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00:00Alright, so this is the Alienware m15 r3. It's the new one for 2020 and when they first announced this I kind of dismissed it
00:08I didn't think it was like a big refresh. It looks so similar to last year's model
00:12I just kind of went under the radar for me
00:14But having gotten it in I realized there's a lot of stuff that they've changed under the hood and we'll talk about them
00:20Now my story with last year's model the r2
00:23This was a device that I thought was a pretty good performer very thin for an Alienware device
00:29Very pretty but I felt like thermally this wasn't the best thing out there, right?
00:34I felt like it wasn't super competitive in terms of just best performance unless you tweaked it and you know
00:40Undervolted it and repaste it and stuff and stuff that's more advanced. So I just never really recommended this thing
00:46Openly from last year's model. It did look really good though. They've addressed a lot of stuff this year
00:52Let's start off with the exterior. This wasn't a problem with last year's model, but they've actually changed it
00:57this is now a
00:59Smooth like hard finish last year's model had like a soft touch finish to it
01:04I really like this material, but my impression was that this was something that could get dirty easily
01:09Like if you had I don't know
01:11Cheetos covered fingers or if you had dirty fingers and you handled a white laptop with a soft touch finish
01:18It would invariably smudge or just stain this material. This feels much more stain and smudge resistant, but it's not as
01:26Inviting to use like the the top deck as well at the keyboard area and the top surface and the bottom panel are all
01:34Refinished they're no longer soft touch, but it still looks really good
01:38Now another thing we've changed this year is the trim around the panel. So it's gonna be hard to see in this shot
01:45I'll do some pickups, but you can see that they've added this rubber trim around the edge of this screen
01:50I think it serves two purposes. One is that when you open and close the device?
01:53It's a bit just you know, it's there. There's less of an impact when you close the lid
01:57It's more of a softer close versus the old one. It's more of a
02:02It's more of like a louder snap
02:04versus
02:06Right, it's subtle but there is a difference
02:08But secondly, I also think that it serves to reinforce the actual bezel around the screen
02:14So on last year's model the trim or the bezel if you pushed it
02:18You could kind of see it wobbling around a bit
02:20There wasn't a ton of play, but it was noticeable. But this year is just a sturdier trim
02:24It's just everything seems to be adhered a little bit tighter
02:27But the bezel itself is still made with that shiny or glossy plastic, which I don't personally love now
02:33Another thing I noticed is that the screen is easier to open with one hand
02:38Not everyone cares about this stuff
02:39But for the people that do I think they tweaked the hinge tension just a little bit so that you can
02:45Do this
02:46If you care for it, okay another thing they've changed this year is the speaker setup
02:51So last year's models the R2s they had bottom firing speakers only
02:55They would just blast out from the bottom of the laptop and hit the surface of whatever you were using it on this year
03:01They still have bottom firing speakers as like the main
03:03but they also have these front firing ones that point towards the user of the device and this is kind of
03:10more traditional in terms of Alienware like all of their older laptops used to have these front firing speakers and this is
03:16more akin to that
03:19Here's my take on them though. They sound better than the R2s, but they don't sound amazing
03:24Like they certainly don't sound as good as let's say like MacBook speakers. That's really the gold standard and
03:29It's good that they've improved it. But if I had to like rate these numerically, let's say
03:355 is an average gaming laptop speaker, right? That's mathematically the average right in the middle of 0 and 10 5
03:41I would consider the R2s like 6 maybe 6 and a half
03:45These are like a 7 and a half
03:47There's still a lot of room that they could improve on but when it comes to positional audio
03:51These do a pretty good job like because the front firing speakers are like the higher frequencies
03:56You can hear like gunshots and sounds like footsteps and pickups any kind of in-game sound that's used to identify
04:03Where enemies are or where your teammates are they come out pretty cleanly from these front firing speakers
04:08Which the old ones did not so if you're someone that doesn't use headphones to play games, these are better
04:14Okay, let's talk about thermal performance or just performance in general
04:18That was the thing that I did not like about the R2 good, but not great this year
04:25It's better, but it's still not perfect. So
04:30Okay, let's talk about the hardware improvements
04:32They've added a vapor chamber for the CPU
04:35But only the CPU the GPU still has a regular heat pipe system
04:38Now the removal of heat on a system like the Alienware
04:43M15s has always been a difficult thing for for the company because Alienware is a company that really takes pride in their ability to
04:49Bring out like the fastest performing devices, right? They want to clock their stuff as high as possible
04:55They don't really care too much about temperatures and it's something that's difficult for a reviewer like myself to convey to you guys, right?
05:01So here's the thing there are companies out there
05:04Let's say Razer. They're a company that purposely lowers their clock speed on their devices. I'm not talking about throttling
05:10They will make their systems run just a little bit slower to keep their system cool all the time
05:16Alienware is not like that. They like to run their stuff as fast as possible
05:20But stuff gets hotter because they're just pumping more water to the CPU and when you have a device like this
05:25That's thin and they're trying to make it look a certain way and they're trying to keep these things running as fast as possible
05:30They're really hard to cool properly. The R3 is noticeably cooler running than last year's R2 for sure
05:37But you still need to undervolt it to get the best possible thermal performance
05:41And that's something I wish Alienware would do right out of the factory
05:43Just like undervolt these things by a little bit and then your consumer base would just probably stop complaining about
05:50thermal issues
05:52But yeah, it's good improved from last year, but it's still just shy from what I would consider to be a perfect
05:59Thermal system on this device. Okay, the fan noise unchanged
06:04It still gets pretty loud at the top end, but I think for the average user
06:07It's a perfectly acceptable fan profile. The screens come in a few options. This one's the 1080p
06:13300 Hertz panel very fast and showcases the hardware nicely games play fluidly on it
06:18I do wish it was a little bit brighter
06:20But there is a 4k panel option if you need something that's a little more color accurate and a screen that's brighter now inside
06:27They've also changed a few other things
06:28Last year's model could not take more than 16 gigs of RAM like regardless of how you configured it
06:3416 was the max and it's soldered on RAM, right? So you can't ever upgrade it this year
06:38They've allowed up to 32 gigs of RAM, which is awesome. They've also changed the whole motherboard layout. It looks a little different
06:45It's still a flipped motherboard though. So if you want to repaste it or do anything, that's more complex
06:51It's a it's a more difficult disassembly
06:54There's three SSD slots two of them are like the big boy normal ones and then there's like a small one for people that want
07:00A third NVMe drive if they need it and the battery has been upgraded this year. It's now an 86 watt hour block
07:06It's a pretty decent size, but I was only getting four and a half hours on this thing
07:09I thought I'd be able to hit five pretty easily, but
07:13four and a half hours
07:16Ports so the ports remain unchanged there is a micro SD slot though this year if that's something you're into
07:22Why was I pointing it like that? You can't even see that micro SD. Okay, let's talk about the things that haven't changed
07:29So like I said right from the beginning this is in my opinion one of the best designs I've seen for a laptop
07:35It's such a unique look like there's so much going on
07:37But at the same time it looks simple enough like you can obviously turn off the lights and just keep it relatively muted
07:43But if you want to you can just turn them on and flex on all those other laptop users that aren't on your level
07:49But I do think that this is such a cool looking device
07:52And I really think this is going to be the at least one of the main reasons why you would consider the m15
07:58Another feature I really like on these devices is their keyboard
08:02I think I've mentioned in the past, but this has got to be one of my personal favorite gaming laptop keyboards
08:07Everything about it the layout the typing mechanism the lighting they do everything right on this thing
08:14Obviously you get some crazy alienware lighting if you want
08:17But the gaming and typing experience on this keyboard is on point the trackpad is glass
08:22They got a really nice texture on it. It is a pretty loud click like it's very audible
08:27So if you're in a work environment that doesn't allow you to click you're gonna have to either tap or get a completely different device
08:32But yeah, I like the trackpad, but the overall device is much better this year
08:37I feel like the R2 last year's model was
08:40It was a nice device, but it was really reserved for people that were focused on like the aesthetic of it this year
08:46It still looks really nice
08:47But I feel like it's more competitive like the thermal performance
08:51And I think the pricing is fair for what you're getting this year. I will say like the one takeaway for me is that
08:59They got to start using AMD stuff in here
09:01I feel like if they stuck an AMD chip inside here the temperature problems
09:06Wouldn't be a thing this would just be a cooler running machine because AMD's
09:10Ryzen chips are just their lower wattage, and you just it would solve a lot of stuff
09:15I feel especially for the enthusiast level okay, so that's the alienware m15 r3
09:21It's a much better pickup this year than was last year
09:25And there you have it okay. Hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it
09:28See you guys next time
09:36You