Alienware 13 Gaming Laptop - Tiny Heavyweight
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,503 words · ~7 min read
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the first OLED gaming display is here
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OLED I mean I've been waiting for something to bring CRT like response
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time back to the PC since Canon crushed
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my dreams back in 2010 by officially discontinuing development of their s
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technology well OLED has that potential
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but so far the best OLED displays are LG
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TVs which have notoriously terrible processing leg so
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the pixels can be as fast as you please but gaming still feels like telling your
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friend in the Next Room which buttons to press for you which okay sorry I digress
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okay so the display I'm talking about OLED gaming display it's connected to a
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laptop the alien wear 13 R3 now with a
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13-in OLED display in case you hadn't
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picked up on that before let's take her for a
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spin
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Corsair's ml fans feature magnetic levitation technology and Custom
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Engineered rotors to provide a high performance low noise experience learn
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more at the link in the video description the Alienware 13 strikes as
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fine a balance between Tastefully
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aggressive looking and Gody and tacky as
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any gaming PC with an alien theme possibly could and and rocks a pretty
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strong I/O configuration with USB type-c and type a super speed ports on the
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right an additional type A and dedicated
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headphone and mic ports on the left and gigabit killer Ethernet mini display
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port HDMI 2.0 Thunderbolt 3 Alien wear's
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proprietary external GPU dock connector and Power in at the back flanked by some
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large rear heat sinks that vent hot air down back and up for optimal cool
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immediately noticeable are both its size
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and weight considering the Alienware
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13's 13in screen size so the numbers
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listed on Dell site are meaningless the depth is based on the edge even though
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the center is a full centimeter more I can't for the life of me figure out
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where they measured the 23.3 mm height and the width is off by a whopping six
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CM oops but anyway when I measured it
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myself it worked out to about 2 L of
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internal volume so for comparison the Razer Blade 14 with quite similar specs
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comes in at less than 3/4 of that while weighing half a kilogram less so how can
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Dell justify it well easy upgradeability
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is one good way making our way to the bottom these five normal Philips head
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screws are all that stand between you and the m.2 slots that you can use to
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upgrader ad ssds and RAM slots that you can use to install up to 32 gigs of ddr4
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RAM just like that Inspire and value gaming machine that we checked out here
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unlike that one however the Alienware 13 is packing some serious heat under the
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plastic cover that protects all the stuff that you shouldn't be tooling
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around with this tricked out config got a COR i7 6700hq quad core with
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hyperthreading 16 gigs of RAM a 512 gig
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nbme SSD and a VR capable GTX 1060 with
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6 gigs of vram that ended up packing more of a punch than I expected more on
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that later first let's flip this puppy over and talk about the important stuff
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that you're going to see and touch every time you use the machine the RGB
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lighting there are nine lighting zones
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including this is the first time I've seen this one an RGB trackpad which
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admittedly actually looks really cool too bad its functionality could be
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improved it does track accurately and feels very responsive to the touch but I
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found it a bit small and I found the chin of the laptop combined with the
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depth of the clicky buttons below made them a little bit awkward to use
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fortunately the keyboard is mostly good news typing experience- wise it's not
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the best that I've used but it's far from the worst the layout is very good
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with full-sized arrow keys and the long travel distance and reassuring tactile
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feel were great for gaming on top of that for a small device it feels
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surprisingly not cramped maybe because
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Dell ended up stashing the speakers on the side of the unit which I was all
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geared up to complain about until they totally kicked my ass with solid output
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volume which is necessary when using speakers on a gaming laptop fans and
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surprisingly lifelike 3D positional audio they ended up being a highlight of
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this machine along along with Windows hello presence detection which by the
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way is still freaking amazing but not as
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amazing as the display boy is it
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beautiful so my config has the optional 2560 x440 OLED touchscreen monitor that
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boasts perfect black levels shockingly vibrant colors and some other advantages
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that were like a breath of fresh air for
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a gamer who grew up on old school CRT monitors look
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at the difference in Mouse movement to screen movement response time here the
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blade 14 at about 40 milliseconds at 60
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HZ is far from the worst I've seen But the Alienware 13 is right down around 25
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milliseconds a full screen refresh faster which only accounts for faster
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processing time the pixel response times contribute equally to the perceived
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Clarity and responsiveness of the display because they keep the image looking
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crisp even during fast camera pans it is
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awesome which doesn't mean though that it's perfect It suffers from Best Buy TV
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syndrome a little bit in that color saturation is off the hook but with a
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little bit of tuning of in-game gamma controls I think you'll find that most
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of the Shadow crushing effects can be countered for an unreal if a little
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small gaming EXP experience let's talk performance and
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usability now the Alienware 13 scores pretty well here in spite of the beef do
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battery off-all life is unexceptional at
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about 2 hours in change in PC Mark's conventional work test and one hour of
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continuous Crisis 3 gaming but it runs
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fanless under very light loads stays
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much quieter than the blade 14 under gaming loads maintains reasonable
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surface temperatures on both top and bottom while gaming and manages to do
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all of that while performing as well as the blade
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14 they both end up falling behind a
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desktop GTX 1060 probably due to power
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delivery limitations but remember guys that's to be expected especially on 1
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and 1/2 to 2 L machines which leads us then to the
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obvious conclusion the Alienware 13 is
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the hands down winner right well maybe not
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who made a better computer personally I
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still prefer razer's approach but while
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I'm not ready to switch to the MacBook Pro fulltime I also don't really gain
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that much anymore which means that I'm willing to make some compromises there
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for reduced weight and a larger display
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with that said the Alienware 13 is a better pure gaming machine in almost
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every way the webcam kind of sucks but the display is better the keyboard is
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better I mean the list goes on iO cooling noise I mean heck even alien
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wear's external GPU enclosure is cheaper
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if you want to upgrade your video card down the road just like the blade don't
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expect any of that to come cheap because this is a serious toy for serious
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LTT thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
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usually phrase that but that's okay bye-bye