Alienware M15 Review - Beware of the Hot Surface!

Alienware M15 Review! Alienwares thinnest & best gaming laptop packs a lot of power and great performance. It's not perfect and it comes with a few bugs! Watch for the full review!

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[bomj-valera]

Only one detail of m15 makes me avoid it: Ugly thick bezels!




No, it's coz I'm poor...

[MatthewMoniz]

Here it is my review of the Alienware M15. It definitely runs a bit hot but the build quality is pretty solid. It's not my top pick but it's a big improvement compared to the bigger Alienware laptops. What do you guys think? Hit me up on discord if you have any questions! discord.gg/mattmoniz

[OWNORDISOWN]

Thanks of for the video Matt ! I too have thermal issues on my 1070 max Q one. My battery life sucked though, 3 hours with the 90w battery. The culprit was the CPU boosting from 800 to 3900 Mhz and pulling 8w to 20w whilst watching Youtube. Power saver, no lighting, quiet mode so no fans. 25% brightness.

[ash]

It is a matter of great shame that such a large company does not know how to design a laptop to reduce the temperature

[jvg]

Looks like you fix the broken key
.
.





Edit: No you didn't

[jordancaleb]

are you gonna review the 2019 M15? I am wondering how its battery life compares to the previous model

[GamingKing]

My m15 is lit and it runs cool i can comfortably touch it

[jhonson]

I received my M15 a few days ago and had the same problems you did with the Killer 1550 network adapter, and I was absolutely infuriated. I seriously considered calling Dell and complaining about it because it shouldn't take ->ANY<- diagnostic time to bring up a brand new product. It felt like Dell didn't even bother to do any integration testing on the hardware with their images. I finally managed to get a complete OS install by skipping network setup during the OS installation, removing the Killer 1550 network adapter from Device Manager, and plugging a USB ac WiFi card I had laying around to get the system up and able to patch completely. After patching, I applied the drivers for the Killer 1550, removed the USB ac WiFi card and everything has been good since. Until I ran into the cooling situation you ran into. This thing runs very hot with the GTX 1070 Max-Q. Those issues aside, I am thrilled with the performance and simple upgradeability of the platform (having watched the nightmare upgrade that is the MSI GS65, which was my first choice initially), and I will be replacing the small 500GB NVMe with a pair of larger units in the near future. The battery life with the 90 Wh battery is quite good at first blush, and since I won't be running any hard drives, it should be a good system for getting work done when I am not gaming.

[aghadmtl]

yo Matt whats the best bang for your buck laptop for mild gaming and business around the 1500$ range?

[shaeshu]

Hey Matt, I bought it (specifically m15 R1) with New intel chipset (i7-9th gen), 16xGB memory, M.2 256GB PCIe SSD + 1TB SSHD (+8GB Flash), Nvidia RTX 2060 6GB Graphics card & FHD (240Hz) Narrow border display.

It costs me $1, 190.08.

Is this worth buying this laptop or should I cancel and go for m15 R2 ?

Awaiting your reply.

[petersonfamily]

Peterson Family


Is the supplied 180W power brick enough for the system? I just received a new m15 with RTX 2060, 90wh battery, 144Hz panel and when updating the BIOS I received a message that the 180W power brick was too small and a 240W was required to ensure devices could operate at full capability and charging would be slower. Also included was an option to turn off this notice in the BIOS. Hum is Dell turning this notice off in the BIOS so the consumer doesn't question this. I had to redo the BIOS several times due to battery issues; while working with Alienware support; and on the 3rd refresh the message above occurred. It did not happen when I did the refresh two other times???? Also interesting is I had a similar message when starting a m17 for the first time. In fact the power brick was not even recognized and would not charge the m17?? I thought the battery issues were corrected but my m15 was only getting 2:30 hours streaming Netflix, on Balanced, with Screen Brightness turned down to 25%, using the Intel GPU, sound at 12, and turning off all LED's. When running a battery report in Command Prompt my battery reported Design Capacity of 90, 000 mWh but a Full Charge Capacity of only 85, 720 mWh?? So a new system doesn't have a full charge capacity, I checked this on m17 and previous m15's and they both showed full 90, 000 mWh capacity. BIOS issues continue? This system had flickering on the screen and extreme light bleed on both bottom corners and the top right corner. It was so bad the light bleed was showing through on applications and while watching videos. I have sent the unit back for replacement instead of opting for an LCD panel replacement. We will hope the Dell vendor lottery is good to me and I have better luck with the replacement.

[nonegiven]

Isnt the 1060 version already an overcooked gpu? How is it losing out to a max-q...?
Couldnt wait longer for the reviews, got the 1070 big battery turning up in a week. Hopefully works nicer than some of these review ones.

[DancingVybz]

is this laptop good at doing live streams on youtube?

[paulyd]

You and Dave2D should compare notes. He got me excited about this laptop, but I'm holding off for the next gen now, or perhaps another brand that's out now like the Razor Blade.

[BobOfAllTrades]

Alienware m15 Battlefield Players----HEADS up!

-BF5 Multiplayer pulls 60 watts (I've seen 79) and it hit 95c in 5 minutes. It'll PL throttle several times before tanking to 25watts to recover.
-Ambient temp of 66F
-Undervolt of -.125 Balanced mode (performance mode hits 100c in seconds)
-Rear propped up about 1" for ventilation
-Liquid Metal and Fujipoly thermal pads.

Other titles such as Overwatch and Far Cry 5 run the CPU around 35 watts stock or 25 watts undervolted as is doesn't need as much CPU grunt. Although the FC5 benchmark beats the m15 down pretty good.

All tested live Stream last night with Stephen from Own Or Disown.

His AW m15 specs:
8750h
2 x 8 RAM
1070 MQ
144Hz
90Whr battery

September BIOS installed with new BIOS (released Dec 5th) results already in the works from the NBR folks.

All temps based on Matthew's 3 or so games mentioned are legit and correct from our testing too. Battlefield multiplayer games push the CPU to different heights.

[Tinwibss]

They should make a alienware m13 with a gtx 1060

[robert_iacob]

I purchased and reviewed this laptop, I did nowhere near as great of a job at describing the unboxing experience, but I tried haha. Everything you mentioned is entirely true, and I agree that it is rather warm all the time even for normal use. I’m excited to see how Alienware can improve this style of laptop!

[swnorcross]

Super embarrassing for Alienware that they haven’t been able to get their thermal issues under control for the past few generations. I mean, what’s the point of buying a premium laptop if it’s just going to throttle back after 20 minutes of gaming. (Hint: There’s no point). I had to undervolt my R3, run it with 2 opolar vacuum coolers just to get it to run Overwatch on LOW settings.

Good job trashing your brand Alienware. Focus on the heat issues. Nobody cares about thinness if you can’t even touch it.

[TechWithSean]

Trackpad is never in the middle of the keyboard when it has a number pad - you don’t want your palm to interfere while entering numbers.

[adamb]

literally every single problem he's having in his review is what i experienced with an Alienware M14 from years ago. completely turned me off from ever bothering with gaming laptops again. Is this representative of what owning a gaming laptop is like? I'd really like to know.