Alienware 18 Gaming Notebook Review
by Dustin Sklavos on September 16, 2013 12:00 PM ESTDisplay Quality
I'm pretty sure this is starting to get frustrating for all involved. Alienware originally wasn't going to include an IPS panel on the 18, but feedback at their launch caused them to add it at the last minute and bump the base price by $100; that's not really a bad trade-off, because when a notebook is already starting at two bills, what the heck does an extra 5% matter?
The problem is that the Alienware 18's IPS display is glossy at a time when everyone else is going with matte, ironically including Alienware. So now we're left with six of one, a half dozen of the other, depending on your perspective.
The other problem is that while IPS is generally superior to TN, this isn't even that great of an IPS panel. I'm not going to quibble too much because it's a nice looking display and definitely doesn't have TN's viewing angle situations, but a good TN panel with a matte finish probably would've actually done the job here. Media feedback resulted in Alienware switching to an IPS panel, it just wasn't a very good one and wound up not really being the upgrade we asked for.
Battery Life
Alienware includes switchable graphics in the 18; since Optimus doesn't work in SLI, the two GPUs have to be manually disabled and the system has to switch to the Intel HD 4600 graphics. Of course, the problem is that the battery still has to power an 18.4" display, and the notebook itself is still twelve pounds, so the feature (and the test results) feel at least a little academic.
I'd say the Alienware 18 has "worst in class battery life," but it's not actually that bad, all things considered. Even under heavy usage you can get more than two hours out of the battery, a far cry from the gaming notebooks of old that were lucky to see an hour. It's nice to know that you can run the 18 off the battery in a pinch.
Heat and Noise
Given how much horsepower is plugging away at the heart of the Alienware 18, it's surprisingly quiet. Under load it's definitely below 40dB, but it also benefits from having dedicated cooling for all three high heat components.
The two 780Ms appear to have their cooling calibrated to keep them as close to 75C as possible (just like the Alienware 17), and while the CPU gets toasty it's not especially hot. Alienware seems to have done a fairly smart job of tuning the cooling system, though I wonder if they might not have wanted to either be more aggressive with the CPU fan or at least give the end user the option of being more aggressive with it.
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brucek2 - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
Your original question asked about "all these weak resolution screens on notebooks nowadays", so it sounded a lot more like a question about the industry in general than this about particular machine.cjb110 - Tuesday, September 17, 2013 - link
Sorry but (a) is a terrible suggestion, given the lack of upgradability the machine should be built as a whole unit. For years gaming laptops have always suffered as they couldn't drive the panels they were paired with. Downscaling looks obviously crap, so kudos to Alienware by sticking with a panel their machine can actually game on.boeush - Friday, September 20, 2013 - link
"Downscaling looks obviously crap..."Why should it? In reality, it is upscaling. For instance, you render the game at 1920x1080, then scale up the result to 2560x1440 (if that's the actual display resolution, which IMO is what should be the case on an 18''+ high-end notebook!) As long as the aspect ratio is the same, the up-scaling will work well without any image distortion (and if done right, may even provide an additional antialiasing effect.)
brucek2 - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
re: win7/8, I just now got a sales email from Dell. The big promo in the subject line? the usual Not -X% off, or +X% power, or FREE <gizmo> -- but"Want Win 7? Swap it out for free during Summer Clearance"
Promos of course are about telling customers what they want to hear, not necessarily about establishing truths. But still very telling that their research convinced them that this would be the most important selling point in a new system now.
kyuu - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
Looks to me like a play at getting a few extra bucks by selling some old Win7 keys they have lying around to people who don't realize that Win7 offers nothing over Win8.Laststop311 - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
The m18x is a truly superb machine if you like to goto your buddies and lan party it up. In that respect it is very portable. But like the article suggests it's much better building a mini itx system. I sold my m18x and used the proceeds to build a mini itx bitfenix prodigy setup.I got a i7-4770k OC'd to 4.8Ghz on all cores HT and turbo disabled. With the awesome Asus z87 mini itx boards. Cooling the CPU is a simple corsair h100i with 4 fans in push pull. 140mm exhaust in the rear and large 200mm intake fan in the front. 4 rad fans are the high static pressure noctua 120mm's and the rear is a 140mm noctua. Always use noctua fans they never let ya down. I've had the same 120mm noctuas for 4 years now and they are still as silent and deadly as the first day I got em. Xigmatek fluid circulative bearing 200mm fan for the intake is also dead silent.
PSU was a tough find. The problem is 160mm just barely fits and if you want a modular psu you need to go down to 140mm. The only modular psu with atleast 600 watts at that size was a silverstone. Luckily it does exist. I'm not a fan of dual GPU setups but I splurged and got a titan. If it wasn;t for getting a titan the sale of my m18x would of covered the whole build and a more modest gtx 770 but with next gen gaming around the corner and the new systems using up to 5GB V ram per game the Titan was the best future proof choice.
For storage we have the wonderful 512GB Samsung 840 Pro and a 4tb Seagate NAS model drive for its superior noise level. Paid only 250 dollars out of craigslist for the SSD it's also where i got my dell u3014 for 515. No optical drive installed the radiator on the top blocks it but who needs an optical drive really. Hvae an external usb 3.0 dvd burner in the house somewhere if I really need to use a disc.
As you can see selling the m18x r1 (I had it upgraded with gtx 680m in SLI and the triple pipe heatsink from the R2 extreme edition up from the single pipe the r1 came with and it had the i7-2960xm overclocked to 4.1ghz) led to me having a WAYYY better mini ITX set up. The single gpu titan with an overclock to 1067mhz and memory at 6.2ghz performs more fluid than the gtx 680m setup and even with the gpu's fan cranking up it's still much quieter than the laptop. CPU speed is a very large increase as well. So dustin is very much correct you can just build a mini itx system and put to rest the large heavy gaming notebooks.
The future of gaming notebooks is something like the razer blade 14 3rd generation. 6.5 hour HD video battery rundown time and impressive 1600x900 native resolution gaming in a package at about 4 pounds and 0.66" thick all the way around, no fatter bumps. It can have longevity like an ultrabook but also have gaming muscle. For 2000 with a 256GB mSATA SSD it's the way to go if you must have a gaming laptop. Other then that usage get a mini itx system + a cheaper haswell ultrabook with a good 8 hour battery life.
thesavvymage - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
why would you buy the 4770k and then disable HT? Might as well have gotten the i5....ShieTar - Tuesday, September 17, 2013 - link
Yeah, I second that question. Especially for somebody who was looking for cost-efficient gaming, the 4670K would have made more sense.Then again, working hard to get an ITX gaming system, and then taking a 30", 24lbs monitor along with it doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.
5150Joker - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
Hate to break it to you but if you compared benchmark results of your 680M SLI OC'd with an unlocked vbios, it would be nearly as fast as the bitfenix mini-itx system you built while being much better for portability. Furthermore, you could have upgraded that M18x with 780M SLI and when OC'd matches a Titan.5150Joker - Tuesday, September 17, 2013 - link
This review lost all credibility when the author tried comparing the M18 to an ITX desktop.