Customer Ratings & Reviews

The Alienware laptop is so pretty! I got mine as open-box (excellent), and it came with some speckles on it which scared me but it was just dirty and cleaned off. The keyboard light and alien head power button and logo & lights on the back are really sweet. The speakers are pretty bad, but I don't mind because I can just use headphones or bluetooth, but if that bothers you, it will probably bother you a lot. The speaker design is also suuuuuper cool looking. My computer turns on and off mega fast. But I have still had some freezing and program crashing (which honestly may be Adobe's fault, as I use Creative Cloud a ton and it's only happened with that). That said, no other laptop I've had has been able to handle programs like Premiere and Photoshop, so it's way better than that. My trackpad also seems to have stopped working, but I would expect that's specific to my device. I use a wireless mouse anyhow so I don't notice a ton. I really should get that fixed though, this stinker was expensive as heck lol. All in all, I really love my laptop and it has been serving me very well. But if you want good in-computer speaker output, you will not be happy with this purchase.

This laptop get HOT!!! if you play any DERP game, you must put your fans on HIGH. Also the ACC (Alienware command center) isn't really that great.... yes you can change your lights/ fan speed... but its confusing to use. My particular laptop didn't even have it installed so i had to figure it out myself. The laptop looks nice... but the thermals are really holding this thing back IMO... shoot this BAD BOY can play CyberPunk 2077 on ULTRA SETTINGS..... but it gets HOT HOT HOT.. so i played CP 2077 for a couple hours yesterday and had to save and exit, the PC was getting to hot, and you can feel the heat on the side especially because its metal. Only con... it gets hot... everything else is pretty darn impressive. But when you drop $2000 plus it should be able to play AAA games. Anyways.. I like.. I don't regret buying it.

Getting an open box of this laptop I wasn't too sure at what I was getting. I can say after a month I am very satisfied with it. It runs everything I want beautifully. However, I must say that when the fans kick in from playing PUBG for 2 hours it gets really loud, I thought it was about to take flight. With that, I have bought a lap cooling fan, I haven't heard the fans kick in like that sense. I can't remember the name offhand but it was one with a five fan setup.

One Word !!! Beautiful , the color, design , lights , weight for a 17 inch laptop ... Very Powerful , play all my racing games at High and Ultra setting.. the Max Q 2070 RTX , compared to my other laptop that has full RTX 2060 , this one is so much quiet , even when playing for longer times...

I dont use the computer for gaming but it works well for my purpose which is mainly business with Microsoft products. I love the screen size and the keyboard and I AW610M which an awesome match with usage and color. The only drawback is the computer gets pretty hot on my laptop, The next thing is I am not a touchscreen guy, but it would be nice if it had that feature.

It's a really good buy for not blowing up a whole budget, handles just about every game in a high graphics stand point and multi-tasking is a breeze. It does run pretty hot for a laptop though so I recommend buying a cooling fan to pair with it, after that no issue. Battery life could be better but that's really depending on what amount of gaming you'll be doing.

This is a good light weight 17 inch computer. Has plenty of power. I purchased for Drafting software. So far no problems. I have not tried to create 3D drawings yet, just to view them it works great. If I start start designing in 3D I may have to upgrade the RAM to 32, but not yet. Since this is a new purchase I may have to update the review later.

Graphics are amazing. Speed is excellent. I love the RAM capacity considering I tend to get distracted and fall down the YouTube rabbit hole so I end up having tons of things open with no lag. I just wish this had included a disc drive. I had to purchase an external blu-ray drive.

Purchased this because I want gaming on the go (at a friends, at *ahem* work, etc). The 2070 shines and helps push 100+FPS on ultra settings for modern games (Gears, COD). The fans were a little wild day 1 but using Dell website to complete all driver updates helped solve that problem. Looks and feel amazing, and even when on battery it works like a charm (for the best performance you have to be plugged in!) Only real problem was the 512 GB SSD (but caught this on a deal and couldn’t pass it up), good thing there’s an empty M.2 slot for whenever a sale comes up.

Im a video editor and light gamer. I am not impressed with the thermals of this machine as it runs hot even at idle. have had it a few months now and am having the batt replaced under warranty but the support has been great so far, they are even coming to my house to fix it so i dont have to mail it in, looks great and feels well built. adding another m.2 ssd is easy but you will need your own screw as one is not already in the retaining mount. i have experienced some discoloration on the palmrest that i have not been able to remove. recommend cleaning that area regularly.

Let me start by saying that this is my first Alienware machine. I've always thought they were pretty cool, but never experienced one for myself until now. Let's start the review. Packaging: My Alienware M17 was packed in a pretty sturdy white box that was shipped in another shipping box. When opening the main box, I found the laptop, power cord and a couple (2) inserts about the brand. This differed from many other experiences with laptops as I usually find loads of paper work and CDs in the boxes of laptops I've purchased before. To be honest, it was kind of refreshing. Not a whole bunch of stuff to go through. Just plugged up the machine and turned it on. Presentation: As I said, this is my first Alienware and also my first gaming laptop. Being the 17.3 inch version, I thought it would be super heavy, but was surprised how light it was in comparison to other laptops I've had with similar sized screens. The finish is beautiful. The Lunar Light is not as white as I thought it would be, which is nice. The keyboard and mouse layout also finishes strong. The whole thing has this futuristic yet simple design. I'm very impressed with the overall look of this laptop. Setup: OK, so make sure you have some time on your hands here. Beyond setting up Windows for the first time, there seemed to be a ton of updates that needed to be installed. I probably did the whole "check for updates, install, reboot" about ten times and that's not exaggerating. There is a decent mix of Windows, Alienware and Nvidia updates that you have to get through before you get the "This PC is up to date" message on the respective updaters. Took a few hours, but I'm glad I got it done before installing anything else. General Use and Updates: This thing moves. From power button to Windows login, we're talking about 5 seconds. After getting myself familiar wit the Alienware Command Center, I got all of my keys and the other RGB spots on the laptop setup. Software installs are blazing fast on this thing. This laptop does not come with an optical drive so if you have software on a CD, you'll need a USB disc drive to install it. For daily tasks, the fans never go above their normal speed. Machine responds well with multiple applications open and running in the background. For my use, I guess 16GB of RAM is enough, but I'm still a little bummed out that the RAM is soldered to the motherboard, making a RAM upgrade in the future impossible. This laptop comes with 2 M.2 SSD slots. For those adding a second SSD, like I did, although there are 2 slots there is only one thermal shield w/screw and it is on the primary SSD. The Dell part number for this assembly is 047W2D. I was able to find one cheap on eBay. That, along with the Samsung 970 Evo 1TB M.2 SSD from Newegg proved to be a very straightforward installation. The BIOS picked the drive up and I just needed to go into Disk Management in Windows to initialize the drive and format it. Now that I have the extra space I can load my games, videos, etc. Gaming: Currently, I'm only playing FF14 on this machine and I have to say, it looks gorgeous. I usually only do my gaming on console, but it's nice to have a mobile system that I can have when I'm on travel and need to get my gaming fix. The gameplay was smooth, didn't notice any stuttering at all. The fans, although they stepped up a bit at times, never got too loud. Monitoring the Alienware Command Center, temps never reached any alarming highs. The sound is decent for laptop speakers. Really looking forward to playing more games on here and seeing how high I can get the settings.

My previous laptop bit the dust mid-pandemic while I was working from home. I drove to Best Buy, described what I needed, and was back home within the hour. I've always been skeptical of Dell products, but this laptop is amazing! It has the graphics and speed to open and handle multiple reports and spreadsheets. I'm not a gamer but if I were I'd understand why they love Alienware. Never going back to HPs againW

I purchased this laptop as a replacement to a 2 year old MSI laptop which I had primarily been using for gaming and VR (Oculus Rift). In comparison, the gaming experience both in and out of VR feels about the same as before (games I had on old system and new are Battlefront 2, Fallen order and Vader Immortal III). It has not had any problems running games on the highest settings although when gaming it does get hot (as did my MSI) and per the documentation should be on a hard flat surface or cooling pad. It does not get hot when doing non-intensive tasks such as web browsing. I have not felt the need to turn the overclock setting on for the processor as yet but should note than it is easy to do so from a button in the included "Alienware Command Center" software. Audio is good although sometimes I have had to manually switch the output device between speakers, oculus headset and my headphones which I never needed to do with my MSI as it would always use whichever device was plugged in or speakers otherwise. The M17 R2 seems to do this sometimes but not consistently. I am not sure if this is an issue with the sound card/motherboard or Windows but I have all the latest updates and drivers. The only major downside I have found so far with this laptop is the 512GB SSD drive is already half full just from downloading these few games. On the plus side there is an extra drive bay provided you use a PCIe/NVMe M.2 type SSD. The M17 R2 will not take a 2.5 inch SATA drive unlike some other iterations of the M17 although it can use am M.2 type SATA AHCI SSD in the first slot assuming you remove the existing 512GB SSD. Also note as mentioned in other reviews you will need to purchase the heat shield from Dell and maybe also a mounting bracket depending which drive you are going with. See the manual on the website for more info and pictures. I would have preferred four USB ports over the 3 it has but it is not a show stopper. When picking it up I feel this laptop is much more sturdy/robust than the MSI laptop I had previously. The keyboard is great and has adequate spacing between keys, a number pad for those that need one and the trackpad works well in comparison to some other laptops although I use a wireless mouse for gaming. The built-in webcam turns a white LED on when used which I can see being a nice feature if you use it for webinars and chat apps to remind you when the camera is being used. Battery replacement looks to be easier than the MSI (which literally had it glued in and considered it a non-customer replaceable part which meant sending it to an MSI service center) although with the M17 R2 you do need to take the cover off and remove 8 screws that are holding the battery in place. It is a shame you can't just slot these in and out with a single button or catch but I guess it is the price for keeping the laptop thin and keeping the weight to a minimum. At 5.8 pounds it is fine for me given that I only really move from it from room to room. Overall the laptop is very good and I would give 4.5 if that were possible. The score would be higher if the SSD was larger given the price of the laptop.

I got mine open box (Open-Box Satisfactory). The box was in really really bad shape but luckily the laptop itself was in great physical condition and even had the plastic wrap on the lcd trim. First thing I noticed out of the box was how hot this laptop gets. I installed core temp to monitor the cpu temperature in real time and I was really concerned that on a cold boot it would already reach 99 degrees on most cores. I updated the BIOS, installed/updated all Dell drivers/applications but that didn't make any difference. I also tried undervolting using Intel XTU/Throttlestop but the BIOS update disabled this feature, all I can do was cut the wattage using Throttlestop which lowered the temps a little bit but it was still peaking at 99 degrees (but not constantly) and it also impacted overall performance. A few days after owning it I also noticed black dead pixels, there is one that never goes away and a few that pops up randomly on the lower right corner of the screen. Luckily I was able to register warranty trough Dell, and although the process was long and slow Dell replaced my laptop (Due to overheating issue and dead pixel). I am now a proud owner of an M17 R3. The temps are a lot better, the R3 doesn't spike to 99 degrees from a cold boot but it still occasionally spikes to 99 degrees. This time I didn't update the BIOS and was finally able to undervolt the CPU. My highest temps are now 70 degrees, this is with hours of video rendering workload and gaming. My Summary: The Alienware M17 R2 is still a great deal if you can get it open box for less than 1K. Just make sure you get warranty from Dell and DO NOT UPDATE THE BIOS as this prevents you from undervolting which is really required if you plan to keep the laptop cool.

Significant improvement from the previous versions. I owned M17R1 2014 model and was like a brick. Now the latest models are light and deliver great performance. Also, some people don't like alienware command center but those who know it will love to use it especially if you'll are upgrading after a long time. Like me!!!!!

Pros: 16 GB ram to start out with, 2070 laptop grade GPU and solid laptop grade Core i7 processor, RGb lighiting, looks great. Cons: Low storage at 512 GB SSD The major issue here is that the only thing you can upgrade is the storage. Normally upgrading ram is available in this price range of laptops. Major flaw especially for something as over priced as this item.

Love the screen size and power of this laptop. Only thing I have issues with is the battery life.

Overall very happy with this purchase. For the most part I will not go into deep specs as what really matters is perception and how something will bring happiness to your life. The sweet spot for gaming is not 4k. Even today the sweet spot is 1080p and that is what the screen supports. Coming from playing on a 4k TV @ 60 hz, playing on this screen at 1080p feels sharper and smoother. The screen does not support Gsync, but honestly it does not matter. The screen is awesome. Imagine playing a game for the first time and noticing details you might have missed or didn't really stand out. Playing on this screen makes you feel that way. I owned the previous gen 17" and this is a world better. The screen is something I have often taken for granted, but after using this screen I wont do that anymore. The screen is not touch or glossy, but I do not miss either. Touch screens on laptops are a waste. Glossy screen catch glare easily. The body appearance is stunning. Probably and subjectively one of the best out there. The lunar light is fantastic. The vents are even a honeycomb design. The build feels pretty solid except for the bottom cover to access drives, which is a plastic panel that is unscrewed and then pried off. Feels like I am ripping skin off every time. For the love of God please put a regular panel on the bottom of laptops instead of these plastic things you have to pry off. That is my biggest complaint with body. The keyboard is a joy to type and play on. They have found just the right combination. The arrow keys while not quite full size feel like they are. Keyboard is A+ Quality... I bought one of these from Best Buy and one direct from Dell. Both have had initial issues. However, I am not impacting the score as the Dell service has been excellent so far, even for the one purchased from Best Buy. Keep in mind for the first year you can call Dell for the laptop from Best Buy and get in home service. This laptop had a scratching sound when purchased. I almost returned it, but called Dell. They sent out a tech in a couple of days and he changed the keyboard and the sound went away. I can only think something was scraping. The other unit had bad ram and has had its motherboard swapped. After the swap there is an error on the diagnostic regarding the sensor. It does not impact usage so not a big deal. Dell continues to try to resolve that issue. My point being is that Dell has been good about communicating and working to resolve issues. Does not feel like a black hole. So far I feel the Dell service is best since they come to your house. Speaking of service / upgrades, the bad thing about this laptop is that the RAM is NOT upgradeable. Get 16g of RAM cause like a macbook pro you wont be upgrading it EVER. 16g of ram should be good for general usage and gaming for a while. There is no 2.5" SATA drive bay. I had last years model which did. Was a little irritated when I opened and found none. But in the end it saved me from putting in a SLOW device in a FAST laptop. There are TWO NVME slots. The second one is open on this. Just unscrew the bottom, TEAR off the plate install a new NVME. Format in windows and you can make it your STEAM or other game library drive. If you want you can take both out and build a nice RAID 0 (Combines into one big drive). I did that on my second unit for a 4tb (less after formatting - seems like they lie) drive. Trackpad is smooth and feels like glossy like glass or other smooth surface. Coming from Macbook pro I am surprisingly happy with it. The Mac has the best trackpad, but this is a very good one that I don't mind using at all. Toby eye tracker is included, although i dont use it. I know its there cause it can tell I am looking at it. When looking away for a while it dims the screen and undims when you look back, Somewhat creepy. Would be fine if it was not included in future models. No biometric unlock. Would have been glad to trade Toby for biometric unlock. Keep in mind that the 2070 is not a Desktop or even laptop 2070. It is a MAX Q. This version runs the chip at an ideal wattage. What you get is a good performer without having to use TWO power bricks on as some brands of higher models. Basically you should be able to play HIGH / ULTRA on your games at 1080p above 60hz to enjoy the high refresh rate. One good thing is you can plug an Alienware graphics amplifier in the back and use a full length desktop graphics card. A lot of laptops can use Thunderbolt 3 and do the same thing, but the Alienware custom solution is faster. Overall recommendation is to get this laptop. It is much better than last years model. Get a nice second NVME drive for your games and you are good to go. Even though I have had issues with two units, I am happy so far with the Dell service provided!

This is a great gaming laptop with a few minor (but not deal breaking) snags that you should be aware of before purchase. The Intel i7 with the 2070 is a great combo that should handle any game with relative ease. The lighting is great, the build quality much better than my previous MSI, and I am very happy. A few people have complained about the cooling, but they just don't know how to operate the Alienware software. If you leave it in quiet mode, for example (which is default), the laptop will favor high temps and turning the CPU and GPU speeds down so that it does not wind up the fans too high. The cooling, while not perfect, is excellent for a gaming laptop; it is not one of the snags. Here are the snags. -WiFi/Bluetooth: The Intel AC 8265 chip is a fine chip, but it is a few years old with Bluetooth 4.2. For this much money, I would hope that Dell/Alienware would have equipped this with at least the latest generation Intel AC chips (9260/9265) with Bluetooth 5.0, if not their newer AX series chips. If you order directly from Dell, you can get the Killer WiFi chip, which is faster, but has less trustworthy drivers compared to Intel. -Upgrades: You can add a NVME drive (two slots), or replace the factory one. That is about it. The RAM, the WiFi card, etc. are all soldered onto the motherboard. 16 GB of RAM is fine for me, I have no need to upgrade past that until I get my next laptop three or four years down the road, and it is plenty for most people. That said, some people want to keep their laptop for a decade, so it is something to be aware of. Overall, a great laptop, and worth the money. Just always be aware of the little things before you buy.

I recently purchased this laptop, I also have the Alienware 17 R5 and was really amazed at how light and quiet this laptop is. Performance is awesome, I would highly recommend for anyone looking to get a gaming laptop that they can easily travel with.