What is so bad about Alienware Laptops?

[orangefurball]

Hello everyone! Wasn't sure where to put this.

Serious talk time; what is so bad about Alienware? (Specifically laptops)

I have a gaming desktop that I am happy with, but I want to get a laptop to game on when I'm not at home. As I look through the choices, it seems I'm faced with only a few brands that are reputible. One of those is Alienware.

Now for whatever reason, my brain is preprogrammed to skip over Alienware and make a sly comment about he poor quality/price of their computers. Then it hit me... The laptops seem halfway decent.

Build quality seems OK, specs are pretty good, and the extremely limited amount of Dell products that I have owned have been perfectly fine. So now I have to ask. What is the problem with Alienware?

The laptop I have been looking at is the Alienware 13 with an i5-4210U, 8 gigs o' ram, 500gb hard drive, and an 860M (2GB VRAM) for around $750-$800. This leaves me with enough budget room to pick up another mouse and 10 keyless mechanical keyboard for the road. Doesn't seem half bad. Thoughts?

[TheKDub]

Overpriced, crappy quality, bad tech support, etc..

[SkilledRebuilds]

Overpriced, crappy quality, bad tech support, etc..

This.

[zappian]

Alienware laptops arent too bad tbh.

Their desktops are god awful tho.

I prefer MSI laptops however.

[pjm0925]

Funny, was just watching this video:  

 

 

More about the PCs than the laptops, but a good look at what you get vs what you pay for.

[christianled59]

Overpriced, crappy quality, bad tech support, etc..

If you were talking about Alienware desktops, I would agree. However their laptops are quite nice. The op was asking about laptops not desktops.

[MrAquinoX1]

One thing that most of us agree's on. ITS TOO GOD DAMN OVERPRICED!

[TheKDub]

If you were talking about Alienware desktops, I would agree. However their laptops are quite nice. The op was asking about laptops not desktops.

 

I was talking about their laptops.

 

One of my friends (unfortunately) has an alienware m14x r1 (I think, might be the r2), whenever he applies a little too much pressure to the keyboard the entire thing turns off, and by the looks of it the entire body of it was plastic too. (at least on the outside), and the keyboard seemed pretty low quality.

[david cassar]

Overpriced af. Also for their desktops they cheap out on the psus and motherboards which is no good. And by overpriced they are veryyyy overpriced. Hell they have computers with an r9 270 that cost over 1500$.

[Nosfy]

Hello everyone! Wasn't sure where to put this.

Serious talk time; what is so bad about Alienware? (Specifically laptops)

I have a gaming desktop that I am happy with, but I want to get a laptop to game on when I'm not at home. As I look through the choices, it seems I'm faced with only a few brands that are reputible. One of those is Alienware.

Now for whatever reason, my brain is preprogrammed to skip over Alienware and make a sly comment about he poor quality/price of their computers. Then it hit me... The laptops seem halfway decent.

Build quality seems OK, specs are pretty good, and the extremely limited amount of Dell products that I have owned have been perfectly fine. So now I have to ask. What is the problem with Alienware?

The laptop I have been looking at is the Alienware 13 with an i5-4210U, 8 gigs o' ram, 500gb hard drive, and an 860M (2GB VRAM) for around $750-$800. This leaves me with enough budget room to pick up another mouse and 10 keyless mechanical keyboard for the road. Doesn't seem half bad. Thoughts?

 

Would go with an MSI or an ASUS laptop

[Manny Calavera]

There are far better deals on prebuilt with good system balanced specs and reputable parts like corsair.

While its true that sometimes you get not so good price per performance parts like corsair h60 included, you still get tens if not hundreds dollars cheaper build that you can make pretty with 10$ LED lights. Some prebuilts even strive to be pretty, gaming ones.

 

Just yesterday i saw on this forum someone posted Australian prebuilt in Corsair 380t with red led fan and black chassis with amazing specs you could not built yourself for cheaper or same price.

 

Alienware is exactly the opposite, you ALLWAYS can build better for cheaper.

[J_BlRD]

I honestly don't think that gaming laptops are worth it, your better off just buying a good desktop.

 

-Laptops are WAY more expensive for than desktops

-good gaming laptops are really big (like an inch) and you are unlikely to bring it around with you, unless you are a serious gamer and live of profits from gaming

[RogueCow]

+1 to overpriced!

 

Out of all the laptops I spec'd out (GT75VW, GT70, Y580), to get a similarly spec'd Alienware was an additional $200-$400. Again, all systems having the same basic specs... In essence they charge the additional money for the badge....

 

If you are laptop shopping, even if you are looking to buy used, spec out every laptop the same and that should give you a good price comparison. SPREADSHEET MASTER RACE lol

[TheTechWarrior]

Alienware is Dell. no other description is required.

[EpicAdom]

If you were talking about Alienware desktops, I would agree. However their laptops are quite nice. The op was asking about laptops not desktops.

This is true. Alienware laptops aren't bad. Their desktops are another story.

[christianled59]

I was talking about their laptops.

 

One of my friends (unfortunately) has an alienware m14x r1 (I think, might be the r2), whenever he applies a little too much pressure to the keyboard the entire thing turns off, and by the looks of it the entire body of it was plastic too. (at least on the outside), and the keyboard seemed pretty low quality.

Really? Did he try to RMA it? I've never heard of issues like that with their laptops. The plastic is pretty sturdy from what I hear and the alienware 15 I had was pretty damn good.

[TheKDub]

Really? Did he try to RMA it? I've never heard of issues like that with their laptops. The plastic is pretty sturdy from what I hear and the alienware 15 I had was pretty damn good.

 

Nope he didn't try to RMA it. (He hardly knows jack shit about computer stuff and things of that sort)

[ShadowCaptain]

Their laptops are well priced (seriously)  well built, good specs, attractive (subjective) and have good support (I have personal evidence of this with my own alienware products)

 

Wouldnt touch their desktops but IMO their laptops are fantastic

 

however there are other good laptops brands

Gigabyte/Aorus

MSI

Asus

Apple

Clevo

 

etc

 

 

I honestly don't think that gaming laptops are worth it, your better off just buying a good desktop.

 

-Laptops are WAY more expensive for than desktops

-good gaming laptops are really big (like an inch) and you are unlikely to bring it around with you, unless you are a serious gamer and live of profits from gaming

 

 

There are plenty of thin gaming laptops with 970m and 980ms

 

They are expensive yes but desktops are the opposite of portable, some of us need machines we can take around with us, they are not comparable AT ALL

[shadowblitz3]

too blingy looking for me

[-TesseracT-]

Well, just look at this thread: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/335598-the-prebuilt-game/

They're overpriced as fuck.

[isdouble]

Honestly, AW isn't too bad with their laptop line ups. I'm a long time fan of AW. So far I had M15x, M17x, M17xR2 and M18xR2. I never had much issue with their laptops except for M18xR2 after 2.5 years of use when one of the GPU died. Thankfully, AW has next day service which they replaced my one of my 7970m and I was good to go. A lot of people are saying it's overpriced and while I do agree, it's possible to get decent discount if you give them a call. I usually give them a call and they give me roughly 10-25% discount, depending on the sale representative. Once those discount is applied, the prices are pretty competitive against other manufacturers.

 

Out of curiosity, I did give them a call when I was building my current set up to see what they can offer me in terms of desktop. They offered me everything that I wanted with 2 GTX 780 in SLI with 20% discount but I wanted to choose my components so I declined that time.

 

Seriously, just give them a chance and a call. You might get some decent deals.

[orangefurball]

Overpriced, crappy quality, bad tech support, etc..

 

I was asking about laptops, and I haven't had any issues with Dell's tech support in the past. 

 

 

 

Alienware laptops arent too bad tbh.

Their desktops are god awful tho.

I prefer MSI laptops however.

 

I was looking at MSi, but my last experience with their laptops was the Wind U100 netbook (which was one of my favorite almost useless computers)

 

 

Funny, was just watching this video:  

 

 

More about the PCs than the laptops, but a good look at what you get vs what you pay for.

 

If I was looking to buy a desktop, I would listen to this video. Thank you though

 

 

If you were talking about Alienware desktops, I would agree. However their laptops are quite nice. The op was asking about laptops not desktops.

 

Thank you for actually reading my post!

 

 

One thing that most of us agree's on. ITS TOO GOD DAMN OVERPRICED!

 

The laptop pricing seems pretty competitive tbh

 

 

I was talking about their laptops.

 

One of my friends (unfortunately) has an alienware m14x r1 (I think, might be the r2), whenever he applies a little too much pressure to the keyboard the entire thing turns off, and by the looks of it the entire body of it was plastic too. (at least on the outside), and the keyboard seemed pretty low quality.

 

Sounds like it should be RMAed. Definately not something he should be dealing with. Is this known to be a widespread issue? 

 

 

Overpriced af. Also for their desktops they cheap out on the psus and motherboards which is no good. And by overpriced they are veryyyy overpriced. Hell they have computers with an r9 270 that cost over 1500$.

 

I'm not asking about desktops, I already built my own.

 

Would go with an MSI or an ASUS laptop

 

Any recommendations? I'm not looking for a beast, just something that lets me game on the go. I do most of my gaming on my desktop anyway.

 

 

There are far better deals on prebuilt with good system balanced specs and reputable parts like corsair.

While its true that sometimes you get not so good price per performance parts like corsair h60 included, you still get tens if not hundreds dollars cheaper build that you can make pretty with 10$ LED lights. Some prebuilts even strive to be pretty, gaming ones.

 

Just yesterday i saw on this forum someone posted Australian prebuilt in Corsair 380t with red led fan and black chassis with amazing specs you could not built yourself for cheaper or same price.

 

Alienware is exactly the opposite, you ALLWAYS can build better for cheaper.

 

I am not talking about desktops. 

 

I honestly don't think that gaming laptops are worth it, your better off just buying a good desktop.

 

-Laptops are WAY more expensive for than desktops

-good gaming laptops are really big (like an inch) and you are unlikely to bring it around with you, unless you are a serious gamer and live of profits from gaming

 

I have a desktop. I am not looking for a new desktop. The gaming laptop is just an extra computer to game on the go.

 

That being said, I used to have an ASUS G60VX gaming laptop before I built my desktop, so I know the drawbacks.

 

 

+1 to overpriced!

 

Out of all the laptops I spec'd out (GT75VW, GT70, Y580), to get a similarly spec'd Alienware was an additional $200-$400. Again, all systems having the same basic specs... In essence they charge the additional money for the badge....

 

If you are laptop shopping, even if you are looking to buy used, spec out every laptop the same and that should give you a good price comparison. SPREADSHEET MASTER RACE lol

 

 

I'll try this out. I was going referb, no point in buying brand new if I am not going to use it every day. 

 

Alienware is Dell. no other description is required.

 

That's a pretty subjective opinion. I have no issue with Dell, I even said so in my original post. 

 

This is true. Alienware laptops aren't bad. Their desktops are another story.

 

That's what I thought. 

 

Really? Did he try to RMA it? I've never heard of issues like that with their laptops. The plastic is pretty sturdy from what I hear and the alienware 15 I had was pretty damn good.

 

Good to hear. I have no issues with plastic laptops. If I wanted a metal one I would be spending more, but it's just not worth it. 

 

Nope he didn't try to RMA it. (He hardly knows jack shit about computer stuff and things of that sort)

 

Well there is his problem. 

 

Their laptops are well priced (seriously)  well built, good specs, attractive (subjective) and have good support (I have personal evidence of this with my own alienware products)

 

Wouldnt touch their desktops but IMO their laptops are fantastic

 

however there are other good laptops brands

Gigabyte/Aorus

MSI

Asus

Apple

Clevo

 

etc

 

 

 

 

There are plenty of thin gaming laptops with 970m and 980ms

 

They are expensive yes but desktops are the opposite of portable, some of us need machines we can take around with us, they are not comparable AT ALL

 

Thanks, I'll check those out. 

 

too blingy looking for me

 

Compared to some other laptops, they are pretty low key. Not a big deal for me though!

 

Well, just look at this thread: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/335598-the-prebuilt-game/

They're overpriced as fuck.

 

That seems to be more about desktops. 

 

Honestly, AW isn't too bad with their laptop line ups. I'm a long time fan of AW. So far I had M15x, M17x, M17xR2 and M18xR2. I never had much issue with their laptops except for M18xR2 after 2.5 years of use when one of the GPU died. Thankfully, AW has next day service which they replaced my one of my 7970m and I was good to go. A lot of people are saying it's overpriced and while I do agree, it's possible to get decent discount if you give them a call. I usually give them a call and they give me roughly 10-25% discount, depending on the sale representative. Once those discount is applied, the prices are pretty competitive against other manufacturers.

 

Out of curiosity, I did give them a call when I was building my current set up to see what they can offer me in terms of desktop. They offered me everything that I wanted with 2 GTX 780 in SLI with 20% discount but I wanted to choose my components so I declined that time.

 

Seriously, just give them a chance and a call. You might get some decent deals.

 

Thanks for the info!

 

 

 

If anyone wants to make any more posts in here, please make sure it is about laptops. I am part of the build-your-own-desktop-don't-give-money-to-AW master race, but I am referring to laptops. Already have a desktop. 

 

Thanks!

[PaulKolby]

their laptops are really good and great quality, but their desktops are just plain awful

[TheKDub]

I was asking about laptops, and I haven't had any issues with Dell's tech support in the past. 

 

And I was talking about laptops.

 

From my experiences dell's tech support is hard to understand, and pretty crappy.

[AMICLG]

If you were talking about Alienware desktops, I would agree. However their laptops are quite nice. The op was asking about laptops not desktops.

Other than the fact that their thicker than a novel, who in their right mind is going to by a 1" thick 14" laptop.