Alienware 13 i7-5500u 2-week impression

Before beginning the post, I would like to say that I was planning on reviewing the 13, but complications with the laptop made me delay such a review and instead post an impression post. Here's a Onedrive link if you want to read this much easier. It's a 5 1/2 page document, so you better find some time to read it. With that said, please read on. Oh, and don't quote this post. Please don't.
You can view the AWA thread here. Oh, and I'm not posting this in the Onwers lounge. Too important and big for that.

 

I read it, seems like a good fair review of the laptop. 13" laptops are too small for me, though.

 

Almost 200 views yet 1 post. This forum confuses me.
I might have to retract my statement about battery life. Currently on my edited balanced, have some Chrome tabs up, Office is up, and of course wifi: Windows says about 8.5 hours, and batterybar says it is consuming 5,609 mW. The battery itself has 49,856 mW, so if the consuming amount is for every hour, then I should get about 8.8886 hours of battery life (roughly 8 hours, 50 minutes). And if I didn't have the 4% wear, I would have about 9.211 hours of battery life (roughly 9 hours, 13 minutes).
Hmm... I need to do more testing. Because if the battery is this good, I'm amending my battery impressions.

 

From work I can't access either site you posted your review to, so I won't be able to read it until I get home...

As for battery, what you said above sounds similar to what I've been seeing. Of course, the more you hit the disk, the less total time you'll have.

BTW, if I were you, I'd ask for a new battery. My m11x still shows 0% wear IIRC.

 

Your reason for not reading is okay with me. I just am dumbfounded how some unlocked and non-stickied threads get so many views and yet has a couple of responses.
I'll think about the battery thing, but if it isn't too bad, then I'll let it slide.

 

Great review Game7a1 ! very indepth.

Strange about the battery life though. I think you should get at least 4-5 hours from it.
I wonder when Alienware will update their AW13 drivers, Im really surprised that the community has to discover those faults with the i7 combined with 860m, seems like Alienware didnt test it at all.
Thats unforgiveable for such a big company. Its like we are beta testers for them except we already paid full price for this testing (thumbs down).

 

I updated my battery life impressions. I'll post them here for easy access.

I did the same with the Final Thoughts 2nd paragraph to reflect the better battery life, but I doubt it'll change all that much.

 

Are you saying 8 to 9 hours is possible with just some browsing and working on office ? That would be amazing.
And what do you mean exactly with dual streams ?

 

Dual streams = viewing two streams. Sorry for the ambiguity.
But from my calculations and what batterybar reports (the watt consumption stayed constant for 2 hours), yes, 8 to 9 hours of office work should be possible.
Granted, I modified my balanced plan to be a major power savers plan on battery (Low TPD, Power limit level 1, etc.). So with regular balanced mode, I would suspect 5 to 6 hours.

 

Ah how logical . Wow im impressed with those numbers on the batterylife of the AW13.

 

thank you game been waiting for this review for awhile now.

 

Looks like Broadwell helped with battery life. I'm glad to see that. I am intrigued to see if the 960M (coming soon) improves it even further. Can't see why it wouldn't.

 

Over at the lounge, we are somewhat sure that the GPU in the Broadwell 13s is in fact the GTX 960m. Start from here and read on to understand what I mean.

 

That's interesting... I wonder if it is the 960M. If it is, Alienware should be updating the website soon, right?

@Alienware-Frank or @AW Khan may be able to shed some light on this.

 

It'd be great if you could attach the Dell Power Companion to the 13. It's not listed as compatible for the Alienware, but I'm not sure what's stopping them from making it compatible.

 

Most likely how many amps, watts, etc. it provides.

 

Underpowered.
I don't know that the 13's minimum amperage is, but it comes with a 130W power supply. The Power Companion puts out 44.85W.

 

Great review. Trying to decide on whether to pull the trigger on an i5/256 ssd/1080p for $1024 now or wait for deals on i7/960m official release. If it is indeed the case that the broadwell (i7) are already running a 960m, just not branded as such I guess that's what I will be wanting to hold out for. Does anybody know whether the official branding will change?

We will see aw13r2 with broadwell i5/960m? Release date?