The Alienware M15 R3: A Powerful Gaming Laptop with Some Quirks

When it comes to gaming laptops, Alienware is always at the top of our list. Their latest offering, the M15 R3, has been making waves in the tech community, and for good reason. This laptop boasts an impressive array of features that make it perfect for gamers and content creators alike.

The keyboard on this laptop is a standout feature. It's an island-style keyboard with RGB backlighting, which can be configured from the Alienware Command Center. The lighting system allows you to customize the look and feel of your keyboard, making it a great option for those who want to express themselves through their computing experience. Additionally, the keyboard itself offers 1.7 millimeters of heat travel, making typing a joy on this laptop. However, we did notice that the keys can get quite warm while gaming, which is a concern.

Moving on to the trackpad, it's placed just below the space bar and feels a bit small compared to other laptops in its class. While it may not be the most spacious trackpad, it still allows for enough room for palm rests on both sides. The good news is that the trackpad comes with Windows Precision Drivers, which means you'll get smooth gestures and pinch-to-zoom functionality. However, we did experience some inconsistencies with two-finger scrolling.

One of the biggest advantages of this laptop is its gaming performance. Paired with an RTX 2070 Super graphics card and an i7-10th Gen Core processor, this laptop can handle demanding games like a breeze. We even played some games in turbo mode, which features fans at maximum speed and GPU overclocking, and the results were impressive.

However, not all is sunshine and rainbows with this laptop. One of the biggest drawbacks is its battery life. Even with relatively low settings, we found that the M15 R3 lasted just below 3 hours while simply web surfing. This is likely due to the fact that the 300Hz panel exclusively uses an RTX 2070 graphics card, which can be power-hungry.

Another issue we encountered was with the laptop's cooling system. Despite Alienware's claims of improved thermals, we still experienced some issues during heavy gaming sessions and GPU overclocking. The keyboard also gets quite warm after a while, making it uncomfortable to use for extended periods.

In terms of design, the M15 R3 is a stunning device that turns heads. The laptop's color scheme is inspired by Alienware's signature IP-3, which gives it a sleek and modern look. The addition of an island-style keyboard and RGB backlighting makes this laptop stand out from its competitors.

Overall, the Alienware M15 R3 is an excellent gaming laptop with some quirks. While its battery life could be improved, the laptop's performance more than makes up for it. If you're in the market for a powerful gaming laptop that can handle demanding games and content creation tasks, this might be the perfect choice for you.

Designing Your Alienware M15 R3

Opening your laptop is relatively easy, with only eight screws holding everything together. However, what's notable is that the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard, making it impossible to upgrade in the future. Additionally, the SSD slots are covered with heat sinks, so removing them will require some effort.

The Alienware M15 R3 also features a 4-way woofer with a stereo speaker design. While we found the speakers to be sufficiently loud, they can get distorted at high volumes. However, for everyday use and gaming, this shouldn't be a major issue.

In conclusion, the Alienware M15 R3 is a powerful gaming laptop that offers impressive performance and features. While it has some quirks, such as poor battery life and mediocre cooling, these are largely outweighed by its strengths. If you're looking for a high-end gaming laptop with excellent hardware and design, this might be the perfect choice for you.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso today i'm gonna talk about my current favorite premium gaming laptop the alienware m15 r3 which we all know is known for being a spec heavy laptop that offers brilliant performance i have been using this beast for quite a while now and since we should expect the r4 to launch very soon with the all new 11 chance cpu and rtx 3000 series mobile graphics card i thought why not give my long term impressions of it spec wise you can configure the alienware m15 up to i9 1020 cpu and rtx 2080 max q graphics similarly the display options that you have are 144 hertz 300 hertz and a 60 hertz 4k oled the configuration that i got for myself is the intel core i7 10 750 edge processor nvidia rtx 2070 super gpu 16 gb ram 512 gb ssd and a 300 hertz refresh rate screen for around 1800 during the black friday sale this one does not have the tow bi tracking so if you want that you will have to go for the 4k led variant which costs an additional 170 anyway talking more about the design the m15 r2 had a superb design so it does make sense that dell has decided not to go for a complete design overhaul with the r3 around it has a minimalistic aesthetic however there are enough lighting fares that help it retain a gaming vibe there are two color options altogether the lunar white one and the off black dark side of the moon as you can see i got this variant traditionally a black chassis meant that you had to deal with a lot of fingerprint smudges however the exterior makes use of this high endurance clear coat finish that helps reduce much attraction you do get some from time to time but it is just a minor issue sticking to the chassis it is not made of metal rather the keyboard and the lid are made up of glossy plastic because of that it is lighter and you can easily carry this laptop around for daily commute similarly on the rear part you also get to see led strip here whose lighting can be controlled from the alienware command center but more on that later you also get almost all the ports that you can expect from a gaming laptop so that's great too for communication it has the killer ax1650w wi-fi 6 and bluetooth 5.1 up front you get a 1080p 300 hertz panel that is surrounded by thin bezels on the side the upper one is slightly thick in order to house the 720p webcam which is average at best anyway the panel itself is a beach the colors pop out quite well and everything seems so vibrant you probably won't require 300hz refresh rate for doing general tests so better switch it to 60hz to save some juice it is not a perfect screen though there's a bit of backlight bleeding and the screen is not that bright either the 60hz 4k oled variant would fare far better in that scenario regardless of that if you're looking to do some content creation on this laptop then that is fine too its panel covers 100 of the srgb color gamut about 64 of the adobe rgb color gamut and 77 of the dc ip3 color gamut so it's a fairly color accurate panel now coming to the keyboard it is an island style keyboard with an rgb backlight the lighting can be configured from the alienware command center the command center allows you to control the led strip in the rear too moreover you also get to tweak the overclock thermal profiles power and sound profiles just above the main deck there's a power button shaped in the form of an alien head and it lights up too moreover if your battery level gets critically low the lighting on the alien head starts to flicker so that even if you're immersed in a game you are notified about the battery levels as for the keys they are well spaced and offer 1.7 millimeters of heat travel with that typing is a joy on this one perfect for everything but the keys do get quite warm while gaming so that's a concern other than that there is nothing much that i have to complain about this keyboard the trackpad is placed just below the space pair and i felt it to be a bit small to my liking i got used to it after a while but still it somewhat bugged me however thanks to the size of the trackpad you get enough space for palm rest on both the sides the trackpad itself comes with windows precision drivers so gestures and pinch to zoom were not a problem however i did find the two fingers scrolling to be somewhat inconsistent as for the gaming performance the rtx 2070 super and i7 10 750 edge cpu is still a deadly combination this one has a 6 core processor however if you're getting this you should probably get the i7 108 75 edge processor variant it performs similar to the i9 and would cost far less for storage our review unit comes with a single 512 gb nvme ssd its performance is pretty good which you can see from the crystal disk mark course add to that the 300 hertz panel and you are good to go for casual to competitive esports i played a few games in this laptop's turbo mode that is fans at full speed and gpu overclocked and the results are as follows you can see from the stats that in each game you will be able to get very high fps the laptop did struggle a bit while playing shadow of the tomb raider however other games were a breeze for it in normal titles the 300hz won't really make much of a difference however while playing fps games such as cs go you will see its full potential opening this laptop is pretty easy too you just need to open the eight screws in the bottom once you're inside you will notice that the ram is soldered onto the motherboard so you can't really upgrade it which i feel is a little bit of a limitation the ssd slots are covered with heat sinks and thus you will need to remove them to add extra storage the alienware m15r3 has a 4-way woofer with a stereo speaker design i found the speakers to be sufficiently loud however at high volumes the details get a bit distorted for thermals as we know the r2 was plagued with heating issues so to solve that dell has tried to improve the thermals on the m15 r3 dell claims that it has 39 percent more copper and 25 percent more fan blades than the r2 furthermore it also integrates a vapor cooling chamber the vapor chamber does impact the cooling as it helps to keep the temperature low during normal tests however i am still not satisfied with the cooling on this device and i think that there is still room for improvement usually i kept my fans in balance mode while web surfing but it still results in the bottom panel getting slightly heated somewhat quickly also while gaming and doing heavy duty stuff with gpu overclocking the keyboard tends to get pretty warm and after 30 to 40 minutes you might even start feeling uncomfortable using it the fan noise is kind of disturbing too that's why i usually gamed on balance or performance mode without overclocking and hence got rid of the fan noise so with this laptop in order to get rid of the thermal issues you should play around with the overclock settings another not so good aspect about the m15r3 is its subpar battery usually it lasts just below 3 hours when simply web surfing at about 75 brightness the catch is that the 300hz panel exclusively uses the rdx 2070 graphics so you should tweak around with the settings or maybe get the oled version for better battery backup the alienware m15r3 for me has been an excellent gaming slash editing laptop and despite its bad battery life and okay thermals it has good hardware and can run everything like a breeze i also really like the design and overall performance of this laptop and i think it is worth paying extra over say the acer 215 or the scar 15 which is around 300 to 400 dollars cheaper than thisso today i'm gonna talk about my current favorite premium gaming laptop the alienware m15 r3 which we all know is known for being a spec heavy laptop that offers brilliant performance i have been using this beast for quite a while now and since we should expect the r4 to launch very soon with the all new 11 chance cpu and rtx 3000 series mobile graphics card i thought why not give my long term impressions of it spec wise you can configure the alienware m15 up to i9 1020 cpu and rtx 2080 max q graphics similarly the display options that you have are 144 hertz 300 hertz and a 60 hertz 4k oled the configuration that i got for myself is the intel core i7 10 750 edge processor nvidia rtx 2070 super gpu 16 gb ram 512 gb ssd and a 300 hertz refresh rate screen for around 1800 during the black friday sale this one does not have the tow bi tracking so if you want that you will have to go for the 4k led variant which costs an additional 170 anyway talking more about the design the m15 r2 had a superb design so it does make sense that dell has decided not to go for a complete design overhaul with the r3 around it has a minimalistic aesthetic however there are enough lighting fares that help it retain a gaming vibe there are two color options altogether the lunar white one and the off black dark side of the moon as you can see i got this variant traditionally a black chassis meant that you had to deal with a lot of fingerprint smudges however the exterior makes use of this high endurance clear coat finish that helps reduce much attraction you do get some from time to time but it is just a minor issue sticking to the chassis it is not made of metal rather the keyboard and the lid are made up of glossy plastic because of that it is lighter and you can easily carry this laptop around for daily commute similarly on the rear part you also get to see led strip here whose lighting can be controlled from the alienware command center but more on that later you also get almost all the ports that you can expect from a gaming laptop so that's great too for communication it has the killer ax1650w wi-fi 6 and bluetooth 5.1 up front you get a 1080p 300 hertz panel that is surrounded by thin bezels on the side the upper one is slightly thick in order to house the 720p webcam which is average at best anyway the panel itself is a beach the colors pop out quite well and everything seems so vibrant you probably won't require 300hz refresh rate for doing general tests so better switch it to 60hz to save some juice it is not a perfect screen though there's a bit of backlight bleeding and the screen is not that bright either the 60hz 4k oled variant would fare far better in that scenario regardless of that if you're looking to do some content creation on this laptop then that is fine too its panel covers 100 of the srgb color gamut about 64 of the adobe rgb color gamut and 77 of the dc ip3 color gamut so it's a fairly color accurate panel now coming to the keyboard it is an island style keyboard with an rgb backlight the lighting can be configured from the alienware command center the command center allows you to control the led strip in the rear too moreover you also get to tweak the overclock thermal profiles power and sound profiles just above the main deck there's a power button shaped in the form of an alien head and it lights up too moreover if your battery level gets critically low the lighting on the alien head starts to flicker so that even if you're immersed in a game you are notified about the battery levels as for the keys they are well spaced and offer 1.7 millimeters of heat travel with that typing is a joy on this one perfect for everything but the keys do get quite warm while gaming so that's a concern other than that there is nothing much that i have to complain about this keyboard the trackpad is placed just below the space pair and i felt it to be a bit small to my liking i got used to it after a while but still it somewhat bugged me however thanks to the size of the trackpad you get enough space for palm rest on both the sides the trackpad itself comes with windows precision drivers so gestures and pinch to zoom were not a problem however i did find the two fingers scrolling to be somewhat inconsistent as for the gaming performance the rtx 2070 super and i7 10 750 edge cpu is still a deadly combination this one has a 6 core processor however if you're getting this you should probably get the i7 108 75 edge processor variant it performs similar to the i9 and would cost far less for storage our review unit comes with a single 512 gb nvme ssd its performance is pretty good which you can see from the crystal disk mark course add to that the 300 hertz panel and you are good to go for casual to competitive esports i played a few games in this laptop's turbo mode that is fans at full speed and gpu overclocked and the results are as follows you can see from the stats that in each game you will be able to get very high fps the laptop did struggle a bit while playing shadow of the tomb raider however other games were a breeze for it in normal titles the 300hz won't really make much of a difference however while playing fps games such as cs go you will see its full potential opening this laptop is pretty easy too you just need to open the eight screws in the bottom once you're inside you will notice that the ram is soldered onto the motherboard so you can't really upgrade it which i feel is a little bit of a limitation the ssd slots are covered with heat sinks and thus you will need to remove them to add extra storage the alienware m15r3 has a 4-way woofer with a stereo speaker design i found the speakers to be sufficiently loud however at high volumes the details get a bit distorted for thermals as we know the r2 was plagued with heating issues so to solve that dell has tried to improve the thermals on the m15 r3 dell claims that it has 39 percent more copper and 25 percent more fan blades than the r2 furthermore it also integrates a vapor cooling chamber the vapor chamber does impact the cooling as it helps to keep the temperature low during normal tests however i am still not satisfied with the cooling on this device and i think that there is still room for improvement usually i kept my fans in balance mode while web surfing but it still results in the bottom panel getting slightly heated somewhat quickly also while gaming and doing heavy duty stuff with gpu overclocking the keyboard tends to get pretty warm and after 30 to 40 minutes you might even start feeling uncomfortable using it the fan noise is kind of disturbing too that's why i usually gamed on balance or performance mode without overclocking and hence got rid of the fan noise so with this laptop in order to get rid of the thermal issues you should play around with the overclock settings another not so good aspect about the m15r3 is its subpar battery usually it lasts just below 3 hours when simply web surfing at about 75 brightness the catch is that the 300hz panel exclusively uses the rdx 2070 graphics so you should tweak around with the settings or maybe get the oled version for better battery backup the alienware m15r3 for me has been an excellent gaming slash editing laptop and despite its bad battery life and okay thermals it has good hardware and can run everything like a breeze i also really like the design and overall performance of this laptop and i think it is worth paying extra over say the acer 215 or the scar 15 which is around 300 to 400 dollars cheaper than this\n"