Alienware M15 vs M17: Which One You Should Buy?

This is the comparison between the Alienware M15 and M17.

BUY NOW	BUY NOW
Alienware M15	Alienware M17
PROS	PROS
Strong performance. Long battery life Incredibly light for a gaming laptop. Gorgeous 4K display. High quality, premium metal chassis. Best chiclet-style gaming, laptop keyboard yet.	Excellent keyboard, beautiful and slim design, superb performance, great cooling performance. Great keyboard, Solid performance, Attractive white soft-touch material. Lightweight, captivating design, Powerful gaming, and overall performance, Above-average battery life, Comfortable keyboard. Crisp and vibrant 4K display, impressive specifications for the superb gaming experience, excellent keyboard.
CONS	CONS
Lackluster speakers. Big bezels. Top-tier model is very expensive It can get warm in spots while gaming. Not as light as the competition.	Not cheap, only has 1080P FHD as screen option, RAM soldered in, We say Powerfully built and beautifully designed, the Alienware M17 R2 is a show stopper of a gaming rig that doesn’t come cheap and has a few minor quirks of its own but proves to be one of Very expensive. Expensive. Fans get a bit loud under full loud, poor battery life, We say The Alienware M17 is one of the most powerful gaming, notebooks currently available in Malaysia that boasts of immense gaming performance and a stylish yet understated design that still bears.

SPECIFICATIONS

Expert Reviews for Alienware M15

By  TechSpot 
The Alienware m15 is a great step forward for the company, but it ultimately doesn’t get our recommendation. It’s hard to create the perfect portable system on the first attempt, and many competitors have simply been doing this for longer and have more refined, better options today that you should consider instead.

By  TechRadar
The Alienware m15 OLED offers undeniable performance in a package that avoids the pitfalls of many gaming laptops: egregious size. It’s slim and light enough to go into an average backpack, but it’s potent enough to work hard and play hard. Throw in a…

By mensxp.com
Alienware took its time to come up with a ‘thin and light’ gaming laptop, but I’d say that it has hit the sweet spot. The m15 is equal parts flashy and powerful. Despite being different from the other Alienware laptops, the m15 has managed to retain…

By  techaeris.com
There’s no question there are plenty of slimmer gaming laptop options out there. With its advanced thermal cooling technology, sleek gaming design, and various customizable options, the Alienware m15 definitely meets the criteria for a gaming laptop….

By hardwarezone.com.sg 
This laptop is ridiculously expensiveTaken alone, the Alienware m15 isn’t a bad laptop. It’s fast and well-built, and it’ll serve you pretty well as a gaming laptop. But when you look at what the competition has offer, it’s difficult to ignore the…

Expert Reviews for Alienware M17

By TechRadar 
The Alienware m17 (2019) is an incredibly powerful and stylish gaming laptop that does a lot of things right. We love the new design, and Dell has packed it with some of the best mobile gaming components on the market today. However, it’s also very…

By hitechcentury.com 
Under an average workload of productivity apps, several open browser windows and streaming video, the Alienware M17 R2 managed a very middling four and a half hours of usage before needing a recharge. It’s not the best in terms of endurance nor is it…

By Tom’s Guide
Alienware has pulled off something impressive with the m17 R2. It’s a relatively slim package that’s packing a major punch in performance, and it doesn’t look too bad, either. The white soft-touch finish is classy and the keyboard is a dream to type on….

By Pocket-lint
During our brief session with the Alienware m17 we were certainly impressed with the look and feel of this new notebook.The screen visuals are great with brilliant viewing angles and fairly decent low bezel design. A potentially fantastic internal…

By tech-critter.com 
Alienware is definitely the OG when it comes to gaming brands. They’ve been in the industry making these computers with a fancy alien-themed aesthetics with decked out hardware for the longest time. Fast forward to 2019 – and we have a lot more..

DESIGN

Alienware M15:

Alienware’s new 15 2017 model is thin and light gaming laptop. Really good build quality, really tankie laptops and is this as well-built, is this still a tank? Structurally i am going to say yes. the build quality across the chassis

This thing feels completely different from those other devices. There’s no flex from the chassis. The hing is really well built The top panel has the same kind of finishes as the previous generations with the light up Alienware head logo. The inside has this soft touch material But it feels a little bit different this year than it did in previous generations So that actually feels like it could last longer It reminds me of this stuff you see on a higher end Lenovo laptops

It feels like it won’t degrade over time. The bottom panel also metal and I mean like a solid metal This is like It’s legit This is the type of stuff you see on really well-built laptops It’s only like thin alluminium that can flex easily It’s built like an Alienware Feels like an Alienware

Alienware M17:

The design of the laptop is constructed with a mix of magnesium and steel so the keyboard deck is rigid but the screen does have a fair bit of play despite its thickness, the hinge is tuned pretty tight out of the box and it’s located in, the center so don’t go opening your screen from the edge or else it puts pressure on the hinge the interior has the soft touch matte black finish which is pretty comfortable and does a surprisingly good job at resisting oils and fingerprints like a really good job.

WEIGHT & DIMENSIONS

Alienware M15:

It’s not super thin. The weight is almost 4.8 pounds, dimensions are  14.3 x 10.8 x 0.7-0.8-inches, the m15 is the slimmest Alienware laptop ever made.

Alienware M17: 

However, in terms of size, the Alienware m17 is king. The m17 comes in at weight of 6.2 pounds and 16.1 x 11.5 x 0.7~0.9 inches of dimensions, which is nearly half the height of the Area-51m (8.5 pounds, 16.1 x 15.9 x 1.1~1.7 inches).

KEYBOARD AND TOUCHPAD

Alienware M15:

For the keyboard is quite different this year the previous generation of Alienware laptops had a very plush keyboard the m15 has a chiclet keyboard.

I’ve you see so much that I’m very comfortable on them for typing and gaming there’s a number pad on the side for people who want them keystrokes on this keyboard isn’t as deep as a previous generation travel is a little bit shorter but it is a very comfortable keyboard.

I think most people can get used to this quite easily the trackpad is also a little bit different this year the previous generation had a light-up surface those are gone this is more of a traditional kind of generic looking trackpad it is a nice one it’s a glass surface kind of good tracking precision drivers.

Alienware M17:

For the keyboard on the em 17 is totally different than the 17 r5 and I’m not a big fan of it the keys are small the travel is quite short and it’s not very tactile it’s just kind of mushy and it’s just a decent keyboard at best now it doesn’t hamper my ability to type like.

I’m not making a bunch of typos but, I have seen much better keyboards before so there is a lot of room for improvement there using a plastic trackpad which I don’t like because it gives way more resistance and friction compared to glass which is smooth but otherwise it checks all of your boxes it’s got windows precision drivers tactile clicks.

PORT SELECTION

Alienware M15:

The port selection including their graphics ant port for their external GPU but it can also use Thunderbolt 3, if you want there’s a power connection and video outputs in the back which I kind of like and then your use be Ethernet and audio jacks are on the side there’s still no SD card slot.

Alienware M17:

I recommend the 1440p 120 Hertz panel because at 17 inches 1080p just makes text look jagged and you also get the high refresh rate for the faster GPUs it’s a win win on the left side you’ll find an Ethernet port USB a and a headphone jack on the back is the charging port HDMI mini DisplayPort Thunderbolt 3 and this proprietary port for connecting to alien worse graphics amplifier and on the right are two more USB a ports. I like the fact that the display outputs and charging ports are on the left side.

DISPLAY

Alienware M15:

The m15 has smaller bezels this time around so Alienware laptop so you should have, really thick bezels it’s improved the side bezels are definitely thinner top and bottom bezel ZAR still a bit thick but the material that they use around the bezel on this thing is this glossy plastic.

Alienware M17:

I give them a eight and a half out of ten they offer a couple of different screen options with the m17 so the pre-configured options all come with a 1080p 60 Hertz screen with options for a 1440p 120 Hertz and a 4k option this is the 1080p 60.

Hertz screen it’s got 320 nits of brightness good viewing angles it is an IPS screen color gamut and color accuracy aren’t great so definitely calibrate it if you’re a content creator the 1440p and 4k options are both a little bit brighter and the 4k panel covers a wider 88% of Adobe RGB so it might be worth it to just get the better screen outright.

BATTERY

Alienware M15:

If you want and you can also see the 90 watt hour battery so this battery is the extended battery there’s a smaller 60 watt hour battery, this unit is getting around 6 hours of battery life with the screen at 250 nights.

Alienware M17:

60 watt hour battery inside that gets me a little under three hours of use if you opt out of the two and a half inch drive you can in a 91 era battery which would give you 50% longer battery life but you’ll still need to bring the charger with you even with five hours of battery life, so it’s probably worth it to just get the two and a half inch drive slot and the charger they include is a 240 watt unit it’s pretty big.

PERFORMANCE

Alienware M15:

When it comes to the performance, this model has a sixty hurt panel and to be quite honest most of the gaming sixty hurt panels that I’ve tested this year haven’t been that great this one is actually pretty good you get pretty good color accuracy you have respectable brightness and overall viewing angles are fantastic the only thing. I don’t like about it are these bezels these are probably some of the ugliest bezels. I’ve seen on a gaming laptop this year so thankfully the webcam is placed on the top so you will get a proper view of your face unlike the XPS.

Alienware M17:

The performance with this is obviously really good it smashes everything at 1080p Ultra which is kind of a shame because this screen is only 60 Hertz, all the more reason to get the 1440p when tween a Hertz screen the thermals are hitting it really close for comfort it’s getting into the high 90s it doesn’t thermal throttle, but it does get very hot if you push it full tilt for an extended load the msi just 75 does the best in my opinion so it’s got three fans instead of two and they can spin up much faster.

CONCLUSION

Alienware M15:

I kind of expect this laptop to have mediocre thermal performance and it’s not because I dislike the bran or anything as much praises. I’ve been getting Alienware over the years for like great build quality and durability they have struggled with thermal issues in the past a lot of their laptops just run a little bit hotter than which I’d like them to this device somehow has great thermals it benchmarks well there’s no throttling even on stress tests this thing runs really well fan noise is not even that loud on idle it’s actually silent so they’ve obviously spent a good amount of time engineering a much improved thermal solution for this particular device.

Alienware M17:

I will, recommend is the base model so the 1660 TI with the 1440p 120 hertz screen and then just throw in an SSD yourself you can find it one terabyte nvme SSD, from crucial or Intel for like $90 on sale that comes in at 1700 or 1650 on sale at the moment plus 90 bucks for the Intel 660 psst and that will bring you to 1740 and at that price both the specs and the hardware is just too good to ignore it’s got dual channel memory dead easy upgrade ability it’s built well it’s got good ports excellent speakers like just go for it.