guys welcome back to justin tech tips
finally after a lot of testing we've got
our review of the all new alienware
x17 r1 gaming laptop
is it time to throw away my alienware
m17 and replace it with this one
the x-17 is great and all but i do feel
a little lied to and there's a few
reasons for that that we'll talk about a
little later if you do purchase this
before watching the whole video
make sure you do not update the bios and
we'll explain why here in a sec now
we've already created a fun unboxing of
this beast but in this video we're going
to break down every single thing that
you're going to need to know before
spending this kind of money on a laptop
is it really worth it we're going to be
revealing performance and gaming
benchmarks
advertised features versus reality fan
noise tests
design and build quality review of the
internals heat tests
battery tests a few cool tips and tricks
that nobody else is talking about and
near the end our overall take on this
machine listing out the top pros and
cons that you need to be aware of and
weighing them against each other so that
you can make the best possible decision
for your budget i've also read through
over a thousand youtube comments on
other review videos
to make sure that i addressed every
unanswered question that you guys had
this is the
800h 8-core processor capable of speeds
of up to 4.6 gigahertz with turbo boost
we got the rtx 3080 gpu with 16
gigabytes of video ram this is the 4k
uhd screen with 500 nits brightness and
hertz refresh rate but you can get up to
360 hertz with an
fhd display it's also worth noting that
advanced optimus is only available with
that version we also got 32 gigabytes of
the fastest 3466 megahertz xmp ram but
did they actually give us the ability to
achieve that
design and build quality when it comes
to design some of you may say that i'm a
little biased because i've always held
alienware up as the gold standard of
great looking laptops
no they don't sponsor me that's just my
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for more information now this x-17 has
set that bar for design
even higher than before i was overjoyed
when i found out they brought back the
rgb backlit touchpad this time with an
even broader spectrum of colors and
animations and the size
is a little smaller than the previous
17-inch models they also updated the led
tron bar in the back to a full spectrum
version with a hundred leds and more
beautiful animations
the per key rgb mechanical keyboard
looks great but here's one of those
disappointments where they misled us
do you remember that exciting reveal
video for these new x-series laptops
in that video they falsely portrayed
that all of the secondary keys glowed
like they used to this unfortunately is
not the case as they definitely do not
light up this is pretty frustrating for
someone like me that does a lot of work
at nighttime in the dark and i can see
how that'd be pretty frustrating for
gamers at night time as well
however this is a great thing to bring
up if you just have buyer's remorse and
you want to return this laptop there's
no way they're going to charge you a
restocking fee if you bring up that
borderline false advertisement for a
while alienware had given us the option
between a dark and light version of
their laptops
until this one this time around they
only gave us one option
combining both versions with white on
the outside and black on the inside
hardcore fans of one or the other may be
a little disappointed but honestly for
me
i really like it overall the laptop is
pretty solid and feels like it's made
out of quality materials
the lid is pretty thick despite how thin
the rest of the laptop is
this gave it a lot of strength and
resulted in very little screen flex the
hinge felt very smooth and sturdy as
well
but for screen wobble that was just
about average and keyboard flex was very
minimal as well
they've decreased the amount of
ventilation on the back but increased
the amount of ventilation on the sides
and moved most of the ports to the rear
our tests showed the track pad to be
very accurate and the keyboard had great
typing accuracy as well
alright the mechanical keyboard i
absolutely
love this mechanical keyboard definitely
feels so much more firm and confident
than before and you definitely notice
that extra key travel it is a bit louder
than before but it's actually a pretty
soothing sound this is what it sounds
like compared to the alienware
m17
the stainless steel switches are
engineered in a way that allows for
smooth key travel straight down no
matter what part of the key is hit i am
a little disappointed that the number
pad was removed but i do love these
dedicated media keys
and i'm sure this extra ventilation they
put in place of the number pad was
necessary
i did discover a couple solutions for
the number pad though that made me not
miss it anymore and i'll show you what
those were here in a sec but first
let's talk about the macro keys a lot of
people all over the internet are
complaining about the removal of the
macro keys but good news for you guys
they're not actually gone if you look
here on the first few f keys where the
media keys used to be you can see we've
now got five
macro keys versus the four from before
and this keyboard now has a function
locking ability that allows you to
enable and disable the function key
without entering the bios
most people i know only use their f keys
for their secondary functions so all you
need to do is hit function escape to
allow all your f keys
secondary functions to work by
themselves without the function key
moving on to the ports on the left side
we've got just one headphone and
microphone jack with some ventilation
then on the right side we've got just a
power port with some more exhaust
ventilation
the large majority of all the ports are
on the back which i've got some mixed
feelings about i like that there's no
cables coming out towards my hands but i
would have at least like one usb
port on one of the sides we do have a
great selection of ports on the back
though it has a usb
3.2 gen 2 type c thunderbolt 4 port with
power delivery
capable of 4k with speeds of up to 40
gigabits per second
a usb 3.2 gen1 type a port with
powershare
a little disappointed it's not a gen 2
usb-a port a killer e
3100 rj45 ethernet jack which by the way
is not available on the x15 model
a usb 3.2 gen 2 type c port with power
delivery an hdmi 2.1 port which
technically has the ability to push 10k
content at 120 hertz that's pretty crazy
extremely future proof and then a micro
sd card slot and a mini displayport 1.4
now moving on to the internals you can
see now at the top we've got
four fans then we've got two upgradable
ram slots right here by the way the ram
on the x15 is soldered on so you can't
upgrade it later so keep that in mind
then we've got two
ssd card slots one a pcie four and the
other a pcie three
and then at the bottom two elongated
speakers and in between that are 87 watt
hour battery so how well did this
battery perform we got four hours and 45
minutes of hd streaming and then web
surfing at 50
brightness and battery saver mode the
computer lasted for nine
hours that's pretty good and then it
only took about one hour to recharge
back to 100
display quality the 500 nits display was
extremely bright even in direct sunlight
and the colors were very rich and
vibrant
probably due to the fact that it has a
gamut equivalent to a 100
adobe rgb spectrum the 120 hertz refresh
rate on a 4k
screen was definitely a welcome upgrade
as i've become very used to only
60 hertz on 4k displays this made motion
and gaming
extra smooth especially in racing and
sports games
so thermals this new cryotech cooling
technology how was it did that with four
fans actually keep this thin machine
from getting too hot and throttling here
are the cpu and gpu temperatures of
each of these games at their highest
preset settings i was actually pretty
impressed that a machine that's this
thin running an rtx 3080 gpu at 165
watts
could get rid of heat that well this is
one of the coolest high performing
machines that i've ever used and the
chassis
and keyboard was cooler than previous
models as well as far as the fan noise
goes
you would think with four fans that that
would make the fan noise extra loud
right
in quiet idle fan mode we got only 41
decibels
in performance mode we got 48 decibels
and in full speed mode we got 54
decibels
but by default in performance mode the
fans never actually pushed themselves
that hard and it didn't seem like there
was that much of an improvement from
performance to full speed so even with
doubling the amount of fans
the noise that it created was actually
about average so the fun part everyone's
favorite performance and gaming
benchmarks
for 3dmark we got an overall score of
eleven thousand
seven sixty nine a graphic score of
twelve thousand forty three and a cpu
score of ten 10429 for cinebench r23 we
got a cpu multi-core score of 13880 and
a cpu single core score of 1504
and for geekbench 5 we got a single core
score of 1505 a multi-core score of 9133
and a cuda score of a hundred and forty
thousand four eighty eight and here's a
few puget benchmark tests for all you
creatives out there for davinci resolve
we got 1180 for photoshop
987 and premier 825 these are fantastic
numbers and absolutely
dwarf what we got for the razer blade 14
and the gigabyte arrow 15 laptops
definitely a great computer for
creatives i've also just recently
created a google spreadsheet that
compares all my past laptop benchmarks
and fps against each other i put a link
to that google doc in the description
i even did an 8k test in premiere and it
played and scrubbed through the timeline
like butter but how well did it do in
games
here are the frames per second we got
with each of these games at their
highest preset settings at 1080p
and these are the results we got at the
highest preset settings at 4k
so you can see these are great numbers
and the highest scores that we've ever
seen on this channel but it really isn't
miles ahead of the competition like they
try to make you think
for a thin laptop yeah it's incredible i
haven't reviewed the msi ge76 yet i will
pretty soon but from some of the
benchmarks i've seen on that one it
actually
outperforms this x17 one thing to keep
in mind though is i was only able to
utilize
3200 megahertz of my 3466 megahertz xmp
ram when i updated the bios it capped
off my 3466 megahertz ram back down to
3200 megahertz and after doing a bunch
of research i found out that there's no
ability to roll it back
for security reasons this was pretty
disappointing and is the main reason why
i advise you not to update the bios when
you get this machine wait until they at
least have an update that fixes this
if you pay for 34.66 megahertz ram you
should be able to use 3466 megahertz for
the speakers we have openings on the
front and on the bottom and as far as
sound quality i'd say it's about average
we got a reading of about 85 decibels at
maximum volume
as far as the webcam goes we did do a
few tests with that and here's an indoor
sample of that audio and video quality
you can see it's kind of on the lower
end of webcam quality and here's an
outdoor sample with a little bit more
light looks a little bit more crisp but
still
not that great of quality not too great
but what laptop is
and here's our experience with the
alienware command center not too much
changed here here's our overclock
settings over clock 1 over clock 2
thermal settings then you've got your
power settings and then for our lighting
effects
so we got the per key rgb right now we
have it set on rainbow wave just to show
you all the colors but this is
customizable per key
so not too many animations or
customization options
but one thing you can customize now is
this touch pad which can also
be rainbow wave or pulse spectrum and
apparently the backside tron bar now has
a hundred leds
so this can actually cycle and morph
between different colors as well
and then under fusion you can monitor
your cpu and gpu temperatures
and then inside advanced view you can
actually set your power limits and your
thermal limits for your gpu and then in
our thermal profiles we've actually got
settings for four fans now which is
pretty awesome two fans for the gpu and
two fans for the cpu both customizable
individually and then just your power
profiles and what those do and then some
customizable audio profile settings
so pros and cons these are my top
reasons some of you might want to pass
on this machine
number one it's very expensive the very
lowest base model
one costs dollars with the maxed out
version costing a whopping forty six
hundred dollars the configuration we got
for this review was thirty four hundred
dollars and number two
was no secondary key backlighting this
is something i needed to reiterate
because a lot of you might have a
problem with this we need to see
secondary keys at night i mean
technically from the glow on the letters
and the bounce light on the screen you
can still see them but it would have
been much better for them to glow as
well
and then number three was the removal of
the number pad this became just mildly
inconvenient though because i found a
really cool app that let me use my phone
as the number pad and i'll put a link to
that app in the description
you could also get a very inexpensive
portable external number pad as well
so my overall top reasons you do want to
get this computer
number one is the speed this is
definitely one of the fastest gaming
laptops there are out there and it would
be a dream machine for both gamers and
creatives
if you're gonna be doing some creative
work though i recommend that you get the
32 gigabytes of ram and number two
is the design man this really is a
beautiful laptop
very sleek and well built and the
lighting effects upgrades are just the
cherry on top
and i love that they stuck with that
sci-fi hexagon theme you might have
noticed i kinda like hexagons
and number three was the thermals well
done alienware
you've finally figured out how to bring
those temps down i'm gonna give the
credit to that new cryotech cooling
technology
and the additional fans so aside from a
few nitpicking dislikes this is an
amazing laptop that i definitely
recommend if you've got the money
because it is on the pricey side but
it's also a super future-proof machine
i'm predicting even better speeds later
down the road after a few bios
updates guys remember every friday i do
a giveaway that randomly selects
someone who's interacted with this
channel so make sure to like comment
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as well as staying up to date with all
of our latest videos before i announce
today's winner if you're gonna be
getting this laptop
if you could please use my affiliate
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really appreciate it as i get a small
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at no cost to you for every purchase
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[Applause]
gh thanks for watching guys i love you
guys
god bless