Customer Ratings & Reviews

This laptop has many problems. I bought it twice and it has problems with both graphics cards. They generate conflicts. The system was updated last time and the memory was damaged. It is not good

So this is my first Alienware machine. They call this a laptop. This is more appropriately described as a “portable desktop” because this laptop does not fit in one's lap. Which is fine, it saves space with not needing a tower and the power cinder-block (normally called a power brick but again – the M18 is large and in charge). And it's HEAVY at a chonky eight pounds, that feels more like ten to fifteen pounds. Definitely not something that will fit in just any old laptop bag, still waiting on being able to purchase one that fits this device. I normally lean towards Intel chipsets / NVIDIA GPU's but so far I have been pleasantly surprised at how responsive the M18 is and how much power it has. Meaning, I can play Star Citizen without much of a hitch, client side anyways. With great power, comes great heat generating abilities. AMD is known for running hot, and despite a cooling pad and being near my window for fresh air, this beast gets hot. The CPU can pretty much handle anything you throw at it, all my games run without a hitch and I'm able to run Chrome, Spottily and games without it throttling. The GPU renders graphics beautifully and smoothly, and I believe the CPU has overclocking capabilities. I usually don't mess with that aspect of computing as most of my machines have been able to keep up without additional tweaks. Oh, and 32 gb of RAM? Star Citizen is my RAM hog program and even then, it uses about half of the available system memory and I don't get low ram warnings like I did on my 16 gb machines. What's cool, I popped the casing and found that there are 2 M2 SSD slots available so if you have an extra stick of storage (No NVME though, for some reason NVME is not liked with most laptops). Just be careful, two of the screws have a retainer clip that makes putting things back together hell. Aside from the hardware specs, the chasis is a nice two tone grey – lunar grey metallic? And the hexagonal designs for vents and the speakers was a nice touch. The amount of ports this system has is a blessing too. A mini DP port, HDMI port, SSD port, two or three USB C ports. . . suffice to say, plugging in peripherals won't be an issue. My biggest issue is the lack of bags available to carry this laptop, I've been using an older backpack that only fits it in one compartment that's not even padded, so if you plan on picking this laptop up, make sure you have a back to tow it in if you plan on going mobile. Overall if you're an Alienware fan that can -afford- their flagship laptop, it won't disappoint!

It had a faulty screen and had to be immediately returned.

First off - This Alienware m18 FHD+ Gaming Laptop is the top of the line of options on the market at this point. With the specifications alone this machine should draw a gaming addict's eye. I will break down the laptop in multiple different categories to analyze piece by piece where this machine shines and where this machine fell short. Physical: This machine is not an easy portable laptop. It is beefy and picking it up you know that this machine packs a punch alone, however what would you expect from a machine that has the power of a full size tower all condensed into one sleek design? The keyboard is full size with a num pad which I enjoy a lot especially doing a lot of data and number entry I am not hunting and pecking at the top line numbers. Display: The display is gorgeous and can truly deny ambient light behind you so that you can still be productive and not struggle to see the screen. The screen is bright and the resolution crisp. As for the refresh rate, you will not see a noticeable difference unless you are using this game in a high-demand fast passed game like a shooter. That is where the refresh rate shines. I felt like I had a beautiful sized display and was on the same tier of refresh as professional gamers where every cycle matters to their eyes! Thermal Management: Thermals has always been a difficult problem to solve within gaming laptops. You have so many components shoved into one place it is hard to figure out a way to displace the heat without overheating the other components or burning the user. Somehow this m18 line has bridged that gap. When playing COD MW3 at Full Ultra Settings the graphics card was not even sweating. The fans spun up and quickly kept it cool but you could certainly feel the heat out of the side vents coming out. The difference was, if your hand is a foot away you wouldn't even feel it. The thermal displacement out of the vent is roughly 4-6" anything further you'd only know its running hot because of the fan speed. The fans aren't astoundingly loud but when they are working overtime, you know it. Multitasking Performance: There isn't much to say. This machine can handle whatever you throw at it. Autocad? Yup. Adobe Suite products? No problem. Multiple things at once... Mhmmm. It just does not struggle in the least. Battery Life: As expected. If you are not running high intensity applications the computer will hold a charge for about 3 hours and change. If you are running a intense shooter game tasking the GPU it'll drain quickly and you'll be lucky to get 90 minutes out of it, much less 60. This is where the Power Supply comes in. This thing is BIG. I'm talking the size of a brick. It draws a heck of a lot of power from the wall but charges the machine relatively quickly. Software / Drivers / Loaded Image: This is why a star was removed from my review. The biggest issue once I turned on the machine and booted into Windows was the drivers of the graphics card. For some reason the AMD Adrenline version which loads drivers and monitors system performance and options was the wrong version. I only found this out after loading COD MW3 and continually got Crash To Desktop issues. After some research I discovered that the software loaded onto the machine was the wrong software, I had to do a clean install of everything and clean out the previous drivers. Then you have AMD's SmartGraphics.... which work well... with some applications. It can cause issues with display drivers if the program you run has to sideload itself to run itself in another mode... this is something COD MW3 does when you switch from Multiplayer to Campaign. Not a huge issue as I like how SmartGraphics work otherwise. This issue is more on a program side of things not AMD. It is something to consider when getting everything set up on this machine. It's easy to disable into Hybrid mode so you don't have to deal with it causing CTDs on those applications. Overall this is a fantastic gaming PC and will be my portable workhorse when I am travelling and just in the mindset to play some games or do video editing on the road. It's an investment for sure, but one that you will be glad you made

Bought this on Amazon on Black Friday so I could not return it due to the price difference the next day. I’ve had three service calls to in which they didn’t even show up. I just took the day off or nothing… In summary: I opened it up, plugged it in and the first thing we noticed, is that if you unplug it even though the battery has a 100% charge and you have nothing running you just have the laptop on… We get about 15 minutes before the whole battery is dead! Again that’s with nothing running. Service came out replaced the battery it didn’t work… Another service call they replaced the battery again replace the port replaced the brick on the charger… Didn’t work. So they set up another service call. The next service call came I took the day off and they didn’t show up. Then they did show up finally on a different day. They looked at it and said I need a motherboard. And begins the nightmare. Since day one I have been trying to get a working laptop and I still don’t have one one month later. The battery doesn’t hold a charge… The USB-C quit working… Every time it goes into sleep mode. It wants to reboot windows as if it had an error… Numerous numerous issues. My concern is that even if they replace this I’m gonna get the same flawed system. Also, I get frequent audio tears . All of these are known issues if you google this system. Finally, after month today someone called and said that in two weeks, somebody will be calling me to let me know about an exchange! This has been nothing short of a nightmare. It’s a very expensive laptop to not have working from the day you bought it , and dealing with customer service has been nothing but a lack of respect for the days off of work. I keep taking and they don’t show up! I have no choice but to slide into the exchange, but I’m not confident that that will be any better from what I am researching online with this particular build. I highly suggest you looked at a different system

The Alienware m18 may be a large laptop but it's also a gaming powerhouse! Design The M18 is a large laptop, but I actually thought it may be thicker. For a high performance gaming laptop with an 18" display I thought it might be bigger. The display is bright and beautiful! It's not a 4k screen but for me on a laptop, 1920x1200 works great. It's got a very nice sized full with a good inverted "T" arrow key layout and a numeric keypad. If you want to upgrade the keyboard to one with mechanical switches, that's actually an option on this laptop (before you buy). There are lots of ports! I was happily surprised in fact with the number of ports. Here's a list: - 3 USB Type C - 3 USB Type A - Mini DisplayPort - HDMI - Network Jack - Headphone Jack - SD Card Slot - Power connector The two USB Type C ports on the back are DisplayPort capable. All USB ports are USB 3.2 with four being Gen 1 and the two USB-C Display Port ports being Gen2/Thunderbolt 4. It does have large 330 Watt power brick. The touchpad works great and is a nice big size. I'm also glad they gave it dedicated volume control and mic mute buttons separate from the function keys. Storage and Memory I don't have much to say about the 1 TB Samsung NVMe SSD that mine has over than it's very fast. I haven't run tests but between having 32 GB of RAM and a really fast SSD I just don't wait for much. Game load times are nice and quick. The 32 GB of RAM in mine is in the form of two 16 GB SO DIMMs, using both of the two slots it has, so if you want to add more RAM you'll need to replace one or both. Gaming Performance I'll just start by saying I'm not used to seeing my average frames per second over 300. Now anywhere from about 300 to 500 seems the normal. That's with all settings at their highest quality. I've played sports games, racing games, open world roaming, first person shooter, types and more. Some things I noticed with all the settings enabled for the highest quality possible are the amazingly realistic lighting, shadows, and reflections (in water or other objects). I also didn't notice any tearing or warping of objects. I also didn't notice breaks in walls where they shouldn't be there. Everything just looks more natural instead of seeing where one part of a wall connects to the next part of the same wall - if that makes sense to you. I did find out that at least in one game I have that offers "1/2 VSync" as well as standard "VSync", the "1/2 VSync" really messing things up. So make sure you turn it off or if things are very noticeably jerky to you even though it's showing high framerates, look for and turn off "1/2 VSync" if it's there, and all motion will be smooth as it should be. The built-in display in this model is 1920x1200 and that's what I used for most of my gaming so far. I did so some testing with an external HDR 4k display at 60 Hz via the HDMI port. That worked great! Though the refresh rate wasn't as good the frame rates were still (after setting games to 4k resolution) butter smooth! Gameplay was just excellent and perfectly responsive. I don't think I've noticed any slowdown or hesitation so far, this laptop is just so fast! It's got a AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX with 16 physical cores and 32 logical processors. The AMD Radeon RX 7900M with 16 GB of VRAM, 72 compute units, and a crazy 4608 Stream Processors - I don't really know what they're used for but I think those are high numbers for mobile graphics. Other Features Using the Alien Command Center application for Windows you can customize the lighting of the Alien power button, the Alien logo on the back of the display, and the oval around the rear ports and vents. You can also customize the lighting for each key on the keyboard individually if you want. You can apply lighting and profiles to games I believe as well, though I didn't try that yet. The first five function keys can also be customized with keystrokes, shortcuts, macros, or a block of text. The speakers sound great for a laptop too. Even at high volume I didn't notice any distortion while playing music. They laptop includes Dolby Atmos and you can really hear a fuller, richer sound when you set it to "Dynamic" and let it enhance the audio. There is a gaming mode for the audio that includes a setting to prioritize location to make sure you can hear where sounds are coming from. As silly as it my sound, I was impressed that the firmware update it did only had one bar that went across. I'm more used to seen a number of bars go across so you never really know when it will be done, you get to 100% the first time, then you go back to zero and start another update, go to 100%, start at zero again etc. This had one progress bar for the entire firmware update. Maybe it was only updating one component but I'm so used to more progress bars that I was impressed. The battery life is fine for a gaming laptop I think. I can get at least 3-4 hours with the brightness down and just working in Windows, not playing games. Summary Between the Alienware design and software, and the fast CPU and GPU, the m18 has proven to be an incredible gaming laptop for me! It feels freeing that I can set all my games to their highest settings and gameplay is butter smooth - even at 4K resolution on an external display! I'm a big fan of all the ports on this laptop too. I love having a network jack as well as all the USB and display options. If you're looking for a fast gaming laptop that has more of an emphasis on high performance and gaming than portability, you should be very happy with the Alienware m18!

This laptop is like a Range Rover. When it works, it's amazing. Games look great, you can run at the top specs of just about anything you throw at it, the keys are fast and responsive. And the looks, Alienware has always had that part on lock. The problem is, anytime I open the lid to turn the laptop on, the keyboard lights up, the Alienware logo appears on the screen, but then it goes black. The camera light flashes, doing the Windows Hello thing, and I can hear the chimes for the login. But the screen is black, and I can't do anything other than hold down the power button and force a restart. Then when it restarts, it says that Performance Mode is disabled due to the unexpected restart, so I need to do another restart using the Start menu. It's maddening and a waste of time. If you're ok with that type of performance in a laptop at this price, then you will be happy with it during the times that it's working correctly. If you don't want to deal with that, then I would skip this until they can figure out the problems. Hopefully there will be an update that fixes it, but it's looking like I might have to do a full system wipe and re-install Windows and everything else. Huge PITA and I don't even know if that will fix it.

If you’re looking to upgrade your gaming rig and “future-proof”, at least for 3 to 5 years or so, look no further than Alienware’s M18 beast of a laptop. This machine is nothing short of superb! Easily one of the best laptops to release this year. Coming in at a hefty almost nine pounds, you’ll feel like you’re carrying a true monster. It can be a bummer if you’re someone whom travels or is looking for an all-in-one gaming/work computer. However, if I had to guess, most people interested in this laptop are primarily looking for gaming rigs. The main drawback to its portability is the power brick, which is necessary to get the most power and the bulk of what you’re paying for. First impressions are solid and the build quality is top notch when it comes to its aluminum casing. Off the bat, the gorgeous 18-inch FHD+ display is jaw dropping and will not disappoint in the visual department. It may not be 4K, but what it lacks in fidelity, it makes up for with its insanely high 480Hz refresh rate. Featuring a beautiful bright screen, colors truly shine but, in some cases, it can lack in the darker areas. It may just be a simple contrast setting but I noticed it on more than one occasion. For example, cyberpunk 2077 at night, which is most of the time, it can be hard to see shadows. Gaming overall has never looked smoother and you’ll be way ahead of the competition if you’re into online multiplayer like, call of duty or apex legends. I don’t think I’ve been this impressed by a laptop in quite some time. I’ve owned an Alienware laptop in the past but this undoubtedly stands at the top. Boasting AMD’s RX 7900m, even the most graphicly intensive games run flawlessly and perform with ease. You get the full suite of RGB control from the keys to the logo and powered on light. The command center does what it says, commands all options to tailor the laptop to your personal liking. My favorite setting is switching between the presets to push the CPU by overclocking, just to see what I can get away with. I encourage you to experiment and see what insane scores you can get. If you’re a big audio buff, you should be pleasantly surprised with the stereo speaker quality. Very clear audio featuring Dolby Atmos, which I’ve come to expect in this day and age. Everything sounded crisp and listening to music was actually tolerable. On the other hand, don’t expect it to be silent all the time. When this thing gets going, the fans can be pretty loud. I normally have a headset on so it doesn’t really bother me. But you can also manually adjust the fans and set different profiles for each game. If I had to sum up the M18 in one word it would be, speed. Everything it does, it can do blazingly fast thanks to its stock 32 gb of ram, with room for expansion! In all honesty, this can even replace my desktop. It may not be the cheapest on the block but if you want sheer outstanding performance, this is well worth the investment. I give props to Alienware for a near flawless laptop. To anyone reading this, I definitely recommend this product.

This isn't really a portable gaming platform, in the sense that you would be gaming on the go. More like, it's a transportable gaming platform, in the sense that you can take it different places to game, easier than you could a desktop rig. The thing that makes it so good, its giant 18 inch screen, also hampers your ability to use this anywhere other than on top of a stable surface that is not your lap. The screen itself is quite good. Bright, sharp, mostly non-reflective, with good color reproduction and dark blacks. Dell makes good use of the space with thin bezels around the edge of the screen. That also provides plenty of surface in front of the screen for a generously-sized keyboard and full number pad and a large touchpad. However, the base of the laptop also extends behind the screen, making the overall size of the machine larger than the 18" screen would necessitate. It's also not a very light laptop. Portable, sure, but not necessarily something you want to carry between classes or airport gates. The power brick itself is quite massive and not something you want to be having to plug in on the go. Some additional area in front of the screen is used for grates that facilitate airflow and speaker performance. During non-gaming use, I hardly ever heard the fans kick on, and they were fairly quiet when they did. Sound reproduction was excellent, so you don't really need external speakers unless you really crave a lot of low-end volume. Keyboard feel is smooth and responsive, with wide spacing to minimize accidental keystrokes. Not clicky, though, so if you want clicky keys you need to pick the model with the mechanical keyboard. Customization options for the rgb lighting is sufficient, though the app to manage it could be more intuitive and easy to use. Touchpad performance is acceptable, though clicking takes more effort than I would like. Overall, this is an outstanding gaming laptop, just not one you're going to be using on the go.

It's not heavy for considering this as a desktop replacement. Awesome performance. RX 7900M is comparable to the RTX 4090 and outperforms it in certain games.

Great buy , runs flawless even on max settings while playing RDR2

I can play whenever game i want without over heating my pc crashing and whatever els you can think of the price is worth it

I got this and it works realy well thank you so much