OLED – Oh my!

What took me by surprise when I first unboxed this machine was the size, I read the reviews, watched the unboxing videos and had seen the size comparisons, but I was still shocked at how small the R3 13 is, I expected a much larger device, this was, I might add, a much welcome surprise.

The R3 13 is well built, it feels solid and very dense, weighing in at 2.6kg (5.8 pounds) and is made with quality materials, from the rubbery tactile material which surrounds the keyboard and trackpad to the solid grey plastic lid and the subjectively tasty looking rear vents, when you turn the AlienFx Lights off, it is, in my opinion, the least “gamer looking” laptop available, it reminds me of my excellent circa 2010 Dell Precision M4500 CAD spec laptop.

I will put the full specs at the end of the article, just so I can get right down to the facts that everyone wants to know, how can it handle gaming? Well, let me tell you!

I play several games regularly on a P.C, mainly: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, Cities skyline and to a lesser extent Battlefield 4.

Simply put, this Laptop eats all the games listed above, I play Overwatch on ultra settings at 1080p with some settings set to Epic, the frame rate is steady at about 120fps with the temp at 65-70 degree’s Celsius. Warcraft also plays well, settings and examples of how Warcraft runs (along with some other games) are in the videos here.

The R3 13 can handle all these games at 2560×1440 but I really couldn’t tell the difference on a screen this small, so leaving the resolution on these games at 1080p seemed sensible to get a favourable frame rate and lower thermals.

The OLED screen is sublime and is honestly the show-stopping part of this laptop, the blacks are so black, you can’t tell where the screen ends and the bezel begins. I have been spoilt with screens in recent years ever since I obtained a 5k iMac and then the 12inch retina MacBook, no other device has compared, this screen, however, is so nice it makes me wonder why Apple is yet to use OLED.

For reference I use the display at its native 2560×1440 resolution with 150% scaling, and I then choose to force most applications to not use scaling, because, well windows is terrible with scaling, if you haven’t used MacOS then you will think I am talking hyperbole, but Microsoft really needs to get it together, it puts me off using this laptop as anything other than a gaming rig, but that is not Alienware’s fault, and maybe this is a great idea for another article in the future, this is not a Windows vs MacOS debate!

The included 180w Power supply is big, (I have seen bigger, however, Ha Ha!) and is heavy but no means a problem, it is, to be frank, as expected.

I adore how Alienware has put the most used ports at the rear of the laptop, I hated ruining the look of a laptop when using a USB mouse especially when it only had ports on the right-hand side (where my hand should be), the rear ports include an Ethernet port, USB c port, Power supply, full-size HDMI and the proprietary Dell Alienware graphics amplifier port (which I haven’t tried yet). There are still some ports on each side of the laptop, a full-size USB port (on each side), individual headphone and microphone jack on the left-hand side and an additional USB C port on the right.

The Keyboard feels very nice to type and game on, and is well spaced, not too “spongy” and good for extended gaming use. The trackpad is ok for a windows device, not as good as the Surface book/ Pro 4 trackpads but almost as good, definitely usable and the physical trackpad buttons are useful yet very “spongy” the “AlienFx” lighting adds a really nice touch, it gives the laptop a distinctive look. On that note, the RGB lighting may not be as comprehensive as the Razer “Chroma” individual key lighting but the zone lighting is effective, at least it lights up the Function keys secondary functions like volume etc, unlike the Razer keyboard.

The new hinge-forward design has really grown on me and really brings the content closer and hides the vents nicely, making the laptop feel smaller than it is when using it as you can’t see the whole footprint. The fans aren’t loud, they are audible on full load but because the design is so good it doesn’t sound like a jet plane going off!. I usually play on a lap board in my lounge while the wife watches telly and it doesn’t get any complaints (unlike when playing overwatch on Low using the Dell XPS 15 with the 960m, which used to make the fans scream)

The spec I went for is the skylake core i7, 16gb Ram, 500gb NVME M.4 SSD, GTX 1060 GPU and 2560×1440 OLED display, the user serviceable parts are the x2 SODIMM slots and the x2 M.4 SSD slots, these are made available when you remove x5 screws from the underside of the laptop.

While I was deciding whether or not to go for this laptop or the Razer blade 14, I had read about thermal issues and that many people felt the need to re-paste both the CPU and GPU but I have had no such issue, if you are reading this, I wouldn’t worry , I think this issue may have applied to the early models only, incidentally I did not go for the Razer Blade because Razer make it so hard to not only get support for the device but to just buy the thing was near impossible (in the U.K through a channel partner) until they sort this I won’t be considering them yet.

Overall, I highly recommend buying this laptop if you are a gamer and need to move your laptop around daily, either to and from work or just around the house, it really is quite portable, it plays all AAA games I have thrown at it on Ultra or higher with a stable 60fps or higher. I would, however, recommend the Dell XPS 15 if you are an occasional gamer, it is lighter with a smaller power pack and better trackpad, if you flat out don’t P.C game and have to use windows then a Surface Pro 4 (i5) or a Dell XPS 13 is the way to go.

The only bad experience I have had with this laptop is that when I put it to sleep and unplug it to move it around the house on waking up, the AlienFX lights all stop working and I need to go into device manager and disable then enable the USB device to get it working again, maybe it’s just mine but it’s very frustrating, it is likely just a windows sleep issue, one more thing MacOS does better ten-fold, I hardly ever reboot or shut down my MacBook.

I can’t see myself getting a new GPU for my desktop now, as it hasn’t been touched since I have had this laptop, it’s simply much more powerful, maybe the graphics amplifier and a GTX 1080 in 12 months time is a better option, but for now I will enjoy my “pocket rocket”, I am very pleased with this laptop, Alienware have done well here.

Thanks for reading, Jay.