- Over the years, I've developed a pretty good nose for (beep), and one of the smelliest things around tends to be mechanical
keyboards on laptops. From Asus to Acer to Gigabyte to MSI and probably Alienware at some point, every laptop with a mechanical keyboard has sucked for one reason or another. I mean, some of them are
okay for certain tasks, but not a single one
of them has been better than a quality membrane keyboard. Which is why when Alienware said they had collaborated with Cherry to make a mechanical
gaming keyboard... (coughs) Excuse me, sorry. I threw
up a little bit in my mouth. I prepared for the worst. But as it turns out, this
thing feels exceptional. (sniffs) Is that rose petals? - Wow! Oh yeah!
- Wow. Well, according to my
writing staff, anyway, it's really good, but
I have yet to touch it. So best of luck, Alienware and Cherry. And best of luck... Telling you about our sponsor, Pulseway. Pulseway is a remote
monitoring and management tool that we use ourselves
here at Linus Media Group. Control all your Windows, Mac, and Linux machines from one app by trying it out for free
at the link down below. (upbeat music) The development of this
keyboard started three years ago when Alienware approached Cherry and asked if they could design a mechanical keyboard for their laptops with the smallest of requests, like: "Give users the experience
they wish they had," and, "Provide mobile users the true feel of a mechanical keyboard." "It has to be good for
gaming and for typing." "Oh, and by the way, you have to do it without using up any more space than the existing
membrane key switches do." Now, how exactly did they do? Apparently I get a single sentence now to give you my thoughts. I can only type a single sentence on this? - [Alex] Yes, one sentence, then we're swapping it out for a bit. - [Linus] Aw, okay. - [Alex] Choose a good sentence. - I'm gonna go with "quick brown fox." - [Alex] You're not gonna try and plug LTT Store or something? - Um, no. I'm gonna type the... I gotta evaluate this
thing in one sentence. I got work to do here. Okay. (keys clicking) Am I allowed to backspace
and retype things if I make a mistake?
- No. (keys clicking) - I feel a bit like a
wine reviewer right now. It's got a strong, tactile feel, heavy at the front end, and a pleasing mechanical sound, save for the slightly twangy end note. Is that what you expected to hear? - [Alex] That's actually pretty accurate. - Now, this has been
billed as the world's first Cherry MX ultra-low-profile
mechanical keyboard, which is true, but there
have been laptops before featuring Cherry MX switches. Like this paragon of practicality. This right here is the Acer Predator 21X, possibly the most (beep)
crazy laptop to ever exist. - [Alex] Oh, just a second,
you need the wrist rest for the full typing experience. - Right, you're right. Sorry, my bad. It's got features that
even today you can't find, like a 21-inch curved ultrawide display, two GTX 1080s running in SLI, more I/O than probably just
about any laptop today, and, of course, a fully
mechanical keyboard. Of course, this isn't
here so I can talk about the room-filling sound,
tasteful lighting effects, and integrated Tobii eye tracking. It's to talk about using
Cherry MX Browns on a keyboard And this is... Well, you know, you joke about it, but this is a pretty good solution to the otherwise-
- It works really well! - Wrist-breaking difference in height between your table and the computer. I mean, it's really better than any other keyboard on a laptop. Because it's full-on Cherry MX Browns. And get this. They weren't even using
low-profile keycaps or anything. Acer went full-fat. They
saved absolutely no Z height. Of course, saving space
wasn't really a priority when Acer was designing
a product like this one. This is not really a laptop.
It doesn't go on your lap. This is a desktop replacement,
and for a number of reasons, this is a product category
that has mostly evaporated over the last three to four years. A big part of the reason
is that you can fit the same kind of features and performance, not to mention even things
like mechanical keyboards, into much slimmer designs. Take this Asus Strix Scar 17 G733. This is probably the closest
competitor to the m17, with matching core specs: 360-hertz panel, RTX 3080 graphics, and an eight-core Ryzen processor, with the big draw here being
that it is just $3,000. Because somehow that's a bargain compared to the Alienware's
casual $3,600 price tag. One key difference, though, is that the Strix comes with
an opto-mechanical keyboard. Those are actuated by blocking a laser beam
as the key is pressed down, for apparently some of the
best response times possible. In practice, though... Ooh, man, this thing does
not feel amazing. (squawks) (snorts) No, no. I will
give it some more time. I will give it some more time. - [Alex] Go to boot up
"Doom Eternal" or something. I think it's not too bad for gaming. - Yeah, I'll give you that, Alex. It doesn't feel nearly as bad for gaming. But what it doesn't feel like is... Mechanical. Now, to be clear, "mechanical"
doesn't mean anything other than the method by
which the switch actuates, and you can can have mechanical switches in all shapes and sizes
and sounds and feels. It's just that, in the
context of computer hardware, people have an expectation
that a mechanical switch is Cherry MX-like in some way. So you've got a longer travel or you've got a tactile bump or a more satisfying consistency in the feel or the sound, right? So it might be mechanical
in its way of operating, but it doesn't feel very good. - [Alex] So I think I know
why it doesn't feel very good. I made this graph here. - Ah! The force curve. So this is how far we have pressed down and this is how much force we're applying. So it goes from actuation to
really quickly bottoming out because you have that much
force on it to actuate it. That makes a lot of
sense. It's too nonlinear. - [Alex] Well, but I
think the problem also is that it's too linear. Like, you don't know
where the actuation point is going to be. - Wait, so the actuation point
doesn't require more force? It's just there, you mean?
- Well, just press it. You can feel there's
a click in the middle. (key clicking) It doesn't really make any sense. - Yeah... Yeah, so there are a
couple of problems here. Number one is that this
doesn't really feel like much. It feels really soft. Then you get to this actuation
point. This is the click. So down, down, down... (key clicks) Click. Click! It's a really strong click. And by the time you've
applied this much force, you're basically gonna
jump straight to here because it's not like you can ride it out by applying just a little
bit more, a little bit more. And then this is a big problem too, because your bottom-out
feels extremely mushy. So you've got mush here,
this really strong click that on paper might seem
nice and sounds nice, and then you've got this
kind of mushy bottoming out, and the whole thing just
doesn't feel very good. You combine that with the
inherent small amount of deck flex that you're gonna have in any laptop that isn't just made out of a solid, machined piece of aluminum, and it contributes even
more to the mushiness. - [Alex] Yeah. So now you
finally get to use this again. - Okay, let's go back to the Alienware. This is a very cute little
chart that you made. Thank you, Alex. It's those extra little bits of effort that set you apart from the other Alexes. J.K. Prime, you're great too. - [Alex] He also does nice
little bits of extra effort. - We ran out of desk pad space. Fortunately we have these
super wide ones, lttstore.com. Before I give any more impressions, I want to actually game
on this thing, though, because a good typing experience
does not necessarily mean that it's a good gaming keyboard. And... I prefer it, but I don't know that I can
objectively say it's better. I just tend to prefer that... Well, more desktop Cherry MX feel. With typing and gaming
impressions under my belt, I can say with confidence
that I like these a lot better than these. But these aren't necessarily
my favorite style of switches for either typing or gaming
because, if you look closely, they're quite stiff at
the top of the keystroke. I can press on it quite a lot before... There, it goes. Right?
(key clicks faintly) Can you hear that click, Brandon? Or is the whoosh of the fans too much? - [Brandon] I can hear it. (key faintly clicking)
- There it is. The bottom-out is much more satisfying, not nearly as mushy feeling, but I do tend to prefer a tactile bump that's somewhere below the
very top of the keystroke. And actually, Alex has a force chart that
I can share with you guys. So you can see that's exactly what... Yeah. Man. I have typed on a lot of
keyboards over the years. So you're pretty much
putting all the force here and then it falls away on you. But the good news is
that when it bottoms out, it doesn't have that
same kind of mush to it. From a strictly performance standpoint, if all I did was game, I would probably have to
take these, but if I was me, and I know that I actually
do type sometimes as well, I would absolutely take these first. Now let's talk about how these work, because while I have used
kind of front-loaded, heavier switches like these, I've never used these ones before because they are brand new. We've got a little
tester here from Cherry, number 39 of 80 apparently, that gives you a really good look, both with some clear
keycaps over the top of them as well as an exposed one. So it's actually a
butterfly-style mechanism that, if you look at our microscope footage, we can see there's a little
piece that slips off and... There it is. That's
where you get your click. Then the spring in the middle
brings it back to rest. So you could easily, that's
actually interesting, you could easily adjust
the tension on this thing by adjusting that spring. That's kind of a cool thought. Not that you would want to. Cherry always impresses me
with their attention to detail. Are these steel?
- Yeah. (key clicking) - 15 million clicks. And if Cherry rates it for 15 million, you better believe it. As good as a key switch might be, though, as I touched on earlier, (clearing throat) I can easily be let down by a chassis that is not stiff enough. And we saw a great example of this in the Galaxy Book Pro on
ShortCircuit about a week ago. Fortunately, Dell/Alienware
has done a great job of this with a unibody magnesium CNC chassis. But it is something to keep in mind, especially as these
switches start to show up on other laptops as an option, because they're gonna cost you about $150. Another challenge for Dell/Alienware is that they already had some of the best mobile key switches on the market before this collaboration with Cherry. Can they possibly be
worth that kind of money? Oh! Wow, look at this. We are so prepared for this video! To find out, I've got an m15 R3 on hand! This is still not my
favorite style of keyboard because I type a lot, and that front-loaded actuation
curve is not ideal for it. But if you like that style, and for gaming, a lot of people do, the Cherry version is definitely better. If it's $150 better,
that's more up to you, but for a lot of people
a good-feeling keyboard is absolutely worth that kind of money and this is definitely
a lot better-feeling. My notes just say, "Somehow use the OLED screen
to segue into the fact that a keyboard is attached to a laptop and the rest of the laptop has to be good for that to matter," ah, yes. So the m15 R3 uses an OLED display. Oh, inky blacks! So good! Whereas (clears throat)
the m17 R4 does not. As far as I can tell, it's using the same
1080P, 360-hertz IPS panel as what we had in the Asus Strix Scar. Now, you might think 1080P, 360 hertz doesn't make a lot of sense
in a laptop with an RTX 3080 because you're gonna be CPU-limited
in basically everything. You might say, "Oh, it
probably makes more sense to get a 3070 and save a couple bucks, or better yet, go for a 1440P display." But if you are primarily planning on playing competitive shooters and then just occasionally want to turn RTX on in "Cyberpunk," this? Not a terrible config. What's really impressive
about the m17 R4, though, is just how freaking powerful
it is, especially the GPU. With 165 watts of power on tap, this is the fastest mobile
GPU we've ever tested, and in games it wins against
the Scar every single time. For productivity, the
Core i9 Intel processor does hold the Alienware back a bit, with the Ryzen 9 in the
Strix pulling ahead, but in the coming weeks
we're expecting Alienware to be launching an AMD version of the m17 that should be the fastest gaming laptop on the market, period. Now, of course, with power like that comes cooling responsibility and also airflow responsibility. So when you're using the m17, expect the fans to always be on, and during gaming, well, don't even think about using the speakers, however good they might sound, or open-back headphones. But what Alienware has done with cooling here is still impressive, even if the CPU regularly gets
close to 100 degrees Celsius. I mean, look. It's not even that thick. Also inside we've got
an 86 watt-hour battery and Alienware did warn me that this system was not optimized for battery life, but holy crap, I thought
the days of gaming laptops with around two hours of
battery had finally ended. Not here. Maybe the AMD version will
be a little bit better, but my hopes aren't super high. Which means that even
though it doesn't look as clunky as its predecessors did, this is still the modern-day equivalent of a desktop replacement. And you know what? I
kinda like this future. You still have to be plugged into the wall pretty much all the time, but dang. You got a lot of I/O. They even worked in their proprietary external GPU dock thing,
which is freakin' awesome. You can, of course, go Thunderbolt if you prefer that sort of thing. Wired Ethernet. Dang impressive. If you have $3,600 to
spend, of course. Mind you! Mind you, that pricing
looks downright reasonable compared to what the Predator 21X costs. What was this thing, like 10 grand? - [Alex] Yeah. - I don't know. Something-something... Sponsor. Thanks to Ting Mobile for sponsoring today's video.
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Plus 5G at linus.ting.com. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe you'll also enjoy checking out... You know what? Go check out our original
review of this thing. It truly is an utterly unique device. Anyone wanna buy one? - [Alex] No! We're not selling it, Linus. - Put it on Craigslist.
- No, never. - But it's useless.
- It's beautiful. - It belongs in a museum. Should donate it to someone.
It takes up so much space. I mean, look at this. Remember this? The trackpad, you could flip
it around to be a number pad.
