Alienware 18 Gaming Notebook Review
by Dustin Sklavos on September 16, 2013 12:00 PM ESTLet's get it out of the way: the Alienware 18 is an expensive, niche product. It's a giant, beastly notebook that uses high-powered CPUs and can't be configured with anything less than two GPUs. It has an IPS display and it starts at a pretty intimidating $2,099. That means that while something like the Alienware 17 may be somewhat within reach for most end users and thus worthy of at least some consideration, the Alienware 18 is most definitely one of those products you pretty much have to be specifically looking for.
From there you have to decide whether or not this particular monster is really what you're looking for and really fulfills your needs. If you feel like a single 780M is inadequate for your gaming needs, the Alienware 18 is the way to go, but from there I have a hard time recommending doing anything other than tricking it the hell out. The Alienware 17 is for people who want a gaming notebook tailored to their needs, but anything other than a seriously high end configuration of the Alienware 18 is a waste.
Here's the deal: unless you want a notebook that's running an LGA2011 CPU alongside your SLI video cards, the Alienware 18 is basically the top of the mountain. It's not perfect, but the only real competition Alienware has to contend with is Clevo, and Clevo seems to be content to show up with their B game every year. You can get a better display out of Clevo and some extra juice out of the CPU, but that's mitigated by the lack of switchable graphics (a minor loss), utterly mediocre keyboard (a major hit), and inferior build quality.
At the same time, with the popularization of mini-ITX, the Alienware 18 can't help but seem at least a little bit silly. You could build a system as fast or faster than the Alienware 18 with your own monitor in half to two thirds the price, or any of the boutiques we've reviewed would be more than happy to perform that service for you. You lose a healthy amount of portability, but we're talking about thousands of dollars, too.
It boils down to whether or not the Alienware 18 is successful at what it was intended for, since price really can't be an object for anyone who's buying it. I think it is. Alienware has plenty of room for improvement, but you're not going to be able to do better anywhere else. As for the rest of us, the Alienware 17 continues to be the weapon of choice.
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Pathfindercod - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
Ive had my 18 for a month and my 14 for 3 weeks. My 18 has the 4800 cpu, 780 sli, 16gb ram, I took out the stock 750gbd hd, put two 512gb Samsung 840 pros' and a Plextor 256gb mSATA. I absolutely love this 18, it is pretty amazing for a laptop. My 14 is quite impressive for a 14" laptop, the 1080p panel is great IMO. I did calibrate them with my Spyder 4 Elite, but they are great panels in both of the machines.Pathfindercod - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
Oh and Alienware cant seem to keep up with demand... This is my first real Alienware computer and im happy i decided to get one.nathanddrews - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
Conspiracy!Notice how the 780M scores 7,970 points in Fire Strike? 7970. Yeah, right!
(tongue planted firmly in cheek)
xTRICKYxx - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
I wish the panel was 2560x1440 or something high-res in that respect. Even a 120hz panel would have been better than the IPS.DanNeely - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
In most games it looks like 780m SLI wouldn't be fast enough to feed either of those options reasonably well. Only half the games scored well above 60 FPS, and since going to 2560x1440 would roughly double the amount of work very few would be playable at the higher resolution.Depending on what, if anything, the new consoles do to put upward pressure on the performance of top level systems we might be able to do that with next years die shrunk mobile GPUs. Then again if new games end up doubling the amount of GPU they demand we'll still be stuck in the same situation. Maybe nVidia/AMD will get 3way GPU support working well enough to create even more massive laptops that could do it in that case.
kogunniyi - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
How does your impression of the build quality of the 17/18 stack up with that of any of the workstations you have tested?boeush - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
In concordance with what xTRICKYxx posted previously, I also find the measly 1080p resolution on an 18"+ laptop monitor, just plain offensive. Never mind that it's a glossy monitor, and with a rather ho-hum color gamut and contrast to boot -- in a system that (when fully tricked out) costs $4,000+ (not including tax and shipping...) The monitor on this thing is nothing short of a flat-out insult.Never mind that the chassis is over-sized for both the monitor and the keyboard (or, conversely, the monitor and the keyboard are under-sized for the chassis.)
And really, who the hell needs 32 GB or RAM? And who'd need the hard drive when there's 512 GB of SSD available? These seem like pretty stupid choices to me. I'd rather have that space taken up by a larger battery (maybe something like 50% larger): lord knows, the chassis is big enough to accommodate it!
On the whole, this design seems like a bunch of cost-cutting compromises and design block reuse, in a system that's supposed to be a top-of-the-range, aspirational, halo product. FAIL
boeush - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
Oh and also, forgot to mention: why, WHY, would anyone configure a premium performance-oriented system like this, with DDR3L-1600 memory??Seems to me, 2400 ought to be the minimum here (and yes, 16 GB of RAM would still quite suffice at least for the next 5 years or so...)
DanNeely - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
Probably because that's the fastest sodimm widely available. Mobile memory isn't generally available in faster than official JDEC speeds. I just checked Newegg, they had 84 sodimm items at 1600, 9 at 1833, and none at higher speeds. The low number of available sodimms at that speed means Dell would probably be concerned about sustaining availability if they offered them. The lower voltage doesn't really do much in laptop as power hungry as this, but it doesn't hurt either; and it's probably significantly cheaper for Dell to use the same 8GB dimms in this beast as the other 99% of 16GB laptops where the lower voltage is a benefit.boeush - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
Well, DELL being an OEM (with rather large production volumes), ought to be able to source the memory it needs directly from manufacturers -- without having to go through retail channels (and eat the retail markup) like Newegg. Apple does it, and its customers pay the premium for the resulting premium products. That arrangement makes sense. Alienware wants to charge a premium for its product, but cuts corners on design costs? FAILAlso, even if 2400 is for some reason impractical using today's manufacturing processes, at least provide 1833 if not 2133 -- both of which are actually available even through the retail channel (and really, there is no point in going with low-voltage memory on a performance-oriented laptop with friggin' SLI...)