• il y a 4 heures
Transcription
00:00All right, so this is Alienware's new laptop design. They have the R5, if you configure it with
00:07AMD components, and it's called the R6 if you configure it with Intel components. But the two
00:12products are exactly the same in terms of the aesthetic and the design. It is a brand new
00:17chassis. If you compare it to the R4, there's a lot of changes. They've revamped the whole thing.
00:20Some of those changes are things that we've been asking for, like we've wanted certain features
00:24and they've added it, but some of those changes were questionable. And as I looked at this thing
00:28and I was trying to go through the review process of it, I was trying to figure out why, and I
00:31think it kind of made sense. Let's start off with the aesthetic. So it only comes in this dark gray
00:37color. It's a nice color. I think it's better than just a plain black gaming laptop. But last
00:42year's model, the R4, and just the past few years of Alienware laptops offered this nice white
00:47color, which I thought looked really cool. Even if you didn't like this particular color, the fact
00:52that they offer it, like the fact that they care enough of their user base and try to offer
00:56something that just sticks out and stands out in the sea of gaming laptops, this was special.
01:01But they've removed this color option for the R5 and R6 in 2021. And I don't know how I feel about
01:06that because it was something that really made the Alienware devices unique. Now in terms of the
01:11weight and thickness of the new R5, it's a little bit thicker, barely noticeable, but the weight is
01:16about 100 grams heavier compared to R4. And that is something that I think most people will notice
01:21if they're comparing the two. It's still a reasonably portable device. But in general, I
01:26feel like the R5 chassis has had a lot of kind of bonus features stripped away from what made
01:35Alienware devices Alienware. So it's gotten rid of the graphics import. It's not something that I
01:40ever used, but it was available for people that wanted it. And they got rid of the mini display
01:45port. They got rid of the micro SD slot that used to be on the side and even the RGB trim on the
01:50back. It's ever so slightly smaller than last year's model. So this visual trim here is a little
01:58bit narrower than what was on the R4. And just visually, it's less prominent and less kind of
02:03vibrant in the color. Is it a big deal? Not at all. But it just feels weird for Alienware to
02:10take away these things that made their M series what they were. Now, at first, all these deficiencies
02:16or these kind of removals of features made me go, why? Like, why are they doing this? But then it
02:21just snapped my head. I realized this is no longer their king flagship product. Like for years, the M
02:28products, the M15, M17 have been their best of the best, their flagship Alienware product. But now
02:35there's the X series and that's supposed to be their best of the best. So this product line, the
02:39M series, it kind of has to be squashed down a little bit, not just in terms of price and
02:43configuration, but also in terms of aesthetics. It can't look amazing because the X has to look
02:48the best and it just has to fit into the whole product hierarchy, which is unfortunate, but
02:53that's just business, right? Now, if you picked up an R4 from last year, I think you're good.
02:58I think it's a very, I think it actually looks better in my personal opinion, but that's
03:03subjective. But the R5 does have a couple noticeable advantages on the inside. So the
03:08first thing, this is a feature we've been looking for for years. It now finally has once again
03:17removable RAM. For the past few years, we've had Alienware laptops that have had baked-on RAM,
03:23baked-on Wi-Fi cards, and now they're both replaceable and or upgradable, which is great to
03:28see. There's two NVMe bays. The drive they include is a short one, but here's a weird thing. In order
03:34to use the larger size, like a 2280, you need to remove the bracket that's underneath the small
03:40one. And I've never seen anything like this, like it's a proprietary bracket. It's not the biggest
03:45pain in the world to do, but if you do want to run a second drive, you now have to seemingly order
03:50this bracket from Dell or get them to send you one because it's not included in the package and
03:54there's no bracket thing on the second side, which is strange to me. It seems really weird,
03:59especially on a gaming laptop where people are just putting in drives pretty frequently,
04:04but that's, that's Alienware. So battery down here, just real quickly, it's 86 watt-hours. It's
04:09the same size as last year's model. Battery life is slightly better. I'm not sure if it's just the
04:13Ryzen version, but I got just under five hours. Last year's model, I think I got like four and a
04:17half of my regular runtime, but yeah. Speakers, this is another downgrade I didn't mention earlier.
04:23On the R4 last year, they had a front-firing speaker in addition to their down-firing,
04:29and it was actually not a huge difference, but significant enough that if you were playing
04:34games without headphones, the treble was just audible between those, uh, in those front-firing
04:39speakers just to help with positional audio, right? They removed it, and it, it seems nonsensical.
04:46Why would you remove a feature that you just added in for one year? But the new X series,
04:50that has front-firing speakers, so maybe they're trying to do that whole product tier separation
04:54thing. Uh, the cooling system. So last year's model had a vapor chamber. This no longer does.
05:00The vapor chamber was only on the GPU last year, not on both the CPU and GPU. They're just running
05:04heat pipes this year, but you'll see in a second that thermally, it's still decent. You know what,
05:09let's just get into it right now. So performance-wise, we are looking at, in this system
05:13with the Ryzen, a Ryzen 5000 CPU as well as an RTX 3060 or an RTX 3070. They do not offer the RTX
05:213080 in the AMD system. Strange. Like, I don't know if it's a supply chain thing or if it's
05:27because there's some kind of brand relationship going on, but we'll never know. They do not offer
05:31the 3080 in the AMD Ryzen version as of right now. But in terms of performance, it's good. The
05:38frame rates are fast and the fan noise is as you'd expect on an Alienware device. Nothing crazy loud,
05:43but there's two things that are mildly concerning. Number one, the temperatures are warmer than I'd
05:48like to see. It doesn't throttle, it's not even close to it, but you can cool it better in other
05:53systems. The competition has lower temperatures than this. The other thing though is the GPU
05:58wattage. So this has a peak wattage of 125 watts on the RTX 3070. On last year's model, it was
06:05brought up to 140 watts. You just get slightly better performance. It's nothing crazy, right?
06:09It's not like double the frame rates, but it is noticeable in benchmarks and I think for certain
06:14games, you will notice it. But it's strange to me that they launched with a lower wattage. Now,
06:19it's Alienware. In the past, they've kind of given an update down the line, right? They can
06:24flash the VBIOS and now you have unlocked 140 watts on your RTX 3070. They've done it before
06:30in the past and I wouldn't be surprised if they do it again, but it's strange to me that they
06:33launched like this. Like again, is it just to make that X series look better? I don't know,
06:37but it feels weird to me and I think a lot of people feel the same way about that wattage
06:41difference. Inside, we have a keyboard that's had a slight change in tactility and feel. It's a
06:46little softer to type on than the R4 and there is a row of media keys on the right, which I
06:52personally like that stuff. I like to be able to control my volume physically and there's also a
06:56change in the shift key. I use the right shift often, even though this is a little bit shorter.
07:00It's still a very comfortable shift key to me. I think if you've liked Alienware keyboards in the
07:05past and I think they're really easy to like, you'll like this one as well, even with the
07:09changes. There is a mechanical keyboard option. I've done a video on it. I'll link it down below.
07:13The trackpad, however, sucks. Straight up sucks. I do not like it. The R4 had a better trackpad
07:20to me. It had a smoother surface. It was like nicer to click on and also the tap mechanic,
07:24not the click, but the actual tap. Like if you tap on the R5, it's got this,
07:31I don't know, it's audible, right? When you're tapping on it, it has this
07:35click. When you tap on the R4, like there's no sound for one and also the texture is nicer and
07:41also the click is just precise, nice and tight versus, I don't know. Maybe the mic can't pick it up,
07:51but the R5 has a noticeably worse trackpad to me than the R4. Okay, the screen. So this is a better
07:58screen than what was offered in the R4. It's brighter, it's faster, it's got a better gaming
08:02and viewing experience and they got rid of the plastic bezel, like the shiny trim that they used
08:08to have. I was never a fan of it and it's now just a simple matte black, but the screen is better.
08:14But the overall product, if I had to kind of give this a kind of overall thought,
08:21the past Alienware products, like the M series, have always been, it's a product line that when I
08:28get the devices in, I have an expectation. I expect them to run a little bit warmer than
08:32the competition, but at the same time, I expect them to have better frame rates and higher numbers
08:37than the competition, because that's what Alienware has always done in the past. They don't
08:41care too much about temperatures, they focus on performance. They want the best possible frame
08:44rate, the best possible benchmarks and they deliver that. In the past, this year, because
08:50they have a reduced GPU wattage, it's strange, it's not very on brand for Alienware, but the bigger
08:56thing is like the competition is doing it. The competition is tougher now. There's brands out
09:01there like Lenovo's, Legion products that deliver an experience that is akin to this, like there's
09:06RGB lights, they got a lot of stuff going on, but they're also delivering high wattage and what I
09:12would say is a better overall experience for the gamer. I will say though that the aesthetic of
09:18this is still very unique and I like the look of this. I like the aesthetics of this more than I
09:23like the aesthetics of Lenovo products, but I mean that's a very subjective thing. Whether or not you
09:27like your product because of the aesthetics or the performance is entirely up to you, but I would
09:32say that this year the R5 and most likely the R6 is a harder device to recommend given the landscape
09:39of gaming laptops right now. But if you like the way that it looks, you like the way that it looks
09:44and there's only one guy that makes an Alienware that looks like this. Okay, hope you guys enjoyed
09:49this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. I'll see you guys next time.