Alienware x17 review

The Alienware x17 is heavy. Big and burly enough to double down as a bludgeoning device. It weighs a thigh-crushing 3.2kgs, and that is without considering the mammoth 240W charging brick. The brick itself comes with a massive power plug. The ones that are used for Aircons? That! So you can’t drop the Alienware x17 in a bag and be on your merry way. Unless you’re friends with the Great Khali. 

Now that we’ve established the dimensions of the Alienware x17, it’s evident that this thing is meant to be sat on your desktop like the Queen it is! Oh, and it looks gorgeous too. The Alienware x17 has a chalk-white lid with black insides. The whole thing is really nice to touch and doesn’t irritate the skin too. It’s a solid chassis that we’ve come to expect from Dell laptops.

You can opt for the low-profile CherryMX keyboard that comes with the laptop, but we doubt you’ll get a true mechanical keyboard experience from a laptop chassis. That said, our unit had a membrane keyboard but not the disappointing kind. It had better feedback than the Lenovo Legion 7 we tested a few weeks ago.

There’s also the RGB disco happening all around the laptop. It’s not excessive or in your face like the aforementioned Lenovo. In true Alienware style, the RGB compliments the clean design with a nice LED ring running around the back. However, the keyboard area is centred like some Windows laptops and MacBooks to make space for the top firing speakers on either side. Even the touchpad is centre-aligned with the spacebar which eats into your palm rest area while gaming with WASD keys. 

 The top firing speakers are much better than most gaming laptops. I think this is the only gaming laptop we’ve tested in India that has top firing speakers. That thick chassis allows Alienware’s speakers to produce more bass as well. Don’t expect to play without headphones though. The fan noise will easy drown out some subtle sounds, especially in RPG games like the Elden Ring. For everything else the speakers are commendable.

That massive weight is not to be used as a paperweight. Although on paper alone the Alienware x17 is packed to the brim with power. Our unit packs an Intel i9-11980HK with an Nvidia RTX 3070 with a maximum power draw of 140W and a whopping 32GB of RAM.

So there’s plenty of power here to go around for a proper FullHD gaming experience. Latest heavy hitters like Elden Ring run at a smooth 60FPS at all times on the highest graphical settings. The game itself is not well optimized for PC right now and it’s locked at 60. We’re sure the Alienware x17 can pull through more frames if FromSoftware unlocks the frame rate cap.

Forza Horizon 5 doesn’t suffer as much. We got a respectable 80FPS on Extreme graphical settings. It might seem a bit understated for a laptop of this size but the game is very graphic intensive. The RTX 3070 almost drags through most of the latest titles but that’s not what the insides of the x17 is meant for. The FullHD display with a 360Hz refresh rate is meant for competitive gaming.

Valorant runs at 200+ FPS on Medium settings. Obviously, you can shoot the graphics down to the lowest settings and reach a good 300 FPS. CS:GO will definitely make the most of that 360Hz monitor. 

Battle Royale games like Apex Legends and Call of Duty Warzone require more graphical oomph and you’ll have to stick to medium settings to get more than 150FPS on this thing without thermal throttling.

The exhaust vents on the side might heat up the keyboard area more than we liked. The air circulates from the back and top and leaves from the sides which blow air onto the mousepad area which might be uncomfortable.

So far we’ve liked the display. It’s a 360Hz refresh rate FullHD display with 1ms response time with Nvidia’s G-Sync. The colours are nice and the FullHD is not a power guzzler as well. 

Much of the display and its fast refresh rate is meant for competitive gamers. It’s a proper machine for gamers who spend a lot of time trying to reach the top ranks in Valorant and CS:GO and have their face plastered on a Twitch stream. For that though, there’s also a proper Windows Hello camera with Infrared face unlock. Open the lid and you’re in! But the quality is not for streamers. It’s enough to work as a security feature but not clean enough for your streaming career.

This Alienware x17 R1 is the older model with the Intel 11th Gen processor. Although, other than that, the insides are pretty much the same as the newer R2 model and that makes the R1 a tempting bargain of sorts if you can find one that will save you some extra dough. You’ll only be losing the more battery efficient Intel 12th Gen and DDR5 in the R2 variant which hasn’t come to India yet.

Be that as it may, the x17 is a behemoth of sorts. It doesn’t beat our reigning champion the Lenovo Legion 7 in terms of heat management.