Why is Dell doing every M15 customer dirty?

Seriously !

I’ve had my M15 for less than 30 days and thought I got it for a good price then they do this !

I literally just bought this laptop because in May they put in the OLED screen option and RTX graphics, then they announce a new chassy the NEXT month ?

I understand technology is ever changing - but this is bad business and no company has EVER made two big changes to the same expensive product within a month period.

My M15:
I7
RTX 2060
512GB SSD
16 GB
OLED
90whr
2year premium support plus

Which I paid $3313CAD (taxes in) for.

 

Fair point, but relax. Not clear the new model will be better overall, certainly not in the battery department which they butchered. I wouldn’t be getting it.

 

Why would a newer model be worse than on older model ?

In my opinion, the logic behind that makes no sense.

Newer is always better than older.

People are freaking out over soldered ram but im an artist who’s freaking out over the better design and better keyboard.

It’s the issue that the previous M15 JUST came out and I paid a lot of money.

 

Because Dell management can make bad decisions? Battery is very important for me and I want better RAM so the new model is out (in fact I could still return my m15 and won't). The new design doesn't do anything for me, but I can see why ladies might like it in white.

 

I wish I knew what the new model will cost.

Also,
I’m not a lady.

Hugs and kisses. Xo

 

New tech is always coming out. I'm not impressed with the redesign and consider it a step back, but that's my opinion. If you're within your 30-day return period, you can always return it and re-purchase the new redesign. In the tech world sometimes you just have to be happy with what you have. If you wait for the latest and greatest, you'll always be waiting...

 

Lol newer is not always better, wow, I wonder why you would think that at all, especially in this case if it cannot cool itself and no one knows if the chassis is better nor the keyboard. The current one is already great so adding further travel time doesn’t mean it’s better. The design is also subjective as some people don’t want the huge 51M vents on the back nor the lack of a number pad.

You’re kind of going crazy for no reason. The current m15s have been in production for at least months and the quality control is still garbage, if you really want to roll the dice that somehow they magically fixed that, go for it.

 

talk with dell and send it back, it was a huge investment and a new heatsink desing is for sure

 

Newer is better? lol say that to my M18x.

Better than AW 18, even AW 17 R2/R3 when the 18 was discontinued. It took the R4 with its 1XXX series GPU to finally even beat the M18x's 980M SLI upgrade.

If it's been less than 30 days why not return it? I thought dell accepts returns up to 30 days?

 

How can you compare an 18inch desktop replacement against the thinner and lighter 15 inch and 17 inch laptops with a single GPU. Totally different markets and products. The AW 18inch laptops are huge behemoths with no autonomy away from a power outlet to speak off and almost twice the weight and thickness....

Also SLI is pretty bad, especially nowadays.

 

Good point. The incremental dumbing down between the successive models has been painful for the users. Take an inch here, SODIMM slot there, shave off an expensive Li-ion cell, keep the price the same, until we arrive at the end state: the new Dell Alienware XPS.

 

Why do people on this forum always forget the factor of portability?

All the pre-AW15R1/AW17R2 had terrible battery lives and those where the exact laptops that started the Alienware trend of downsizing their systems. On one hand people are complaining about optimus etc but at the same time this is the exact reason why people have the battery time that they enjoy these days. There is a demand for a certain type of systems and they are providing. It is what the market is asking for. It is not the other way around. Gaming laptops have seen an incredible increase in sales and the reason is that portability could finally be achieved. COnsumers demand a different type of system than a vocal minority on this forum is asking for. The only thing I wish to see myself is more reliability and this has been an issue the past 10 years when it comes to laptops and consumer electronics in general.

 

that is not true, my 15 R1 is bad in a lot of ways, but the battery is really good, 4.5hours in normal use like browsing and that stuff.

 

I think you missunderstood his post bro rinneh. He said in short older M18x was better than the newer AW 18. Aka new ain't always better

 

LOL are you serious? Have you seen the 17 series?? It is literally the size of my M18x! It's just thinner and lighter. Overall size is very similar.

I am comparing them because the "top dog" used to be an 17 inch (M17x/R2)> 18 inch (M18x/R2/AW18) > 17 inch (AW17 R2-R5) > 17 inch Area-51m.

Flagship is flagship. They could have kept the 18 series as MSI did until now.

My M18x gets better battery life than my friend's Aw 17 R4/R5 soooooo no idea what you're talking about. You must have never owned the M18x series otherwise you'd know you can turn off the DGPU completely for good battery life AND they had 96Whr batteries.

I still have my M18x actually, my friend no longer has his AW 17 R4/R5 and went to desktop. Makes you wonder why.

 

So you claim that the M18 can do about 8 hours of productivity out of the box without severly limiting clockspeeds etc? I highly doubt that. Because those 980M's which cannot be disabled with Optimus already take about about 20 watts on idle, So that would be if everything else wouldnt do anything about 4 hours of battery life with the battery installed in the M18x?

Also so weight and thickness dont matter? It is a 5.4kg laptop!!!! excluding the PSU which would bring it over 6kg. That is way more compared to the first echo model "AW17R2" which was the new design philosophy of thinner with a weight of 3.5kg. It is a huge difference and just a totally d

The m18 didnt sell, so they ditched an expensive produc tline, doesnt matter what MSI does. The word flagship doesnt mean anything comparison wise.

 

You are so wrong, customers always need and are happy with smaller, weaker machines. It's human nature and it's how capitalism works. Smaller chassis size is everything, look at the chart. Except the feet, they make them too small. There would never be a demand for another large laptop with desktop components like 51m, no company would ever make it these days or ever again, Dell's competitors like Clevo don't make it, people wouldn't buy it. Oh, wait
.. WTF am I talking about lol

 

Yeah going from one extreme directly to another is such a good direction........ a niche market doesnt equal mainstream succes. It is like those small handheld PC's with Atom CPU's like the GPD Win. They just sell enough for a small company to survive. Doesnt mean that it is suddenly what every user want. Clevo is not comparable in size compared to the top 5 if we have to believe market researchers. Time will tell if the Alienware M51 is succesful or not.

 

I was able to workaround that insane battery hog. Use latest Intel driver and dell's nvidia driver to get 8hrs+ battery life for web browsing.
On Linux, dGPU is always on so it eats up 17-18W on balanced profile and using tuned-adm laptop battery saver profile the dGPU power is reduced to 14W-16W.
On Windows I use Traypwrdwn to keep dGPU always at low clocks whenever I connect HDMI for watching movie and it can net 6hrs runtime on dual display running with 40% still left in the tank.

 

The AW15R2 has a 92wh battery. Shouldnt you lower your power usage more than the 14 watts to have more than 6 hours of battery life?

But SLI has 2 gpu's in there. physics cant push high battery times in a laptop like that. It is just an 86wh battery. Even if you can push it to only 20 watts of power usage, you only have about 4 hours. That is really not a lot. In an Optimus system with the dGPU disabled 10 watts is quite nice but also not the easiest without some good tuning.

 

I got a 96.5Wh battery for 15r2 maybe that extra Wh can influence runtimes but consistently using for 7-8hrs with Wifi and Bt enabled and if they are disabled I can squeeze out 10-13hrs.
On windows with nvidia forced at low clocks the drain is ~10-14W but I do manage 6hrs from it. Depends on apps too. If you use intensive apps that consume more than 30W the battery life is merely 3-4hrs.

 

8 hours was what I could squeezy with optimus on out of the 15R2 too, never tested it outside of windows with optimus off. It changed though when I changed my screen panel to a more bright LG panel which used more power.

 

Maybe that's it. I use the same crap panel with 220 nits but sRGB coverage is really high and very accurate. The screen is useless in bright sunlight but in the room its too bright even with prescription glasses.
On Linux if you switch to Intel GPU and accidentally nvidia driver Linux boots into black screen and only a reinstall can fixed it. So, I keep it on dGPU mode only.

 

You can disable SLI.

What they said... Problem get hold in quality 18,3 panels for the Aw18.

 

Too be fair all companies are doing it right now. Razer, Gigabyte, and Msi all have big changes coming that would make anyone that bought a laptop from them in the last couple of months mad. It's just bad timing. I've done it in the past and I'm sure it'll happen to be again.

That being said unless you absolutely need the OLED display, want the i9 eight core, or love the new design you're not missing out on much. Arguably if you went with the same specs for the new model it wouldn't be vastly faster if at all. The 9750h vs 8750h is really only noticeable in benchmarks. Games? Basically the same. Cpu upgrades are very underwhelming when if comes to game performance. If you missed out on say the next gen graphics then I'd say you'd have alot more to be upset about.

Don't get me wrong I know how you feel. Been there and done that dance.

 

M18x has amazing battery life. @Mr. Fox @Raidriar @Rengsey R. H. Jr. would probably agree. I can almost match my 2013 macbook pro which is thinner, lighter, and smaller than a AW 17 R2, R3, R4, R5...even m15/m17 series.

I think you're missing what I said...M18x has a MUX switch. AKA iGPU only is possible. NO optimus, NO dGPU is powered. Literally like having a laptop without a dGPU. This is why it gets such good battery life + 96WHr helps.

Point I was making is battery life and overall size. Obviously the 17 series is thinner and lighter. However my point was...for 17 R4/R5 it's only thinner and lighter. Still requires a 330w AC Adapter for highest config. But guess what? The size kills the point of portability. It doesn't even fit in my backpack which can carry my M18x! This is due to the extra deep size because of their exhaust design.

Yes smaller is better. Thinner and lighter is better according to the market. HOWEVER, the AW 17 R4/R5 is NOT small in overall size. The depth is longer than my M18x...The length is like my M18x. It's a huge laptop, it's just lighter and much thinner than the M18x. That was my point, obviously 17 R2/R3 is a different story.

 

M18x is a beast of a computer, you can turn off dGPU if unnecessary and get 6 hours of battery life with proper tuning, SSD only, no backlit keyboard, minimum brightness, using a thirsty 2920XM. Imagine if equipped with a newer intel processor I imagine it would double that number.

 

as a designer, i feel they are going backwards in design department, i like the area m51, but for the smaller ones, they should have sticked to same old keyboard, and removed that ugly honeycomb mesh from top and kept the LED trackpad.. its like a hybrid of dell G series and Alienware laptop now..

 

My bad I wasnt aware running the iGPU was possible when 2 dGPU's where installed. But twice the thickness is still part of the size. But I do agree that the footprint itself, the slightly weird size isnt ideal.

But I think the real upside is that the 15inch models are now more powerful compared to older 15inch models. The gap was in those days quite big. I would never have bought a 15inch gaming laptop 8 years ago because the gap between desktops and laptops was too big but now it is pretty nice for daily gaming in my opinion.

 

I like the design but not the relatively large black exhaust. The AW15R3 had it tapered down more which made it look sleek. What I like the most maybe is that they ditched the soft touch finish and went magnesium for the palmrest. It lasts longer.

 

It seems Dell use same design language for many of their models... Add in more copper on the pure Dell model (increase the rear as the newer AW) and the similarity becomes even more apparent.

 

Soon customers ordering Alienware laptops will be sent XPS units and many won't be able to tell the difference.

 

I had been complaining about trading thickness for surface area for a while now. It's illogical and the market loves it anyways.

I like my thickness, it's how I got 15TB of storage in there.

 

I love the 13R3, I wish it was even a bit thicker. I can game on it and it holds 1,5TB NvME storage. I can just put it in my backpack and game on the go. Such a shame they discontinued it. A 14" model would be nice too.

 

I have mine in my pack right now, been trying to set it up as a mobile gamer / dedicated emulator for my older titles when I game on both my Ranger and the 13 R3.

I also agree though, a 2mm thicker chassis would've helped the cooling quite a bit, and maybe allowed for more M.2 storage. All that being said Im still quite happy to have the 13 R3 as my backup / emulator / on the go machine