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over the years i've developed a pretty good nose for and one of the

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smelliest things around tends to be mechanical keyboards on laptops from

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ASUS to acer to Gigabyte to MSI and

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probably alienware at some point every laptop with a mechanical keyboard

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has sucked for one reason or another i mean some of them are okay for certain

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tasks but not a single one of them has been better than a quality membrane

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keyboard which is why when alienware said they had collaborated with cherry

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to make a mechanical gaming keyboard

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excuse me sorry i threw up a little bit in my mouth i prepared for the worst

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but as it turns out this thing feels

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exceptional is that rose petals wow yeah wow well

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according to my writing staff anyway it's really good but i have yet to touch

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it so best of luck alienware and cherry

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for free at the link down below

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the development of this keyboard started three years ago when alienware

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approached cherry and asked if they could design a mechanical keyboard for

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their laptops with a small list of requests like

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give users the experience they wish they had and provide mobile users the true

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feel of a mechanical keyboard it has to be good for gaming and for typing

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oh and by the way you have to do it without using up any more space than the

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existing membrane key switches do now how exactly did they do apparently i get

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a single sentence now to give you my thoughts

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i can only type a single sentence on yes one sentence then we're swapping it out

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for a bit oh okay choose a good sentence

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i'm gonna go with quick brown fox you're not gonna try and plug like LTT Store or

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something um no i'm gonna type

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i got to evaluate this thing in one sentence i got i got work to do here

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okay

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am i allowed to backspace and retype things if i make a mistake no

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i feel a bit like a wine reviewer right now it's got a strong tactile feel heavy

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at the front end and a pleasing mechanical sound

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save for the slightly twangy

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end um

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is that is that what you expected to hear that's actually pretty accurate

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now this has been billed as the world's first cherry mx ultra low profile

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mechanical keyboard which is true but there have been laptops before featuring

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cherry mx switches like this paragon of

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practicality this right here is the acer predator 21x

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possibly the most bat crazy laptop to

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ever exist wait a second you need the wrist rest for the full typing

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experience right you're right sorry my bad it's got features that even today you

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can't find like a 21 inch curved ultra wide display

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two gtx 1080s running in sli more i o than

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probably just about any laptop today and

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of course a fully mechanical keyboard

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of course this isn't here so i can talk about the room filling sound tasteful

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lighting effects and integrated toby eye tracking

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it's to talk about using cherry mx browns on a keyboard and

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this is you know you joke about it but this is a

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pretty good solution to the otherwise it works really well wrist breaking you

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know difference in height between your table and the and the computer it's

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i mean it's really better than any other keyboard on a laptop

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because it's full on cherry mx browns with and get this

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they weren't even using low profile keycaps or anything

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acer went full fat they saved absolutely

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no z height of course saving space

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wasn't really a priority when acer was designing a product like this one this

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is not really a laptop it doesn't go on

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your lap this is a desktop replacement and for a number of reasons this is a

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product category that has mostly evaporated over the last three to four

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years a big part of the reason is that you can fit the same kind of features

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and performance not to mention even things like mechanical keyboards into

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much slimmer designs take this a sous-strix scar 17

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g733 this is probably the closest competitor

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to the m17 with matching core specs 360

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hertz panel rtx 3080 graphics and an 8

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core ryzen processor with the big draw here being that it is

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just 3 000 because somehow that's a bargain compared to the

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alienware's casual 3600 price tag one

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key difference though is that the strix comes with an opto mechanical keyboard

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those are actuated by blocking a laser beam as the key is pressed down for

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apparently some of the best response times possible

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in practice though oh man this thing does not feel amazing

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no no i will i will give it some more time i will give it some more time

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i'm to boot up like do maternal or something i think it's not too bad for

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gaming yeah i'll i'll give you that alex it doesn't feel nearly as bad for gaming

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but what it doesn't feel like is

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mechanical now to be clear mechanical doesn't mean

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anything other than the method by which the switch actuates and you can have

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mechanical switches in all shapes and sizes and sounds and feels it's just

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that in the context of computer hardware

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people have an expectation that a mechanical switch is

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cherry mx-like in some way so you've got

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a longer travel or you've got a tactile bump or a more satisfying

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consistency in the feel and the sound right

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so it might be mechanical in its way of operating

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but it doesn't feel very good yeah so i think i know why it doesn't

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feel very good yeah i made this graph here ah

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the force curve so this is how far we have pressed down and this is how much

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force we're applying so it goes from actuation to really

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quickly bottoming out because you have that much force on it to actuate it

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that makes a lot of sense it's too non-linear well but i think the

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problem also is that it's too linear like you don't know where the actuation

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point is going to be wait so the actuation point doesn't require more force it's just there well

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we'll just press it you can feel like there's a click in the middle

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and it doesn't really make any sense yeah

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yeah so there are a couple of problems here number one is that this doesn't

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really feel like much it feels really soft then you get to this actuation

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point this is the click so down down down

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click it's a really strong click and by the

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time you've applied this much force you're basically going to jump straight

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to here because it's not like you can ride it out by applying just a little

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bit more a little bit more and then this is a big problem too because your bottom

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out feels extremely mushy so you've got mush here this really strong click that

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on paper might seem nice and sounds nice and then you've got this kind of mushy

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bottoming out and the whole thing just doesn't feel very good you combine that

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with the inherent small amount of deck flex that you're going to have in any

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laptop that isn't just made out of a solid machine piece of aluminum and it

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contributes even more to the mushiness yeah so now you finally get to use this

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again okay let's let's go back to the alienware this is a very cute little

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chart that you made thank you alex yeah it's those extra little bits of

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effort that set you apart from the other alex's jk prime you're great too he also

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does nice little bits of extra effort so we ran out of desk pad space fortunately

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we have these super wide ones lttstore.com

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before i give any more impressions i want to actually game on this thing

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though because a good typing experience does not necessarily mean that it's a

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good gaming keyboard and

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i prefer it but i don't know that i can

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objectively say it's better i just tend to prefer that

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well more desktop cherry mx feel with typing

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and gaming impressions under my belt i can say with confidence that i like

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these a lot better than these but

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these aren't necessarily my favorite style of switches for either typing or

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gaming because if you look closely

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they don't they're quite stiff at the top of the keystroke i can press on it

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quite a lot before there it goes

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right can you hear that click brandon or is the whoosh of the fans too much

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there it is the bottom out is much more satisfying not nearly as mushy feeling

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but i do tend to prefer a tactile bump that's somewhere below the very top of

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the keystroke and actually alex has a

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force chart that i can share with you guys so you can see that's exactly what

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yeah yeah i have typed on a lot of keyboards over the years so you're

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pretty much putting all the force here and then it falls away on you

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but the good news is that when it bottoms out it doesn't have that same

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kind of mush to it from a strictly performance standpoint

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if all i did was game i would probably have to take these but

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if i was me and i know that i actually do type sometimes as well i would

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absolutely take these first now let's talk about how these work because while

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i have used kind of front loaded heavier switches like these i've never used

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these ones before because they are brand new we got a little tester here from

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cherry number 39 of 80 apparently that gives you a really good look both with

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some clear key caps over top of them as well as an exposed one so it's actually

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a butterfly style mechanism that

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if we look at our microscope footage we can see there's a little piece that

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slips off and there it is that's where you get your

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click then the spring in the middle brings it back to rest so you could

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easily that's actually interesting you could easily adjust the tension on this

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thing by adjusting that spring that's kind of a cool thought not that you

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would want to cherry always impresses me with their attention to detail like are

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these steel yeah

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15 million clicks and if cherry rates it for 15 million

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you better believe it as good as a key switch might be though

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as i touched on earlier

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it can easily be let down by a chassis that is not stiff enough and we saw a

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great example of this in the galaxy book pro on ShortCircuit about a week ago

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fortunately delay alienware has done a great job of this with a unibody

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magnesium cnc chassis but it is something to keep in mind especially as

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these switches start to show up on other laptops as an option because they're

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going to cost you about 150 another challenge for del alienware is

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that they already had some of the best mobile key switches on the market before

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this collaboration with cherry can they possibly be worth that kind of money

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oh wow look at this we are so prepared for this video to find out i've got an

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m15 r3 on hand this is still not my favorite style of

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keyboard because i type a lot and that front loaded actuation curve is not

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ideal for it but if you like that style and for gaming a lot of people do

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the cherry version is definitely better if it's 150 dollars better that's more

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up to you but for a lot of people a good feeling keyboard is absolutely worth

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that kind of money and this is definitely a lot better feeling my notes

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just say somehow use the OLED screen to segue into the fact that a keyboard is

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attached to a laptop and the rest of the laptop has to be good for that to matter ah yes

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so the m15r3 uses an OLED display oh

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inky blocks so good whereas

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the m17r4 does not as far as i can tell it's

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using the same 1080p 360hz ips panel as

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what we had in the asustrix car now you might think

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1080p 360hz doesn't make a lot of sense in a laptop with an rtx 3080 because

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you're going to be CPU limited in basically everything you might say oh it

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probably makes more sense to get a 30 70 and save a couple bucks or better yet go

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for a 1440p display but if you are primarily planning on

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playing competitive shooters and then just occasionally want to turn rtx on in

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cyberpunk this not a terrible config

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what's really impressive about the m17 r4 though is just how freaking powerful

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it is especially the GPU with

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watts of power on tap this is the fastest mobile GPU we've ever tested and

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in games it wins against the scar every single time for productivity the core i9

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Intel processor does hold the alienware back a bit with the ryzen 9 in the strix

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pulling ahead but in the coming weeks we're expecting alienware to be launching an AMD version

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of the m17 that should be the fastest gaming laptop on the market

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period now of course with power like that comes cooling

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responsibility and also airflow responsibility so when

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you're using the m17 expect the fans to

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always be on and during gaming well

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don't even think about using the speakers however good they might sound

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or open back headphones but what alienware has done with cooling

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here is still impressive even if the CPU regularly gets close to 100 degrees

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celsius i mean look it's not even that thick also inside we've got an 86 watt

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hour battery and alienware did warn me that this system

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was not optimized for battery life but holy crap i thought the days of gaming

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laptops with around two hours of battery had finally ended

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not here maybe the AMD version will be a little bit better but my hopes aren't

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super high which means that even though it doesn't look as clunky as

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its predecessors did this is still the modern day equivalent

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of a desktop replacement

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and you know what i kind of like this future you still have to be plugged into

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the wall pretty much all the time but dang you got a lot of i o they even

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worked in their proprietary external GPU dock thing which is freaking awesome you

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can all of course go Thunderbolt if you prefer that sort of thing wired Ethernet

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dang impressive if you have 3 600 to spend of course

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mind you mind you that pricing looks downright reasonable compared to what

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the predator 21x got closest thing like 10 grand yeah

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i don't know something something sponsor

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if you guys enjoyed this video maybe you'll also enjoy checking out you know

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00:16:12,880 --> 00:16:21,360
what go check out our original review of this thing it truly is an utterly unique device

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anyone want to buy one no we're not selling that line it's

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craigslist no never it's useless it's beautiful it belongs in a museum

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00:16:28,320 --> 00:16:33,199
donate it someone takes up so much space i mean look at this remember this the

231
00:16:31,759 --> 00:16:36,600
track pad you could flip it around to be a number pad