Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17 Comparison

Recently DELL has launched it’s new line-up of Powerful Gaming Laptops “Dell Alienware x15” & “Dell Alienware x17”, Let’s have a detailed comparison between Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17.

Dell Alienware x15 R1

The new Alienware x15 gaming laptop a redesigned slim and light 15 inch gaming laptop from DELL. now in this review i’m not going to be comparing this to the DELL Alienware x17.

The x15 uses intel’s 11th gen processors and lets you choose from a 3060, 3070 or 3080 Max-Q GPUs you can also configure the ram at 16 or 32 gigabyte and there is a range of ssd and screen choices as well.

the base model for this review which consists of an eight core 11900H an rtx 3060 16 gigabytes of ram a 512 gig ssd and 165 hertz 1080p panel.

This looks very different from the older m15 range the laptop is only available in one color scheme which is a two-tone design with lunar light outer and a dark side of the moon deck on the lid.

We still have the lit alienware head and the embossed 15 logo in keeping with the alienware epic design and the bottom retains the honeycomb venting pattern we still have the tron ring at the rear of the laptop.

But DELL really improved the lighting here making it much more vibrant and increasing the number of colors available where things have really changed is the new cooling system and port location.

Looking at the left and right side you will only see a power adapter jack and a headset jack the rest of the side is used for venting for the laptop’s new four fan cooling solution which we’ll look at in more detail later.

As we move to the back we can see the range of ports and this is an area where i have mixed feelings putting all the ports at the back certainly makes the laptop look clean with all the wires out of the way.

The port selection is okay with usb 3.1 thunderbolt 4 a micro sd card slot a usb type c and an hdmi 2.1 considering this laptop is a slim gaming laptop this is not a bad selection of ports but personally i always want at least two usb ports on my gaming laptops you may notice the lack of ethernet port but dell has kindly included a usb-c to ethernet adapter to combat this.

DELL made a big deal about how slim and light this laptop is with a height of just 15.9 to 16.3 millimeters depending on your screen choice a lot of viewers have requested i placed it up against macbook pro which is a similar height but it actually sits much higher on the desk.

i’ve been using the laptop solidly for a few days and does a great job of not showing fingerprints and it looks like it will hold up well to daily use the trackpad although small glides nicely and responds well to gestures and it feels very solid.

The key style is my favorite gaming laptop keyboard hands down for typing and gaming but as usual with dell is one step forward and two steps back although the typing is still great with this keyboard the layout needs a lot to be desired.

The new media keys to the right of the keyboard have caused a few typos and it shoves the up arrow directly under the enter where the right shift would normally be causing a few miss hits there as well whenever i tried to use the right shift key i’m sure after a while you will adjust.

I tested the Speakers in the unboxing i was not blown away by them but playing around with the sound equalizer they have improved but still lack bass and sound a little bit tinny.

the keyboard the alien head power button is something i still love on these laptops the head lights up and also indicates if you’re on battery charging or fully charged it’s a very handy feature.

the screen of my model is the base 165 hertz 1080p panel it’s a decent panel but a little dim at a 285 nits but the colors and the contrast look good testing the panel on the ufo test shows that the panel is responsive with no trails or overshoot and with this bass panel there is no mux switch or advanced optimus or g-sync.

so you’re stuck with regular optimus in my opinion if you can afford it upgrade to the Q-HD model.

the webcam and the microphones on the alienware x15 gaming laptop and finally all models now have Windows Hello facial recognition (Learn about Windows Hello and set it up) which is my favorite way to log in and dell’s implementation has been very quick and accurate.

So now we’ve looked around the laptop let’s take a look at the internals and performance inside we can see the full fan setup unfortunately the motherboard is inverted so you can’t see the vapor chamber.

it also makes it much more of a pain to replace the laptop the ram is soldered on so make sure you order the amount you need when you configure it you can also see the wi-fi six card is socketed and there’s also two times 80 millimeter m.2 ssd slots one of which is a gen 4 and the other is a gen 3. our base models 11th gen 11800h 8-core cpu performs very well in this laptop considering how much more of this laptop is compared to other gaming laptops.

it puts out results that are not far off a 17-inch laptop even cpu performance on battery is good if you need to get some work done away from the power outlet with regards to the gpu we have the rtx 3060 in our base model and this has a tgp of just 90 watts if you opt for the 3070 or 3080 model you will get a tgp of 110 watts.

Dell Alienware x17 R1

This is anywhere’s completely redesigned premium gaming laptop which will replace the m17 range that has been a solid gaming laptop that dell has been improving on year on year this new chassis is now slimmer at 21.4 millimeters at its thickest point and there is now only one color choice which is a two-tone color scheme the outside being lunar lights and the deck and keyboard.

The model we’re reviewing today has the new 11th gen 11800h cpu and rtx 3070 with 140w tgp this model comes in at just over three kilograms which being reasonably heavy by 2021 standards is actually not bad at all for a 17 inch gaming laptop the machine feels incredibly sturdy with no creaking or flexing.

For an alienware laptop we’re greeted with plenty of rgb the keyboard the alien head power button the rear alien head and the improved tron bar which now has much better lighting and as always you can customize the colors and the effects in the alienware command center software being a new slimmer design they have changed the cooling solution in this laptop and it now has four fans to remove all the heat.

The top end components can produce lot’s of heat, to do this they’ve added venting on both sides as well as the rear vents on the back of the laptop now this means that most of the ports have now been moved to the back of the machine with only the psu socket and a headset jack being located on either side around the back of the machine the port selection is good with a thunderbolt 4 port a usbc two usb 3.1 an hdmi 2.1 and a mini Display port as well.

It also has a micro sd reader just in case you plan to use this machine for content creation my only gripe with this is i would have preferred to have a usb or usbc on either side of the machine as having to lean over that top to keep plugging in devices can be a bit tiresome.

The laptop can be opened easily with one hand and while the lid is a little heavy it means the screen has no wobble or play while in use looking at the palm rest it has the same high endurance coating.

Moving up to the screen we have 165 hertz 1080p ips panel on the base model now i want to start with the bad news this model comes with no mux switch which is a real shame but other than that this auo 5793 panel is very good with 369 nits of brightness good colors and it feels very responsive.

Looking at the ufo test image it was very clear with no ghosting or trails this would make a great panel for gaming at 1080p and finally all alienware x17 and x15 models now come with windows hello this is brilliant it’s my favorite way to log into windows i’ve been using this on this x17 and windows hello has been incredibly responsive and logs me in quickly.

The new Alienware x17 laptop the x17 not only has four fans but it also uses a vapor chamber cooler and gallium silicon thermal interface material.

I’ve tested the laptop on three of its power profiles quiet balanced and max fans to see how the benchmarks react to each of these profiles and the good news is all the profiles are usable even for gaming.

Obviously it throttles back performance a few percent on the quiet mode to reduce fan noise but this is good news as it gives you the opportunity to choose either better temps with more noise or a quieter system with slightly higher.

All eight cores and it consumes just over 100 watts now this gives an impressive score of over 5000 points on cinebench on its max fan profile the geekbench 5 scores were equally impressive especially the single core scores which has received a big boost with these new 11th gen CPUs.

Now this is going to make the machine feel snappier in day-to-day use as we start to test some game benchmarks you can see the scores are in line with what we expect from 140 watt 3070 and the good news is that the laptop does this without overheating or throttling and we get the full 5120 CUDA-Cores.

Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17 Comparison

Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17 General Specifications

Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17 Display Comparison

Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17 Processor Comparison

Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17 Graphics Comparison

Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17 Connectivity Comparison

Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17 Inputs Comparison

Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17 Memory Comparison

Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17 Features Comparison

Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17 Extra

Dell Alienware x15 vs Dell Alienware x17 Gaming Comparison

Playing games on the laptop is a very enjoyable experience the four fans can get quite loud at 51 death spells on the balance mode but it was a comfortable fan noise that blends into the background and the W-A-S-D keys remain cool for a sweat-free palm experience.

The laptop did not throttle at all and the internal attempts can get into the 80s which is more than acceptable for the cpu and gpu okay enough of gaming let’s look at how this laptop performs as a laptop.

Now the laptop remains quite quite an idle with the fans turning off when the laptop is very cool when they do spin up they are audible but not annoying i’ve been happily working on this laptop with any crazy fan spikes in my day-to-day tasks even when installing light applications that did not cause the fan to ramp up like they can do on other slimmer night laptops.

Battery life is good at 6 hours and 45 minutes on our streaming youtube test over wi-fi at 50 brightness with 50 speaker volume this was with all the lighting enabled if i switch the panel to 60 hertz and turned off all the rgb i managed to push that up to 8 hours and 20 minutes and this is a pretty good result.

DELL’s previous 241 adapter and does a good job of making the package even more portable and also the laptop is capable of power delivery on both the usb-c ports though do not expect to get full performance over usb-c as these components are far too power-hungry as with all alienware machines there is very little installed software and no bloatware you get the dell support assist and driver update software and the alienware command center.

DELL Alienware x17

So with the benchmarks out of the way let’s fire up some games and take a look how it plays okay so for gaming we do a little bit of warzone because it’s a good use of gpu and cpu power at the moment i’m running at 1080p on this 3070 165 hertz and we’re all high setting with ray tracing on.

So extra ultra where possible so we’re really going to try and push the laptop to its maximum performance this is all stock drivers out of the box from alienware just using the anywhere update to update them and we’re also using msi afterburner for the overlay so you can see the results at the top left hand corner and this is in the balanced profile.

So it’s not as loud as my short the other day on the max fans but as you see the temperatures are still well in check fast get to the face though eliminate all targets.

The Quad fan system is really doing its job this is only on balance so i’m not even on max fans you can see the temperatures are in the 70s and yet i’m using 45 watt on the cpu and between 120-130 most of the time on the gpu it’s obviously not.

Alienware finally updated this power supply as what is the point of making their laptop thinner and more compact when you’re still carrying around a massive heavy brick with it the laptop is also capable of being charged by usbc but don’t expect to be gaming whilst.

I think it’s an incredible addition to the alienware lineup the upgradeable ram and the new cooling system is a massive plus and the system is powerful and slim without overheating unlike many alienwares in the past obviously there are going to be some gripes.