Customer Ratings & Reviews

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!

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 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.

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!

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.

This Laptop had everything I was looking for. I wanted an SSD for a fast boot up, latest Windows because Windows 8 never should have removed the start button, a large HDD for storing games, and a decent graphics for gaming. I wasn't planning on getting all that with a 4K resolution screen but I'm glad I did. Even though most resource demanding games can't be played with ultra graphics settings on the 4k I am still happy with it. The 4K still looks great on the desktop and games that don't require a very high quality graphics processing. For example, I can play Star Wars Battlefront with high settings just fine, but the cut scenes in between will have a low fps. This doesn't bother me because either can still play it. Also the Witcher 3 game can only be played on medium graphics but it still looks amazing that way. I can also get better performance by lowering the resolution in game down to standard 1080 but for now I've been using the highest resolution. Of course there are many other games that don't require as much and the run very great. I can play minecraft with hidef texture packs, mod packs at 3840x2160 resolution at 60 fps easily. Other than gaming the video quality when streaming videos is amazing. Some how the lower resolution streams look like a higher resolution on this screen. There are still many reasons I'm glad I got this even though I can't play all games on ultra high graphics settings. To be honest I was disappointed at first because of the long boot time, the WiFi occasionally becoming disabled, and the integrated on board graphics would occasionaly crash and reload. All of this was fixed by updating Windows 10, installing dell updates, and updating integrated graphics in the device manager. Now this laptop boots up in about 5 second and no errors are occurring. I know some people have complained about the touchpad. I guess it could be better but it's not a deal breaker. It does what it's supposed to do. I'm not aware of any people commenting about how awesome their touchpad is and they had to buy their laptop to get their hands on that touchpad. At least I can say that this one lights up and changes color. I can even customize the color to change based on which game I'm playing. I also want to point out that a big reason why I chose Dell is their customer service agents are very knowledgeable. I had made a few phone calls to their competitors and I decided to take the safe rout and get a laptop that I know I won't regret.

I chose this system because of speed and it's 4K display. As 4K displays are not common this is causing issues with several software vendors. Basically this is caused by the programs not scaling correctly to this newer format. Some vendors are planing updates for "later this year" One (Quicken) stated they cannot test this issue because they have no 4K displays. Adapter issues: WiFi I had very poor speed from my setup. My Internet connection is rated at 16Meg down and I was only able to get 1.5 when tested. A short session with support corrected the problem by them loading a different driver set from the ones supported by their updater. USB: This system comes with 3 super speed ports, as I have been using 4 ports on my previous system I needed to purchase a hub to add my additional devices. Bluetooth: I use a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse as I don't like using a track pad. My Bluetooth adapter just went away with no error message. A search for related errors on the Web showed that several used have had this issue. The adapter came back in about 2 days before I was able to address it to support. I would recommend this unit with the caution about 4K support.

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.

I purchased this primarily for video editing, but I found that it is a lot of fun and quiet capable for gaming. It suffers from an on-board video card that had a complex and doesn't like you give way to the high-end card that is also included in the system, but it has only been a slight annoyance. Due to its newness as a system, there doesn't seem to be a lot of forum support to questions, but Dell seems to be dedicated to staying after driver and system tweaks to address what nuances appear.

So, I bought this for myself and was very happy with all the features- speed, 4k ultra, how fast my games played etc BUT I did end up returning it for a different laptop. I chose one thats very comparable as far as gaming goes, but isnt 4k (the one I chose does have a touchscreen though so that was the trade off). I went with something almost $500 cheaper in the end.

It's been a month since I got the blue screen of death on my Alienware (I've had it for 1 month and a week). At first I was so disappointed. Upon first boot it would work. If I restarted it would bsod. It was the killer networking driver. It needs to be updated immediately upon purchase. Other than that the laptop is beautiful. I haven't played any games on battery, but I have done some coding and the battery lasts many several hours. As far as games go, 2013 games and below can be played on ultra settings with the exception of 4k resolution. It doesn't play games well on 4k. Newer games still look good. I received the division for free as part of a best buy promo and it looks beautiful with a good framerate. The screen is gorgeous. 4k movies play fine and look great. Finally...Zero bloatware. 'Nuff said about that. I only hope Dell can keep up the standard that I now expect after this purchase. I'm now a loyal alienware user...neigh fanboy.

PRO's: You definitely get what you pay for, and in this case it's a lot. First off, I build computers as a hobby (only one laptop though), and never bothered with alienware because I thought they were overpriced because of the name. Turns out good looks aren't the only qualities of there product. This thing is solid as a rock. My son's been on it non-stop for a month gaming online with friends. No heating issues what so ever, which is good considering a 970m GPU. The screen is excellent, big, and thin. No washout in the corners and good viewing angles. My son customized the lighted keyboard to include every color in the spectrum (I prefer all red). One person said it boots up under a minute which he considered fast. Mine boots up in 23 seconds, considering the amount of junk my son has in startup I suggest that person check his settings. Plenty of storage with 1 TB, but if you want to keep all your games on a faster drive you'll have to get a second m.2 SSD (128 gigs doesn't cut it), there is an extra slot. Huge keyboard with plenty of wrist space and programmable keys. The color coordinated lighting on the backside of the screen and the front side of the keyboard makes it look like a Ferrari (if computers looked like cars). Cons: The cons aren't enough to knockoff a star but I felt they were worth mentioning. It comes with 8 gigs of memory, which is plenty for most games and applications. But if you want to upgrade to 16 gigs you'll have to buy two sticks of 8 gigs because both memory slots are used by two 4 gig sticks. Next, there is no Bluetooth. All our headphones are Bluetooth, and so is our cheap laptop and tablets. Just seems odd that this beast doesn't come with it. Easy fix with a $15 usb adapter. Next, you won't be able to use Oculus Rift VR system with this laptop. The minimum GPU is a 970 GTX desktop version, the 970m GTX is just under the minimum. Lastly, two keys have popped off already but that must be my sons fault, his gaming technique is pretty rough and he's popped off keys on every brand of gaming laptop I've bought, and I've bought them all.

The computer is fast. The colors are vivid. My son enjoys the computer and he is a 24/7 gamer. He had a AMD 10 that was always overheating. This computer does not overheat plus it has the ability to multitask several programs at one time. It was well worth the money.

Great laptop with quality components. Great for gaming and Photoshop. Took one star off for issues with the speakers. Needed to flash the bios and they worked fine for a few weeks (so far).

I bought this computer for my teenage son who's growing up to be serious gamer and coder. The UHD screen is great, the built quality is stellar and the programmable LED lighting fun. Best buy's price is Great value for the specs and quality.

...my first Alienware! I know this seems weird to state but I've waited 20 years to finally grab an Alienware device! Today is my 30th day of ownership and what's really awesome is it went on sale as well today. Best Buy (BB) taking a $150.00 off the MSRP was really great! First thing on my to-do list today, which is now complete, get the adjustment on my purchase when it was $1649.99 to $1499.99! There's so many excellent reviews for this device but I'm just having a blast with it I don't know what else to really say. I purchased Crucial RAM, upping it from 8 gigabyte to 32 gigabyte. Also purchased the Alienware Graphics Adapter from Dell for $159.99 and two days ago purchased the EVGA GTX 1070 for $449.99 and LG's 4k 27" monitor, which was on sale for $399.99, both from BB. Everything works great, no issues at all. The reason I purchased this notebook, as I'm sure many others have done so as well, is reference to the 4k display & being designed as a gaming rig. Upgrading RAM was too easy and I just ordered a secondary SSD as there is an empty slot for one more SSD, two total. So in summary I say to you "...if you're still on the fence, go get it now, you won't regret it" BB will be there for your needs if issues develop! Thanks for reading my review! PS A reminder to always check your "My Rewards" profile as BB hasn't credited my purchase & adding missing points failed as site stated record information didn't match. Time for a phone call...!

I was looking to replace my previous laptop after it stopped loading games and slowed to a crawl when I tried to run programs like Visual Studio. My Alienware is a beast and it runs almost every program I need without issue, except for Mozilla's Firefox, which crashes the video driver no matter how many times I update it. I also received the blue screen of death after leaving the computer in sleep mode for a few hours because the wireless card driver crashed. Both the Firefox and wireless card drivers have had issues and there are numerous posts about them. Other than the above-mentioned problems, I have been very happy with my choice. The 4k screen is great and I appreciate being able to choose the color of the keyboard back-lighting so I can use red at night. I have run multiple programs like SQL and Visual Studio at the same time, as well as played games at close to the highest settings, and my Alienware hasn't skipped a beat. Once the driver issues are fixed, it will be my ideal laptop.

This is a Fast, good looking, sturdy laptop, but Microsoft Edge internet browser takes a little getting used to. The video driver keeps glitching when on certain websites, probably due to flash or some web content. I upgraded to Windows 10 Professional because I am using this as a business computer and video/audio production workstation. When I activated Hyper-V the video keep having problems. Once I disabled Hyper-V the problem went away. Still working on a solution for that. This laptop is FAST!