Alienware 13 Review

[XAMI]

• The Smallest Alienware Refreshed for 2017

 

If you want a reasonably small and portable gaming laptop, the Alienware 13 is one of the leading options on the market. With its 13.3-inch display, the footprint of this laptop is smaller than a typical 15-inch laptop, and if you’re willing to put up with extra thickness and weight, it’s possible to use it as a portable workstation instead of an ultraportable.

Like many Alienware laptops, the 13 comes in a large range of configurations. Depending on how much you want to spend, you can kit out this laptop with a GTX 1050 / Ti or GTX 1060 discrete GPU, as well as quad-core Kaby Lake CPUs, up to 32 GB of RAM, up to 2 TB of PCIe storage, and either a 1080p LCD or 1440p OLED display. Prices range anywhere from $999 to nearly $3,500.

 

The Alienware 13 is a relatively unique product as few of the major gaming laptop manufacturers produce 13-inch devices. MSI, Gigabyte, Aorus and Razer only go down to 14-inch systems, leaving Alienware almost unopposed in this space.

It’s not an automatic win for the Alienware 13 in the size and weight arena, though. At 24mm thick and 2.6 kg heavy (5.7 lbs), it’s not attempting to be the slimmest or lightest it could be. In fact many 14-inch laptops are more portable than the Alienware 13, including the Razer Blade (1.9kg heavy and 18mm thick), the MSI GS43VR (1.8kg and 23mm) and Aorus X3 Plus v7 (1.8kg and 23mm).

 

The Alienware 13 also runs into a footprint issue. Despite its smaller display, it’s not physically smaller than any of the aforementioned 14-inch laptops. This means the Alienware 13’s display is flanked by large bezels, which could easily have accommodated a 14-inch panel. I’d be disappointed if Alienware was using the smaller 13-inch display as a marketing bullet point, making the system sound smaller and more portable than it is, rather than giving users the largest display possible in this form factor.

There are a couple of reasons why the Alienware 13 is larger than its competitors. The main reason is there’s a beefy cooling solution that uses two massive heatsinks attached to the rear of the device. Air is drawn in through large vents on the sides and base of the laptop, and exhausted through the rear. There’s a lot of metal used here, which adds to the weight of the device.

 

Alienware has also opted for a large 76 Wh battery inside the body, which is marginally larger than the 73 Wh and 70 Wh cells used in the Aorus X3 Plus v7 and Razer Blade, respectively. Combined with the smaller display, you can expect the Alienware 13 to last longer than its competitors on battery.

There is an excellent selection of ports on the Alienware 13. On the rear you get a power connector, HDMI 2.0, mini-DisplayPort 1.2, Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C, Ethernet and the Alienware Graphics Amplifier Port. Having these ports on the rear makes sense if you’re primarily using the laptop on a desk, as you can plug in things like a display and a wired network without cluttering the sides of the device.

 

On the sides of the Alienware 13 are two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, one on each side, plus a USB 3.1 Type-C port (not Thunderbolt 3) on the right. There are two 3.5mm audio jacks for headphones and a microphone on the left.

Towards the front of each edge are the large speakers included with the Alienware 13. These speakers can go quite loud, but the quality isn’t particularly impressive, especially as there are noticeable distortions at high volumes. Don’t expect much bass either, although the speakers are less tinny than many ultraportables.

 

The design of the Alienware 13 is very similar to every other Alienware laptop released in the last few years. On the metal lid is Alienware’s signature Y-shaped pattern with their alien head logo, which adds a bit of gamer style to the design. The palm rest is made from a soft-touch black plastic, which is clean and stealthy but attracts fingerprints easily. While I typically prefer more business-oriented industrially-designed laptops, the Alienware 13’s design is good as far as gaming laptops are concerned.

Of course, it wouldn’t be an Alienware laptop without a ton of LED lighting. The Alienware 13 has eight RGB lighting zones: four in the keyboard, plus a zone in each of the trackpad, power button, Alienware text, and alien head logo. This provides a great level of customization, although it’s disappointing you can’t control the color of individual keys, which is possible on the Razer Blade.

 

The keyboard on this laptop is decent. The layout is great, with large modifier keys, a full-sized set of arrows, and a decent range of functions mapped to the F-keys. Travel distance was impressive, and tactile feedback was very good. This leads to a great experience while gaming or typing.

The trackpad is also very solid. The trackpad’s surface is good, which provides a comfortable tracking experience, while the tracking itself is excellent. You won’t be using the trackpad for any serious gaming, but it’s nice to see massive physical click buttons included here.

 

Alienware is one of the few gaming laptop manufacturers that includes Windows Hello and Tobii eye-tracking support across their entire product line-up. The Alienware 13’s implementation is the same as the Alienware 15’s, so it’s very solid and works well for facial recognition log ins and eye tracking. Personally I’m not a huge fan of eye tracking in games, and there’s only a limited selection of games that implement support, but it’s a neat feature for those that want to try it out.

There are technically three display options available for the Alienware 13, but I would not recommend the 1366 x 768 option under any circumstances. My review unit included a 13.3-inch 1080p IPS LCD and there’s a 2560 x 1440 OLED option available for those that want to spend an extra $250.

There are some disappointing aspects to both the 1080p LCD and 1440p OLED options for gamers. Neither display comes with support for G-Sync, which is a feature available on some competing devices. Neither supports refresh rates above 60 Hz either, and while the fastest GPU available (the GTX 1060) isn’t particularly suited to high-refresh gaming in modern titles, it’s possible to achieve well over 60 FPS in games dating a few years back.

 

Alienware claims the 1080p LCD option is only good for 300 nits of brightness, but in my testing, it comfortably hit 377 nits at 100%. Contrast was good, at 1180:1, while color temperature was too cold, which is a typical trait of most laptop displays. Color performance out of the box is decent but not hugely accurate, although the display looks vibrant and decent in general, thanks in part to great viewing angles.

A quick color calibration using SpectraCal’s CALMAN 5 software allowed the Alienware 13 to hit very accurate levels. I’m not sure how many creative professionals will actually use a laptop like the Alienware 13, but it is possible to use this laptop for color accurate work when properly calibrated.

• Hardware Overview and System Performance

There are loads of configuration options available for the Alienware 13. As of writing, there are six options to be found on Dell’s website with room to change some components as you see fit. The configurations available are as follows:

• $999.99 – Core i7-7300HQ, GTX 1050, 8GB RAM, 180GB SSD, 768p LCD
• $1,099.99 – Core i7-7300HQ, GTX 1050 Ti, 8GB RAM, 180GB SSD, 1080p LCD
• $1,599.99 – Core i7-7700HQ, GTX 1060, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 1080p LCD
• $2,049.99 – Core i7-7700HQ, GTX 1060, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 1440p OLED
• $2,624.99 – Core i7-7700HQ, GTX 1060, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 1440p OLED
• $3,349.99 – Core i7-7700HQ, GTX 1060, 32GB RAM, 1TB + 1TB SSD, 1440p OLED

 

The model I received to review is the $1,599.99 option configured with 16GB of RAM rather than 8GB. With this change, my review unit would cost $1,699.99.

Like with many Dell laptops, it’s easy to remove the base model from contention. For just $100 more, you’ll get yourself a faster GPU in the GTX 1050 Ti rather than a GTX 1050, plus a higher-resolution 1080p display.

The mid-tier configurations are expensive, but this is typical of most smaller, portable gaming laptops. The Razer Blade, for example, is $1,899 for largely the same hardware as in my Alienware 13 review model; in other words, it’s $200 more expensive. The MSI GS43VR is similarly priced to the Alienware 13 at certain configurations. The simple fact is: if you want the best hardware in a gaming laptop, the best value has always been in 15-inch models, not 14- or 13-inch devices.

I’ve tested both the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 and the Intel Core i7-7700HQ in gaming laptops before, but never in the same laptop. The GTX 1060 6GB variant in the Alienware 15 is essentially equivalent to the desktop graphics card, with 1280 CUDA cores and a rated boost clock of 1670 MHz. The Core i7-7700HQ is a 45W Kaby Lake CPU with four cores, eight threads and a base clock of 2.80 GHz with a boost of 3.80 GHz.

Before I get to the benchmarks, I will mention that 256GB of storage in a gaming laptop is completely inadequate. I currently test 10 games on every laptop I receive to review, and with many games installs pushing 40 to 50 GB, I couldn’t fit the entire test suite on the Alienware 13. In fact I was barely able to squeeze five games on this laptop. Most gamers will want to install more than five games on their laptop at once, so I’d recommend at least a 512GB SSD.

 

In games, the Alienware 13 performs very similarly to other GTX 1060 laptops. It’s two percent slower than the MSI GS43VR, and roughly on par with the MSI GS63VR on average. Strangely, the Alienware 13 is 3.5 percent faster than the Alienware 15 on average.

My general thoughts on the GTX 1060 in gaming laptops hasn’t changed with the Alienware 13. This GPU is well suited to 1080p gaming, and it performs very well in titles from a few years ago. In more modern titles, especially the most punishing games like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, you’ll be hovering around the 30 FPS mark with ultra settings, so in some circumstances you’ll have to turn down the quality if you’d rather play at 60 FPS.

At this stage, the GTX 1060 is as good as it gets in this form factor; there are no GTX 1070 laptops smaller than 15 inches, so if you want more performance, it’s not possible to upgrade further.

Thermal performance of the Alienware 13 is average. Using AIDA64’s stress test on the CPU only, the CPU sat at around 88°C with only moderate fan noise. Even with this intense workload, it took the fans a full six minutes to spin up from a reasonably quiet state, which is much better than other gaming laptops I’ve tested. If you’re not using the GPU, you can expect the Alienware 13 to remain quiet for the most part, and even under load, the fan noise is pleasant enough.

Hitting the CPU and GPU together in AIDA64 punishes the Alienware 13. The system gets noticeably louder, with the GPU sitting around 90°C and throttling impacting CPU performance. Luckily this sort of test is a worst-case scenario for the laptop, and you won’t see these sorts of figures in typical games.

Playing Hitman, the Alienware 13’s GPU hit 85°C while the CPU sat at 86°C (both 100% utilization), which is above average for a GTX 1060 gaming laptop. Fan noise was lower than in the AIDA64 stress test, but still very noticeable and quite loud.

Raising the laptop off my desk by four centimeters lowered the Alienware 13’s temperatures by nearly 20°C on both the GPU and CPU, indicating there is an airflow issue preventing enough cool air from being sucked in through the vents along the base of the laptop.

• Battery Life & What's to Like on the Alienware 13

Inside the Alienware 13 is a 76 Wh battery, which is marginally larger than other gaming laptops of this size, and much larger than most 13-inch ultraportables. While this battery is decently sized, the powerful components in the Alienware 13 do limit its battery life to an extent.

 

Battery life isn't fantastic, but it's better than most 15-inch gaming laptops. In the video browsing test in particular, the Alienware 13 outperforms MSI's similar GS43VR by a significant margin, though it falls behind slightly in web browsing.

• Wrap Up: Powerful Laptop, Not So Little

As a smaller form factor gaming laptop, the Alienware 13 gets a lot of things right. At most price points, this laptop includes powerful and competitive hardware, which is exactly what most buyers are after. On the flip side, the Alienware 13 isn’t as portable as other laptops of a similar class.

Most people interested in buying a 13- or 14-inch gaming laptop are doing so because they want something portable but powerful; something they can use for work out of the house, and games in the house. Due to the size and weight of the Alienware 13, this laptop really isn’t suited to this type of user.

 

All the major competitors to the Alienware 13 – from MSI, Razer, and Aorus – clock in under 2kg heavy, while some also strive for a slim chassis. The Alienware 13 is a whopping 2.6kg heavy, which puts it in the same ballpark as larger 15-inch laptops, reducing its portability. And while the screen is just 13.3-inches in size, the laptop itself is no smaller than 14-inch competitors thanks to large bezels and a beefy cooler.

If you’re not hugely concerned about the portability of the Alienware 13, and don’t want a more affordable 15-inch gaming laptop, there’s a lot to like about this system.

 

For starters, it’s affordable across the entry-level and mid-tier configurations. At $1,100 you can net yourself a pretty decent GTX 1050 Ti gaming laptop, while at $1,599 for GTX 1060 models it’s similarly priced to MSI’s GS43VR and much cheaper than the Aorus X3 Plus v7 and Razer Blade. 256GB of storage space is too slim in the base GTX 1060 configuration, but the included SSD is blazing fast and upgrades to 512GB of space cost $150.

My review unit was kitted out with an Core i7-7700HQ processor, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and GeForce GTX 1060 6GB. This configuration performed exactly as I expected. The GTX 1060 is a fantastic GPU for 1080p gaming at very high quality settings, and the 7700HQ provides a small performance boost over its Skylake predecessor.

 

During low-intensity or CPU-only workloads, the Alienware 13 is reasonably quiet thanks to a decent cooling solution, with fans that only spin up aggressively after 5 to 6 minutes of 100% CPU utilization. The laptop is much louder during gaming, although the fans aren’t as annoying as some other solutions I’ve tested.

I was impressed with most other aspects of the Alienware 13’s body. The keyboard and trackpad are both very good, and you also get a wide range of RGB LED color zones you can use to customize the Alienware 13’s look. The layout and selection of ports available should suffice for most users, and the included speakers are loud.

Whether or not the Alienware 13 is for you depends on whether portability is important. If it is, you should probably look elsewhere for lighter laptops from Razer, MSI and Aorus. If you don’t really care, the Alienware 13 offers decent hardware and features at an affordable price point.

Article from: TechSpot