A new guys review

*So up until yesterday I have never ever owned a laptop, or for that matter anything owned by alienware or dell.*

I ordered my laptop thru aafes on the morning of 4/28. Basic system with only the screen and wifi card upgraded. Grand total was $1,048. They gave me an edd of 5/25. After regularly checking the dell site for progress updates my laptop went from in production straight to shipped as of 5/9. It arrived by fedex around 11am on 5/11. No issues with fedex, I signed box was in pristine condition.

Everything was packed very nicely in the box. I opened it all up and was instantly disappointed by the lack of an alienware hat. My friend just bought a m17x r3 and got the hat. I wanted one too! At any rate everything else was perfect. After a good once over of the laptop i can find zero issues with "fit and finish". No keyboard flex, no squeaky spacebar, no screen or speaker issues etc.

Powered it right up and the battery was at 100% charge, hooked it up to my wifi with zero issues and started downloading my steam library! This site made it very easy for me to find out about white-listing games and all that fun stuff so I had zero issues with any of that.

Played some batman arkham asylum right away and I am simply floored at how awesome it is. Put the overall setting to very high, physx to low and aa x4. Zero hiccups. I'm sure its not running at 60fps but I can tell you for a fact it doesnt dip at all into the "laggy range". No screen stuttering nothing it was great. Also tossed on some starcraft 2 and played the "left 2 die" multiplayer co-op mission on Ultra quality. It dipped down into the teens a few times for a second or two and then stayed at a pretty consistent 30ish. Once again very happy with that performance.

Battery....is a big pile of win in my book. On a single battery charge I watched about 30 mins of netflix. Then I did some web surfing, and the entire time I was web surfing I had Starcraft 2 downloading from battlenet. Was browsing the web for about 2 hours. When I was done browsing I left laptop on and let it continue to download SC2. If you add up all my time together it went through about 90% of my battery on balanced power setting in 4 hours. I know this isn't the technical test that you guys normally put on here. I'm just trying to show real world normal every day use! (for me at least)

Screen......the screen is the only thing I would say isn't 100% awesome. While I find it good. It doesn't knock me out of my socks. I'm coming from a very good samsung home tv as well as a 23" led computer monitor and this screen simply doesn't pop (color wise) like those 2 do. The glossy screen I have zero issues with, I find the blacks to be plenty black enough for me just wish it was a bit more vibrant.

Everything in my laptop is 100% stock zero oc to anything. I ran 3d mark vantage twice and got a 6324 and a 6372.

Well that's all I got for you all. Nothing groundbreaking in here. I am, I would say in the middle of the pack as far as pc knowledge goes. So sometimes a lot of the reviews I read have info in them just doesn't matter to me or is too technical. Just wanted to offer a more basic review that may help anyone on the fence.

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One last note. I used my webcam late last night. Got to show my wife my ugly mug. She's currently in Afghanistan. I was having the blue flicker issue that others have reported. Went into my skype settings for video and found a setting dealing with "white" something or other. Checked that off and web camera works fantastic now!

 

Thanks for sharing and welcome to the forum!

 

I noticed a lot of people complain about the screen, this is interesting to me because to me the opposite seems to be true. I have the basic screen and I would describe it as vibrant and bright. Maybe it's because I'm coming from a HP laptop.

 

*cries because of my broken webcam*

 

Hey, I have a question. I'm not sure if this is against the forum rules or not, but could I get your order number? I'm ordering the same exact laptop and the sales rep said that he could price match it if i find something cheaper, just with the order number. Mine is about 300 more bucks then yours with the same specs. Sorry to be off topic too. ^__^

 

dude, he got it from aafes. you can only use that discount if you're affiliated with the military.

 

Oh i didn't see that. That's what i get for skimming. >__<.

 

Yeah and aafes even cut the heck out of their discounts on these right now. If I bought the exact same system through them right now it'd be $200 more. Good thing I ordered when I did

 

That's exactly what happened to me. I still kept the cost down as compared to the regular AW/Dell website, but $1640 is a harder pill to swallow than the $1440 I saw about a week ago.

 

Welcome to NBR, and thanks for the quick review of the system!

 

Ya, like others said Welcome to the Best Alienware Forum on the Internet.

It would be handy if you register your service tag under your name via Dell's Support site.

Cheers.

 

Its no longer 22% ugh thats what i get for waiting.. how much is it now?

 

$60 off. However, if you act quickly enough the M14X is listed on the site twice. Choose the second M14X and look at the price reduction if you choose the Nebula Red- It subtracts $200. I would have gone that route but I wanted the black finish and I won't compromise. Plus I wanted the 2820 proc. (added$$$)