Alienware X17 Laptop - Review

Over the years, I have come to be quite critical of gaming laptops that are less about portability and more about raw power, Alienware had started to buck that trend with some of their recent efforts, but they were always left wanting. Enter the X17, their next all-new design for what a modern gaming laptop can be, the question had to be asked, did it have the X factor, or was it all in a name?

The first thing that you have to understand about the X17 is that it is a beast in terms of size, as well as power, the 17 refers to the screen size of the laptop, so with a screen that big the rest needs to match. The external look, before you lift the lid is pretty basic, it has the white 17 printed onto the top, along with the Alienware logo that does light up. Apart from some grills on the left and right sides, the rest of the case looks pretty normal, until we get to the rear of it, because this is where things breakdown. After having the power be at the rear of many of their previous designs, Alienware have opted to move the power to the back left corner, on the left side of the machine, that placement is fine, it allows for a more user-friendly access point, the downside is that for some odd reason they have not chosen to include any sort of USB port, anywhere other than the rear of the device.

This is not to say that there are no ports, in fact it does have a really impressive line up of them, the issue is that none of them are easily accessible if you have external displays or such connected. What you get are two USB-A ports, two USB-C’s – one for power and one for video, a dedicated Display Port, Micro SD card slot and ethernet port. The headphone jack is located on the right side of the laptop, in the same position as the main power connector and with everything at the back, it makes for a clean workspace when set up, but is just no user friendly. Once you break the seal and lift that lid, you are treated to an amazing display and keyboard, as always, the little Alienware logo contained within acts the power button, lighting up when you turn it on. Perhaps something that you will either come to love or hate is that the trackpad also lights up when in use, much like the keyboard might, you can modify all of those settings of course when you are using their software, but by default it activates when in use.

Around the keyboard, that striking Alienware hexagonal design, made to allow for more airflow, but to maintain rigidity of the case is there and as always, looks a treat. The keyboard itself is their custom CherryMX ultra-low profile mechanical keyboard, with per key lighting, which helps make things light up wonderfully, at least when set up to do so. Above the display you will find a webcam, but it is not full HD as it maxes out at 720p and 30fps, but it does have a dual microphone array, so while you may not look Hollywood ready, you will sound great. Finally, as for the screen, it is a 17.3" FHD display, running at 165Hz with a 3ms, meaning it will help display your games without any issue. Overall, the external offerings are really well thought out, the keyboard is as great as always, the display works wonderfully and there is a decent array of input options, I just wish they had considered the fact that not everyone wants to rearrange their desk to insert a USB stick.

Now that we have looked at what is external, it is time to talk internals, because having a laptop that large means you need power to make use of it and the X17 does have a few different options to choose from. The one provided for review came with an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 11800H, alongside a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, and 16GB of DDR4 ram, so it has power to spare. With all that, I was able to run DOOM Eternal, which has been one of my go to testing games for a while, without any issues and running with everything at ultra, even some newer titles like Weird West, which is out in January, ran without issue. There is a massive caveat to the performance and that is the fans, the laptop uses a cooling system that they call Advanced Alienware Cryo-Tech and what it is meant to do is keep the laptop running cooler, without needing to make the laptop size even bigger. The problem is that while it does an admirable job of keeping it somewhat cool, DOOM Eternal did push that to the limit, the speed at which the fans move, results in a lot of noise being created and while this wouldn’t be an issue, it overpowers the speakers that the laptop comes equipped with.

The speakers are located on the front of the laptop and they have a slight downward turn, which when playing music, did help to push the sound out a little more, the problem is something else. Now I am not sure if it was due to a hardware fault, given the laptop is almost brand new, I would hope not, but whenever I put the speaker volume up above 30% it would sound so bad, like when you crank up the cheapest pair of headphones you have and the sound just makes the speakers rattle around in the casing. When attempting to play any game, with the fans whirring away, I had to turn the volume up and that just made everything worse, a solution I attempted was to just wear headphones, but as the port is on the right and most headphones have their cords on the left, it meant I had very little cord to work with. There is no doubt that the issue could just be an isolated one, but even if the speakers are amazing normally, the amount of noise that the fans can generate does make it a reason to pause on the instant buy, because even if you use headphones, those around you will have to deal with it.

That brings me to the final issue, the power brick and by using that term, I am not trying to be funny, it is a literal brick, you can see just how large it is in the picture above. The size is massive and with that size comes weight, it is not an easy thing to carry around and when you consider that the laptop on its own weighs in at 3kg, adding a power source that weighs another 1.3kg, before you connect the final cord, really removes the portability from this laptop. If you say that you were never going to travel with this, outside a rare trip and were going to use it only as a new home computer, that would negate the issue, but then you are dealing with inaccessible ports, which again is an issue.

Alienware have done a lot of improvements to the overall design here, the fans while loud when pushed, are almost whisper quiet when just browsing the web. There is significant power inside, to allow for the most hardcore PC gamer, to enjoy any offering they want, without issue and the number of ports available does mean you can have external devices out the wazoo. The downsides though are too big to just let slip buy, the laptop is really big and heavy on its own and that power brick does not make it portable friendly and while the number of ports is great, the fact that not a single one is easily accessible when the laptop is in use, is an odd design choice. The laptop has the power to keep you going for years, but the disappointing design choices would easily make it frustrating to use for more than a few months.

The Score

7.0

Review unit provided by Alienware

The Pros

+The Legend design ID is still as striking as ever, even when the laptop is closed

+There is real power contained within and it is able to handle modern games without issue

The Cons

-The port placement is just stupid, nothing is accessible, without moving the laptop first

-Moving the laptop is a challenge as it is heavy and the addition of the power brick, does not help