give it 5 stars. (Another machine I got from work is a business dell and does not have the heat concern and weights much less and also expandable to 32 gig ). Another plus of this machine is that it has alienware software and high performace alienware command center toggle in keys. High performance turns on the fans on high. Feel I broke even with the open box discount. So far very happy.

I had bought a msi bravo on 5/17 that had a ryzen 4600h and a rx5500m and there is no comparison this dell g5 is far superior in terms of features and hardware. Screen is so much brighter and is 144hz compared to 120hz. Few trade offs but nothing worth going back. first is no freesync panel and I liked the chassis design better on my old laptop this g5 reminds me of a old ps1 gray plastic body but for the price and productivity of the laptop there is no better deal for the price.

The Dell G5 Special Edition with all AMD CPU/GPU is a great contender for the gaming laptop marketplace. You get the AMD4800H with 5600M dedicated graphics for a reasonable price. For a lot of detailed bench marking information, I recommend you check the review on hothardware dot com. Trust me – you will be impressed. There is 512GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. This is 2 x 4GB of RAM. See the picture and this is 3200 memory with 22 timings at 1T.So if you want to upgrade the RAM, you will likely replace with 2 x 8GB. You can also expand the hard drive with an additional drive. It is supposed to have a pair of M.2 slots for adding a hard drive space. One is taken with the 512GB drive so there is one open. I did not take off the cover and verify this. With an AMD CPU/GPU combination, you get the advantage of SmartShift. This laptop is one of the first to offer this. SmartShift basically controls the power management between GPU and CPU. There is a 4 zone backlit for your keyboard. It was easy to configure in the Alien Command Center. I tried to get a good pic but it does not show up well in pictures. The screen is 1920x1080 @ 144 hz. It is a Va panel. I is crystal clear and amazing. Seeing 2 USB 2.0 connections was a little disappointing. I wish there were at least 2 if not 3 USB 3 instead of just one. But you can use hubs for expansion. After unboxing, I charged the battery. The battery charges relatively fast. I did find the power button a little odd as it is not clear if it is pressed on or not. After going through all of the Windows and Dell registration stuff, I recommend you download all Dell updates (bios, drivers, Alien Command Center, etc.) and Windows updates of course. This was easy and efficient. After it is all charged, I do a battery test. Of course this is a gaming laptop so my expectations were low. Under load/gaming I got about 50 minutes on battery only. Under a very light load I got about 2.5 hours. Definitely in the reasonable range for a gaming laptop. I ran an OCCT stress test to test stability for 2 hours. It passed with flying colors. Temperature is one main concern with any electronics. Heat and moisture is an electronic devices enemy! These are the temps I was seeing: Full load GPU/CPU in Celsius: 66/81 degrees without using the Game shift (Fn shift 7) and 59/84 degrees with Game shift. GameShift makes a HUGE difference as you can see. So you MUST have this on while you are gaming or any other demanding tasks. The heat is concentrated at the rear bottom. I strongly recommend a cooling pad. In fact, you will not be able to game with this sitting on your lap. Now for a gaming test with Game Shift enabled. The fans are a little loud but you do not hear them with a headset on. I tested Call of Duty Modern Warfare. On the lowest settings it was about 130 fps. On max settings it was around 80-90 fps. The screen looked amazing and gameplay was crisp and responsive. Very respectable I gotta say. You should be able to play anything you like on this and it will be fine. I saw the CPU hit a max of 108C and GPU hit 85C. This is much higher than I would like. A cooling pad is mandatory as you can see. You can get good ones for around $30. But remember the heat is in the rear so pick your cooling fan configuration appropriately. I will get one with 4 outside small fans and one large center fan. The keyboard feels really nice while gaming. I did not feel any flex to the keyboard. Overall this is an impressive laptop for a reasonable price. The heat is a concern and you should do everything you can to cool it down while under load. Battery life is in the expected range for a gaming laptop. 8GB of RAM (2 x 4GB) is a little disappointing for this price. 16 GB would be more appropriate. I do recommend this laptop with 4 stars.

Dell cripples this computer like crazy. Avoid this model! There are lots of things wrong with this computer. To name a few of them: Dell puts tape between the thermal pads and the VRMs/chiplets that causes the thermal pads to not transfer heat, resulting in dangerously hot VRM temperatures. The newer bios revisions throttle the GPU performance of this. Alienware command center is tied in with other essential drivers, so if there's a software issue on this laptop it can break a lot of the other things on the laptop. The copy of windows that is shipped with this has no drivers properly installed on it, resulting in loss of performance out of the box. The heat sink fins have a gap of air between them and the fan where air can escape the cooler, resulting in higher temperatures. The heat sink has hollow space in the middle of it, reduced surface area for the cooler and fans means the laptop won't cool down as fast. The fans audibly struggle to keep up with how warm the computer is getting, to the point where under a full load at max ram speed the computer still reaches temperatures of 100+ Celsius. The computer doesn't have enough power delivery on the motherboard, which means that the computer will throttle because it doesn't deliver enough power. The thermal paste application out of the box is HORRENDOUS, I highly suggest to everyone who has this to repaste it ASAP.