AW13 Battery Life & Trackpad Question

Hi,

I am considering getting an AW13 for travel, I already have a AW17 for home.

I've read some pretty awful reviews about the trackpad on the AW13 and also battery life.

How is your trackpad? and also how long is your battery life? I am looking at the QHD model

Thanks in advance

 

I haven't tried a battery test but have observed:
* Can get a movies worth of use while watching tv and not had to run for charger. Call this 2hrs+
* Was gaming on battery and didn't notice right away. Let it go and worked well. After about an hour plugged it in.

For the trackpad... its crap. Not the actual feel of it or mouse movement but the "buttons". The buttons are disappointing. As I'm on external most of the time its not a deal breaker and I have actually used worse.

 

It amazes me how Apple have had phenomenal trackpads for years, but its something that Windows PC manufacturers have struggled with

 

Very true...AW and others need to embrace the quality of the MBP(r)'s, iMacs, etc...although the AW's track pad is pretty decent and I do like the keyboard...but it's no where near the quality of Apple.

 

Well, we all say that MacBooks are over priced for the specs, and that's true. But PC makers just toss specs into a plastic shell while the MacBook costs go into the premium build quality and the research gone into the final product. If the Alienware was on a MacBook level build quality you'd be expecting to add a grand onto whatever you paid.

 

Very true...for that the AW is pretty decent considering the cost to build quality ratio....it's actually best in class in that category for sure....

 

My bigest beef with the macbooks is, and I had some for a long time. Is that they chassis is well built but the design itself, and the lack of cooling kills the laptop slowly while using it as a power user. Battery health drops quickly because the heat trapped inside and these laptop still have solder issues similar to the old 8800 geforce series.

I do love the AW trackpad, its very accurate, I didnt notice much of a difference between my old unibody macbook pro which I had sold for 70% of the purchase price . I like the build quality of the AW series now, but I would love to see a bit more aluminum in the chassis. Now just the motherboard plate, keyboard plate and screen lid are aluminum.

 

Yea the cooling leaves a lot to be desired. If you're only browsing the web (not using chrome) then sure, default fan values are fine. But when you go into a game the fans spin at max or near max and it's very loud. And it's just funny how people keep asking for Mac support in games when running the game in OS X is consistently many many frames slower vs boot camp. At best you're almost on par with windows version speed.

Ok anyways that went off on a tangent. If the laptop trackpad is no good you could buy the Logitech wireless one. I have one and the surface feels like the MacBook version and very spacious.

 

It said you are using the AW15? Is it the AW13 trackpad you love or AW15?

 

The AW13 trackpad feels really cheap, I hate it personally. I wish they went with the same trackpad as the AW15/17. However, if your looking at the QHD model dont even worry about the trackpad, the touch screen is very accurate and nice, its a way better experience than any trackpad ive ever used.

Battery life? Its okay. I can get around 3 - 4 hours at fullish brightness doing regular stuff on my laptop. If you really tried you could probably squeeze 5 or 6, but I get tired of changing power profiles. I have the 51WH battery, with the 62WH battery you should see a solid hour or so more out of the laptop.

Overall im really pleased with my AW13, I wish they did a better trackpad. Performance and portability wise it is awesome. The display(QHD+) is beautiful all around, and it has plenty of power to play current titles at medium/high settings. My model has the 5500u, GTX 860M, 16GB RAM, and 640GB of SSD space on 2 M.2 drives.