Customer Ratings & Reviews

I wasn't aware of the serious issues that AMD is having with their GPU drivers before buying this Laptop. Please do your research about the current state of AMD and their processors/drivers before getting this. For the last year apparently, their drivers have had serious bugs. I can't even run a game like World of Warcraft on this thing, which, that game is not that demanding on the hardware. Ray tracing is not supported by their current drivers. People all over are having their games/applications crash left and right. I wish I read the current news and reviews about AMD. I'm returning this and getting an M18 with the Intel setup. I don't understand in this day-of-age that AMD would have bugs like this..

Has some quirks but overall a pretty good laptop for the price.

lag issue fix I bought new and it is starting lag like crazy so bad so i found a issue with amd and ryzen graphics card, when it tern on in Amd smart access graphics. Go to AMD Game perfomance Monitoring it is red icon schould be, over here go to gaming and switch amd smart graphics to "Hybrid Graphics Mode" .it schould stop lag like crazy when you open a any game even a some application. Good powerfull chip, overal gaming good but display 2k which is bad, very bad.

No complaints this is a great laptop. I’ve used it for two years almost with no problems. It doesn’t overheat or anything. Easy to clean as well.

Completely broken within 1.5 years. Constantly crashed and overheated. Can't even use the bios.

This laptop is one of the best I bought it open box but the quality and performance is as is brand new I was finally able to play a game that I’ve always wanted to play and it played very well with graphics the 18 inch screen makes playing games so much better

Have not had any issues using this laptop other than most websites are not secure enough to use with Windows 11. Very quick to start up and use without waiting, If you are tired of waiting for you laptop to think get rid of it. The only thing that I do not like is the battery life only last a few hours and the advertising for this laptop claimed that it would last almost all work day.

Let me begin with the battery life sucks lasted me maybe 30-40 min tops and that was just using it for work no gaming involved. 2 weeks in my screen just went black and and nothing don’t waste you money it!

After reading Best Buy's online explanation of an excellent open box laptop, i decided to pull the trigger and make the large purchase. Unfortunately, the laptop i received was in "fair" condition at best, as it didn't come with anything stated in the explanation at all. The laptop was merely placed in a generic box with one sheet of bubble wrap and the power block just thrown in on top of it all tangled up. In addition, when I took the laptop out of the box, it had scuff marks all over it, grime from the last person who returned it, and 3 nickel sized DENTS on the lid, directly behind the screen. It also didn't come with any of the original paperwork, inserts, packaging, or box. Best Buy gave me a refund, but the Manager told me that they get these complaints ALL THE TIME because the website basically lies about the conditions of the items and will automatically assign an excellent rating to an open box item as long as it meets 2 conditions. 1) It functions like normal, like new. 2) The screen isn't cracked or scratched. That's it folks! So buyer beware and know that you're taking a roll of the dice with Open Box items. You might luck out and get an item that's actually in excellent condition, but that is the exception and not the norm. You're really just rolling the dice as to what Best Buy ships you after you make the purchase.

I recently purchased an open-box Alienware m18 from Best Buy, and unfortunately, it was a completely defective item. When turned on, the screen stayed black and the laptop wouldn’t work at all. I immediately brought it to Geek Squad, who confirmed it was beyond repair, and I had to return the laptop. However, the most frustrating part was the trade-in experience. I traded in a device with a market value of around $400, but I was only given $112 for it. This feels unfair, especially considering I ended up with a defective product in return. I have been trying to get in touch with the store regarding my trade-in and refund, but they have been unresponsive. Overall, the combination of the defective product, undervalued trade-in, and unhelpful customer service has made this a very disappointing experience. I hope Best Buy improves how they handle both product quality and customer concerns.

It is humongous to the point where even thinking your going to use it in a mobile fashion is laughable. Carrying this around will ensure you never miss leg day at the gym again. You are also married to the power brick, might be able to get 1hr of use out of it doing any sort of gaming and it'll be time to recharge. The power brick is also massive and heavy like the laptop itself as it is rated for 330watts. This laptop without the power adapter factored in is a solid 10lbs so again don't fall into the trap of thinking you'll be out in the middle of the woods gaming it up for hours on end with your personal starlink satellite by your side, at least not without a diesel generator. Overall the lap sized desktop PC that is the M18 R1 performs fairly well. I clocked about 31,000 points in Cinebench R23 which is higher than a 2nd gen threadripper with twice the number of cores. It runs destiny 2 at 1080p high settings around 120fps average and Alan Wake II was a range from about 60-110fps. Very few games will get to take advantage of the 480hz capable display but it does look impressively smooth all around. I do have one major concern and I have not been able to pin down if it is a result of the processor itself or the cooling solution used on this laptop but the 7945HX runs HOT. I didn't expect it to be frosty with 16-cores/32-threads of compute power but at idle pulling 25-30w it is sitting around 55-60c. As soon as you put it under any load I see it exceed temperature limit (which is 100c for reference) and begin to try and throttle itself to survive. This thing runs seriously hot, to the point where there is no chance you are using it comfortably in your lap, it needs to be on a desk surface. The GPU, AMD 7900M, stays at a more reasonable temperature around 75c. The factory fan curve seems terrible but I cant for the life of me find how to change it in all the stupid software Dell/Alienware always pre-load on the computer for you. I don't think changing the curve will completely resolve the issues with cooling that I am seeing. Unfortunately have not had the opportunity to try undervolting the CPU/GPU to improve temperatures but that is something i'll be diving into soon in hopes to see something more reasonable. Ultimately im not sure exactly who or what this is for. At the price point you can get a nice desktop system which will outperform a laptop dollar for dollar, with the weight and battery life factored into the equation that seems like the most logical choice if you need something with this much power. Also concerns about the CPU cooling on this one, not sure what to expect from the lifespan with temps so high so consistently. So even if you do need something "mobile" with this many cores be wary of the thermal performance from this system.

Pretty awesome computer. Has some glitches in the display when I attempt to "un-sleep" the computer which causes it to crash and force restart. Need to get it looked at which sucks for a 2k+ $ laptop. Other than that, runs great.

Great laptop but amd drivers suck . When it works its the best gaming laptop you can buy . When it doesn't its horrible fps & crash

I have had this laptop for a little over a week. And in that time it has been unusable due to drivers. DO NOT get this until amd fixes their drivers. They know and are doing nothing about it. I got the machine and started doing updates like anybody else would. I noticed the drivers gpu drivers needed updating. I updated and the screen turned off. Nothing fixes it... I am stubborn i have tried for over a week and got it to run one time. It was sweet for 15 minutes.

IF you purchase a Dell computer be sure to get the Best Buy additional protection/trade in, etc. I usually avoid these but my Alienware M18 was defective the day I bought it. I SHOULD have returned it, but I thought working with Dell customer support I could address the sound/audio interface issues I was having. Well, just over 5 months later and after repeated calls and exchanges with Dell customer/technical support that involved my having to reinstall the Windows 11 system reload all my software, the issue persisted. Having jumped though all their hoops, Dell agreed to have my computer shipped to their repair facility in Texas--where it has been for a month awaiting back-ordered parts. I finally had enough and demanded they send me a new computer. The very best Dell could do after going through several layers of approval was to agree to send me a "refurbished" computer of equal or greater performance. Huh? I was reassured that "refurbished" does not equal "Used." Since this is a new model of computer, I reluctantly agreed since it will come with a full 1 year warranty and 30 day return policy. Dell's online customer service is excellent and everyone I spoke with was professional and polite. That's a plus. But their policies and access to replacement parts makes spending a few more dollars on a Best Buy no-questions-asked return good choice.

The Alienware m18 gaming laptop is a well built, high end gaming laptop featuring an AMD Ryzen 9 7945X cpu, an AMD Radeon RX 7900M gpu and a 480Hz, 18 inch FHD+ screen. It also has 32GB of memory, a 1TB SSD, and multiple ports mostly on the rear of the laptop. The first thing that you will notice about the laptop is the size and weight. At over 8 lbs. and with a large brick power supple, this is definitely a desktop replacement and not a portable laptop. This is further emphasized by the battery life which I found to be very poor at 480Hz and around 3 hrs. for general use if you drop the screen refresh rate to 120Hz. The overall build quality is excellent and the keyboard is one of the best that I have used. The screen, however, is only fair with maximum brightness of around 300 nits and an adequate contrast ratio. Sound is also only adequate and you will probably want to use headphones for better quality. The FHD+ resolution is also adequate but it would be nicer to have a higher resolution for an 18 inch screen. The refresh rate of 480Hz is excellent and useful in first person games because of the blazingly fast hardware. As I mentioned, this laptop is fast. Before testing the laptop, I downloaded the latest Windows updates, updates from My Alienware, and the latest AMD drivers. I did this because some of the reviews on YouTube had mentioned blue screens and other potential driver related issues. After doing this, I did not experience any issues or conditions where the laptop was not operating properly. To give you an idea of the speed of the laptop, here are the results from several benchmarks. in Performance mode. These scores are better than my 2 year old desktop using a RTX3080. Heaven 4.0 10,765 score, Average 427.4fps high settings 3Dmark 17,043 Timespy score In summary, I recommend the Alienware m18 to anyone looking for a desktop replacement/gaming laptop that will primarily be in one location or infrequently moved from room to room. The 480Hz screen and the excellent hardware allow gaming at the highest level.

Bought the Alienware M18 at my local Best Buy. Out of stock but only took 1 day to deliver. Received my laptop at 3 PM yesterday. Downloaded my game that evening. Went to play this afternoon and the screen goes blank within a minute. Read several 1 Star reviews and they have similar issues. Don't buy this laptop.

Works as youd expect, definitely get a fan or cooling pad/system to use with this as it does heat up

Machine is a beast, did clean install and driver download and love it. No complaints.

This is my 2nd Alienware m18. The first one lasted 6 years. This one didnt even make it a day. It gets one star because it actually booted up. After logging in and updating I got the flashing lights for bios issues on each start up. Windows 11 took minutes to load and even then I had to restart it multiple times. When I tried playing games the CPU thermal throttling caused constant 1% lows stuttering even on low settings. It couldn't handle 7 days to die or shadow of doubt. Neither of which should give this graphics card issues. The Bios needs a serious overhau and the GPU drivers need to be updated as well. I would have loved to see an all AMD laptop compete with Intel and Nvidia. Unfortunately this thing is just a very expensive brick. A brick that I returned.