Alienware - 17.3" 4K Ultra HD Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive + 128GB Solid State Drive - Epic Silver

This is my second Alienware laptop computer. I am in school for graphic design and I am currently a freelance photographer. I got this computer to handle all the Adobe programs I work with. It handles them great with only a few problems with Illustrator. The only reason I gave it four stars instead of five, is everything is saved to the 125 GB drive instead of the terabyte drive. But another reason I bought it was because it did have two drives and having a solid state drive really helps with the speed and handling multiple programs at the same time. Anyone in this field I would definitely recommend it to. I've also played games on it and it has handled them amazingly!

This computer is incredible. It boots up lightning fast, even from a full power down, the graphics are beautiful, and the customization features are very cool!

I really like the asthetics of this computer. I bought it for video editing and it works just fine for this. Obviously I wish it were cheaper to purchase but other than price there isn't much I'd change.

Bought this and best thing ever. Lan parties are super easy haha. Got the graphics amp with a 1070 and a 27 inch 4k screen for home use.

At first I found it hard to find anything in windows 10 and I'm not doing much better. Then there were problems with the operating system had to reinstall windows 10 if there's more problems go on mac

This laptop is a great purchase for someone who wants a laptop that can do just about anything. There is one thing i would like to clarify. The description for this product is for the 2015 version but it is in fact the the 2016 so it has 3 usb 3.0 ports with 1 usb 3.1 port also known as type c. Also once you turn this on UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS and BIOS. If you do not do this you WILL encounter issues with this product. I had to do a reinstall of windows 10 because i did not heed the warning of other 2016 Alienware 17 R3 owners. Pro's -I can play just about any game with a mix of high and medium settings at 1080p and get about 45-60 fps. -This laptop supports up to DDR4 2666 (says only 2133 but G Skill and other brands will auto overclock at the 1.2 volts. -The screen does 100% Adobe RGB so it will be great for the mobile Photographer that needs the color accuracy. The screen is also about 400 nits, thats really bright i keep my screen at about 50% brightness so it does not hurt my eyes. - Screen back-light does not use Pulse modulation so there is absolutely no flicker -The keyboard is really good and does not feel like it will break while gaming. -Easy to setup as long as you update drivers and bios immediately after turning on for the first time. -No bloatware - Battery last around 6 hours of "lite use" not gaming -System lighting offers a lot of customization -Creative sound card - almost matches my Creative E5 DAC but not quite has lots of noise when you turn the volume up when using Sennheiser HD 598SE -Graphics Adapter - I have not tried this yet but it lets you connect a full size desktop GPU to the laptop. - Macro keys are nice but I have not used them yet Cons - Speakers may say they are made by Klispsch, but they give the brand a bad name. They sound worse than the Harmon Kardon's on my 6+ year old Toshiba. This is a real shame I am a fan of the Klispsch Brand. - Heavy really heavy for a laptop so its not that portable its like carrying 5 red bricks. Also it is larger than most other 17 non-gaming laptops so don't expect it to fit all cases or backpacks. Other Thoughts - I wish there was a program for editing BIOS settings in Windows, my old Toshiba had that and it was a nice feature. -I would recommend using a fan-less cooling pad for this laptop it really needs the air flow like the Xpad Slim. I do not recommend anything that is powered off of usb you can fry the port. - Get a USB 3.1/C usb hub as most people do not have usb 3.1/c devices and it will give you more 3.0 ports. I will update this if I think of anything i want to add.

I selected this Alienware laptop for two primary reasons: 1) the 4k/UHD screen 2) the ability to use it with the Alienware Graphics Amplifier, which allows me to use a desktop grade GTX 1080. I was looking for a gaming laptop that I could take with me on occasion when I traveled, but mostly as a desktop machine with a built in display. I went back and forth between this model, and the more expensive one that had a GTX 980m in it, and ultimately decided that since my primary use case was home use, I could get a desktop GTX 1080 instead of a GTX 1070 if I went with the slower built in graphics. In any case, my observations: 1) The screen is awesome. Text is silky. The screen is bright. Viewing angles are wide. Only issue is that a handful of apps not designed for 4k look pretty ugly in the "scaled" mode that they appear in, but one thing I can assure you is that out of the box at default settings, the 4k panel does not mean "can't read" on this laptop. 2) It is smoking fast. Especially with the Amplifier and GTX 1080 plugged in. While docked to the Amplifier, I was playing The Crew with most settings maxed in 4k, and it was handling it just fine. If you went into 1080p for gaming it'd be even quicker. 3) the keyboard is meh. It's not bad, but I wouldn't call it standout. The spacing is different than the apple "chicklet" keyboards I am used to, so maybe it'll just take some time. 4) DItto the trackpad. The lightup feature looks cool, but it's a little odd for me not being able to "press" the trackpad itself. I'm sure I'll get used to that too, and the touch pad itself is responsive enough, but it doesn't wow either. (Also, I have a mouse plugged in, as I use it as a desktop) 5) It's HEAVY, but that isn't surprising. I wouldn't want to take this on the train every day... but then that's not really the target market for this laptop either. 6) the AlienFX light up feature is neat and very customizable. It's obviously fashion rather than function, but it is a nice touch, and one I've had fun with. 7) the material around the keyboard, upon which your hands rest, is some soft of magic comfort material. It feels awesome under my wrists, and doesn't smudge much. 8) While I removed a couple of preinstalled items, for a consumer laptop, the bloatware was minimal, and there is only one sticker (an intel Core i7 inside sticker) on the casing. 9) Opening up the panel to access the RAM sockets, SSD slots (the laptop has two m.2 slots, one of which comes empty), and hard drive was simple and easy. [Note: it's way cheaper to just add 32GB of RAM after purchase than it is to buy it from Dell] So far, I am convinced I made the right choice. I am loving this for satisfying my gaming itch, without requiring me to "borrow" a monitor from my work oriented Mac. I'm sure I will also be thrilled I have it the next time I travel.

Alienware 17 R3 - the 4K model which is available on BestBuy is really a wonderful deal. Skylake 6700HQ combined with 970M makes this laptop a beast in performance. What's really interesting is this 4K UHD Screen has 100% Adobe and sRGB color accuracy and covers 96% NTSC (I used Spyder5 to calibrater to read this and found that this is really a good IGZO panel, though the white-point is really low making the color too warm for my liking - hot/reddish kind of). This model has 128GB fast Samsung 871 SSD and 1TB Hitachi 7200rpm HDD which is good combination, though 128GB really feels far less, during any s/w installation that I did I ensured that application will use the 1tb D drive but still this is getting filled up pretty fast, I will add another M.2 SSD later as for HDD expansion, there is additional M.2 PCIE SSD slot available and we can also do RAID for the drives (I have heard about it not tried). One downside was 8GB RAM which was 2x4GB filling both RAM slots, so to upgrade we need to ditch atleast one of these RAMs, 16GB RAM is a must for such configuration machines but 8GB works fine as well. I will upgrade the RAM in next 4-5months for sure. I purchased this laptop during BlackFriday deals though there was not much discount from Bestbuy only 50 bucks, it turned out that this was still really a very good deal. Even when Dell's site for Blackfriday had good offers, this specific configuration from Bestbuy was the cheapest deal saving atleast $150 over what Dell was offering online. I reviewed the Asus as well as MSI gaming laptops (MSI I never got to see in hands though), I felt that built quality and the non-glossy 4K screen on this one was really the best. The audio quality and trackpad is also among the best in its class. Only one drawback I found was that there is slight screen bleeding at both right and left edges on mine (found few reviews also online where other have found this, its not visible in day-time and can easily be found when laptop boots in a dark room), I found that the flaw is in the design of the laptop itself, basically at those locations the hard shell behind the panel gets tapered inwards (there are 2 cuts at those corners of screeen) and that's where the screen's panel top covering in those edges are loosely fitted. So if we hold just those cutted corners with hands the bleeding goes away. I was initially worried but when I found the root cause I am pretty confident I will be able to fix it by sticking those edges properly. Also, initial few days I had some issues typing on the laptop specially with the additionally macro key columns besides the TAB/CAPSLOCK/SHIFT/CTRL keys and the macro toggle key besides the ESC key. I found myself always pressing those macro keys when I reached for those set of keys and it was very difficult. I configured the TactX for the default set of macro to mimic those key presses only and it helped me a lot. Now after 3-4 weeks on this laptop keyboard, I think I am getting used to the key location and am pretty comfortable as well. The key travel is good, though I liked the Asus's G752 keyboard more, I think this one is not that far behind. As I am not a gamer and this laptop will be my programming and casual photo/video-editing companion, my requirement was to have a non-glossy 17inch with a quad-core and good keyboard. Alienware turned out to be perfect for me. Though one more thing that is bit annoying is the screen :) yeah its too bright and color temperature is more hotter/reddish which makes reading on this laptop bit tiring. I found that if I reduce the red by 4 stops and green by 2 then the screen is good for reading stuff as well. Unfortunately there is no direct button for this calibration (I think MSI has something for this but I never got opportunity to see/actually type on MSI laptop myself), I found myself keeping 2 screen profiles one for programming and one for video/photo editing viewing. Overall I felt this was value for money considering that other players were also in this price bracket, I can say I am really satisfied. Bestbuy did a real good job in getting this configuration at a good price... Thanks!