The Thin and Light Gaming Laptop - Alienware X15
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
2,175 words · ~10 min read
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- Sure, lots of gaming laptops have loads of FPS and
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vapor chambers or whatever the crap, but I don't want to carry this in my backpack.
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Super heavy. I want something more like this.
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The new Alienware X15, and well, I haven't seen it yet,
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so I guess we'll see if it's good or not pretty soon.
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Oh, fancy box. Can you see that? There's like an exploded view of the laptop.
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We'll open that in a second though. Here's the charger.
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It's not type C, although I would not expect you to be given it's 240 Watts,
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which is very impressive. Look at the size of this thing for 240 Watter,
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that is not bad. Oh, Alienware, strike number one.
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We have a USB type C two Ethernet adapter,
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which means there's presumably no Ethernet on this laptop,
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which makes me sad. Here we go. (smooth RnB music)
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Do do do do. (beep) (laughter)
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It's very fancy, more exploded view, but this time in black and gloss,
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and we get our laptop. This is quite thin and surprisingly light.
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The XPS15, just under two kilograms,
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where as the Alienware X15,
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2.3 kilograms. So it is a little bit more,
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that is rather light for a gaming laptop, especially given this has a 3080 in it.
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So right off the bat, the IO is not fantastic.
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We have full-size HDMI, like to see that. USB type C, mini SD reader,
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Thunderbolt, and USB type A,
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one USB type A and that's it. The most confusing part here
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is that it looks like there's lots of space where they could have put, like,
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if they had two or three USB type A's back here,
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that would be just so much nicer and so much more usable,
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because like right now you're going to plug in a mouse,
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and you're done, that's your USB right there. On the X17,
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we have two USB type A's, full-size Ethernet,
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and also mini DisplayPort. Was there one of those on here?
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No. What is definitely undeniable though, is that this is very thin for a gaming laptop.
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CIRCUIT at Ridge.com/circuit. How is this looking, at as a small track pad.
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That's my first impression. Alienware did the same thing with the X17,
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where they sacrificed track pad size in the name of venting.
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So, vents along the sides, vent along the top,
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vents along the other side, vents on the back,
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and also there's a bunch of venting on the bottom.
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This apparently is very well cooled. Look, there's half my IO gone.
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Stupid. All right, we are downloading some games,
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and it's already a bit on the loud side.
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Let's go to hardware info and try and figure out just
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how hot it is getting, like we are just installing games.
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It shouldn't be too bad. Peak CPU temperature so far is 95 degrees.
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So, that's kind of hot.
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Actually, what I'm going to do, let's make sure that this is totally fair.
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I love these desk pads, but it's probably not great for the thermals.
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Don't want people getting mad at me in the comments. All right, while the games download,
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let's just figure out how the rest of it is. Track pad, it's too small.
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I was just using it and my finger stopped being on
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the track pad and started being on the keyboard, when I thought it should have still been
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on the track pad, so, but it's RGB,
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Most track pads can't say that much. Okay, Brandon just said, "it's a gaming laptop,
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will you use the track pad all that much." Maybe not, but the Zephyrus M16
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has a really, really good track pad, and it's a similar size to this,
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so I want a big track pad. (typing) Keyboard is fantastic.
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I do wish that there was an option so that I could give Alienware a bit more money,
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and they would give me their really excellent Cherry keyboard.
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It still is, like, A+ territory for gaming laptop keyboards.
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It's just not like the cherry one. One thing that is rather disappointing for me,
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I didn't care on the 17, but on the 15, I really want 16 by 10.
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So like, there's loads of space here, like you can see
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there's bezel down here that could be not bezel.
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There's also a lot of hinge, that could be screen, and not hinge.
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The panel itself though, it is very good.
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I would not get this one. So this is the 1080p, 360 Hertz version.
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This right here is, like, try hard mode, you're trying to get ranked in CS:GO or whatever.
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There is a 1440p version that's 240 Hertz,
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240 Hertz is a lot of Hertz and 1440p is wicked,
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so I would go for that one for sure. Let's go over the full specs here though.
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So for the CPU, we have an i7-11800H, so eight cores.
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I think that's 4.7 gigahertz total.
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32 gigabytes of RAM, 3,200 megahertz.
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We have, oh, it looks like two, one terabyte SSDs
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in a raid zero config, super speedy.
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Oh cool. I was thinking our download was really fast,
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It's peaked at 140 megabytes per second,
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and that's because this little adapter right here is two and a half gig. I wasn't expecting that,
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but that's quite an awesome little adapter then.
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And we also have an RTX 3080. So, we don't get the RTX 3080 in this laptop.
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I'm just going to say that, even if it is well cooled,
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you're kind of just wasting your money. It's 110 watt version,
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and at that point you might as well get the 110 watt version
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of the RTX 3070. I guess, do we just start some gaming? I want a game.
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One problem I've noticed almost immediately,
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is that, not only is the track pad super small, but because they have all this venting up top,
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the keyboards move down, and my hand just is not comfortable.
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It's like it's resting here, but like, my wrist is kind of resting off of the edge
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in a rather uncomfortable manner. It wasn't really a problem when I was typing,
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to kind of go like that, but when I hit WASD, and like,
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a finger comes down to shift, it's sort of hanging off the edge in like this weird,
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not super comfortable way. Also, this screen is not particularly bright.
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Having trouble figuring out what's on the go here,
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but, actually Brandon, can we turn the lights down a little bit in here?
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Okay, yeah, I just looked it up, so both of the 1080p panels are only 300 nits, and like,
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we turn the lights down in here, and this is actually a very good looking display, and,
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the 360 Hertz of it is very nice,
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but the 1440p panel is 400 nits,
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and I probably wouldn't have had to ask Brandon to turn on all the lights in here,
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if I was using that one. I don't know quite how many FPS we're getting right now,
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but it's more than enough for Valheim, it's easily in the hundreds, I would say.
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Right in the basement, we're getting like 30, 40 FPS.
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That's kind of about what I would expect.
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That's kind of all that you get in this house.
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Well, I just opened up Hardware Info, CPU's been hitting a hundred degrees Celsius,
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love to see that. How's the GPU doing? Oh, the GPU, at least, is doing pretty good.
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So, maximum of 75.9 degrees,
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they have clearly preferred GPU cooling over CPU cooling
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in this chassis. You're not using open back headphones if you buy this thing.
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While we wait for battlefield to finish installing, let's check out the webcam.
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Testing, testing. I have no clue if the audio is working in this clip,
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but it looks okay-ish.
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This isn't great. That's for sure. I don't expect a whole lot out of these webcams.
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The one thing that is nice about the webcam though, is that, along with the webcam,
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you also get Windows Hello facial recognition. Awesome way to get into a device.
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Really like to see that. Wow, this is running incredibly well,
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so I'm an ultra right now, and we are getting 190 FPS.
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That is extremely good for this game.
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This is definitely not a super bright display,
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but at the same time, I wouldn't be incredibly concerned about it,
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unless you, like, game outdoors or something, because most of you aren't gaming with studio lights on you.
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So again, in Battlefield there, we hit a hundred degrees on the CPU.
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Now, if that's a bad thing or a good thing, it's kind of hard to say.
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We don't have the time in a ShortCircuit to figure it out, but it's the sort of thing where,
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a hundred degrees on the CPU in a thin laptop like this,
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is not necessarily a bad thing. And I don't know if, when it's at a hundred degrees,
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it's dropping down, but like,
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I didn't notice any problems in the game, although I also didn't play for a super long amount of time.
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Okay, we haven't started Crab Rave yet, but this kind of
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gets to my main problem with this laptop.
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Like, you can see that the display is like, what, nearly an inch taller
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than the one on the XPS 15, but you're just getting less screen than you have here
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on the 16 by 10. (Crab Rave)
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So this is, this is terrible.
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These are awful speakers, so, Alienware to Dell.
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(Crab Rave) It's not even not even close.
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The X15 is good at making noise, but not out of it's speakers.
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Oh, one thing that definitely should be noted, this has a MUX in it.
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So you are not going to be losing any of the performance from the GPU, getting to the display.
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The X17, which I complained a lot about in that review,
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also has a MUX in it, and they enabled it the day before review went up.
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Didn't tell us. So, I'm sorry, Alienware.
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You actually made a really good laptop that's super fast.
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So for the battery, we have an 87 watt hour version in here,
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it takes up a lot of space, and given how thick this thing is,
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I'm surprised they were able to fit that much battery in there.
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I have no clue how long this is going to last.
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It might be four hours, it might be eight. Aside for the battery, we have
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a Wi-Fi module that you can swap out, and two SSDs.
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No RAM though, that is soldered straight to the motherboard.
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We do get a glimpse at the cooling system in here. So we have our four fans,
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radiator goes all the way along here,
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fins just along the sides, also, all of the top up here is all fins.
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The cooling in here is freakin' sweet,
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as is, like, the build quality of this thing is exceptional,
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but I don't know how to feel about it, if I'm honest. What are you going for Alienware?
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On one hand, this is an exceptional gaming device,
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like, if you just want to game, put on some headphones,
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awesome. But on the other hand, it's so thin and light.
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I wish that they'd just sacrificed a bit of that gaming,
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and given me a little bit more of, like, productivity
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and general usefulness, like, this had just a slightly larger track pad,
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and a 16 by 10 display, I would be like, buy it.
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I would recommend it, but I don't know if I love it.
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Oh, I haven't talked about pricing, but the starting price is over two grand,
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so, like, R.I.P. your wallet.
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Well, thanks for watching guys, hit like, get subscribed, and just have a great ol' day.
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See you later!