Razer Blade 18 vs Alienware M18 - Which is the best 18" Gaming Laptop?

so in tonight's video I wanted to put head-to-head two of my favorite 18-in gaming laptops for this year the Alienware M18 versus the razor blade 18 now 18 in is a new and massive size for gaming laptops this year and I've really enjoyed my time with both of these gaming laptops these are some of the most immersive desktop replacement laptops you can possibly buy and they are amazing for gaming on the actual laptop screens themselves I find with an 18in panel I don't need an external display so if you want to choose an 18-in gaming laptop these are two of the most premium gaming laptops that are available and this Razer Blade 18 has an eye watering price tag so hopefully in tonight's video we're going to show you the differences between these two so that you can decide whether you want to save some money with the alware M18 or really put your hand deep in the pocket for that blade 18 so just before we start delving fully into how these compare I've tried to get them as close as possible in the specs Department both of these have the I9 13th gen Intel processor they've both got a 4080 graphics cards we've both got a 2560 x600 display albeit with different brightness and response times which we will talk about in a little while and we've chosen 32 GB and 1 tbte on each of these machines now if you buy these at retail price from either Dell or Razer you're talking about £3,800 in the UK for the blade 18 or £2,800 for the anywh M18 now that's ,000 difference in the UK between these two and that's not even taken into consideration you can usually get discount codes for a Dell so does that blade 18 have extra features worthy of £1,000 let's start Tak a look around these to find out so first things first let's take a look around the chassis and we're going to take a look at both the build quality and the size now the razor blades have always prided themselves on making very compact gaming laptops and sometimes at the expense of performance but this year with the blade 16 and blade 18 Razer have improved the performance by making these laptop slightly thicker and straight away you can see when you're putting it up against the anywh M18 the height of the laptops the blade 18 is slightly thinner than this massive anywh M18 but there's not a lot in it especially at the front end where they're almost touching the rear ends obviously with the humpt shape of this anywh M18 it does get Fair bit thicker but you will notice the massive difference in size between these two is the width and the depth especially because on the Alienware team where it pumps all the heat out of the back you have this big fat Grill and the grill does make a great difference pumping that heat out rather than through the screen of the r blade 18 at the expense of size so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put it on top of it so you can see how much difference there is between these two so on the width we're not talking we were literally talking about a centimeter that's not massive but look at the difference in the depth that is incredible that's got to be inch and a half difference between these two laptops now once it's on your desk and you're using it you're not going to notice the difference in size but with you will notice it is trying to fit one of these in a bag now this razor blade 18 I've managed to get into 17-in laptop bags it's that compact whereas the Alienware M18 is a struggle to get a bag for it now you can get the Alienware travel backpack in an 18-in version for this laptop and I would recommend if you really want to go that route with this 8way M18 get that bag as well and even then it's a little bit tight this is one huge laptop and not only is it bigger in the size department when we're talking of the weight there is a kilogram difference between these two the actual blade 18 comes in at just over 3 Kg whereas the anywh M18 comes in just over 4 kg and that is a big difference when you're carrying these around when you're carrying the blade around it's very easy to pick up and use one-handed this is just like the weight of a normal 7 inch laptop from last year and this anywh M18 the Big Daddy this is one heavy laptop you can pick it up one hand but it's not comfortable you're going to feel that and you will feel this if it's in your bag for a significant amount of time and you're walking a reasonable distance but if all you're doing is picking up your laptop transporting it from desk to desk and then opening it up that may not be that important so that's something that you need to consider when you're buying this laptop so now I want to quickly touch upon build quality and I have to say that both of these are built like absolute tanks the wi to me personally would have to go to the build quality of the roseblade 18 this is of a mil aluminium chassis and it is that not only is the build quality fantastic but the fit and finish on this machine is is truly Next Level feels like a Macbook for Windows it's absolutely incredible now the Alienware M18 the build quality is still great there's no flex there's no Creek even this is a heavy laptop when you pick it up and it does feel great in the hand It's All Metals but it isn't a mill laptop like the blade 18 uh you can get a bit more flexed like when you pushing down on the lid but either way I think both of these are built like tanks and they are built to last now before we open them up and look inside I want to quickly talk about ports and RGB now I've got the Mercury version of the razor blade 18 and this is very muted when we talk about RGB there's only RGB on the keyboard and we've got a status LED on the front there's no lit razor head logo you do get the on the Black Version and I think this makes it great if you want a a subdued looking gaming laptop that's almost at place at work environment now the actual Alienware M18 when we're talking of the RGB we've got the L anywhere head on the lids we've also got the Tron ring around the back of the laptop as well as the RGB keyboards and the anywhere power button all lights up so if RGB is your thing the anywh M18 is better in that regards and when we're talk about the ports on these laptops both of these are I would say desktop Replacements with a good selection of ports that will'll see you through your day-to-day use now the Razer Blade 18 has all the ports on either side and I do personally prefer that because I'm always plugging things in and out of my laptop but I will say if you're plugging a lot of peripherals in and out it looks Messier on the blade 18 the Alienware M18 on the other hand has a lot of the ports at the back and just a couple of the ports at the side and although I think this is great for making the laptop tidier because a lot of your ports are hanging out the back of the laptop the strangest decisions that anywhere have made with this machine is they put the RJ45 on the side which should have gone on the back cuz that's a cable that you want sticking at the back of your laptop and on the back of the laptop they put the full size SD card now if you buy this for Content creation video editing or whatever else that you want do you want to really be sticking your SD card around and trying to poke it into that little hole at the back of your laptop that's so inconvenient so although I like the fact it's tidier on the anywh M18 in most Parts with the ports out the back I do think that you know the engineers need to spend some time thinking how do people actually use these laptops and with the Go the actual number of ports themselves the anywhere M18 does have a couple of extra ports that the actual blade 18 does not we get a mini display port which can be very handy for monitors although both these do have Thunderbolt 4 we get an extra USBC on the M18 we just get two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the blade 14 whereas the M18 we get two Thunderbolt 4 and a USBC and we also get one extra usba a port we get four on the M18 and three on the blade 18 both of these in my opinion are a good amount of ports and very usable in my use every day using these laptops so now we've looked around the the externals of the laptops let's open them up and take a look okay so we're into the actual laptops themselves where you spend most of your time with your gaming machine now both of these have a per key RGB keyboard but there's an easy win here for the Alienware M18 now this keyboard is fantastic whether you choose the standard keyboards or the full mechanical keyboards for this machine both of these have the most incredible typing experience of any laptop I've ever used used and easily if typing is your absolute preference this wins hands down the rise blade 18 on the other hand it is per key RGB and has better back lighting than the actual El M18 but the keys feel quite dead they don't have a lot of travel and you have no choice mechanical it is what it is plus there's no number pad on such a large 18-in gaming laptop whereas the anywhere M18 you'll notice you have a number pad to the right hand side of the actual keyboard now personally I'm quite happy without the number pad because I prefer a scentered keyboard what you will notice is on the LW M18 because we've got the number pad they've shoved over that touchpad slightly across to obviously sit underneath the space bar as you'd expect I prefer the look of a fully centered touchpad and keyboard usability wise I would definitely say the win here getes to the keyboard on that anyware M18 and as we move down to the touchpads both of these have premium touchpads and they both work absolutely flawlessly but if you look side by side the difference in size between these touch pad is just truly phenomenal even though the Alienware M18 is a much bigger laptop the touchpad is stupidly big on the blade 18 to a point where I would say it's too big that's not something that you usually hear me say and what this often leads to is when I'm using the gaming laptop for full-on gaming with inbuilt keyboard I have had a few Taps on the palm rest whilst I'm using the keyboard leading some misfires into some FPS games they definitely need to improve the Palm rejection on this model personally if they had made that touchpad similar size to the anyway M18 you wouldn't have that issue and I wouldn't be complaining at all because the TouchPad does feel better and track better than the Alienware M18 not by a lot but it is a little bit of a better touchpad it's just a bit too big in my opinion so between the two for usability I would have to prefer this anywhere M18 another quick point to note with the actual razor blade it is MIL aluminium so the whole Palm deck is aluminium feels absolutely Rock Solid I do really like it slightly sharp corners on the edge as you'd expect with a mil machine like this just like any MacBook or any other miled aluminium laptop out there whereas the alware M18 we've got the soft touch coating over the top of the laptop and I do absolutely love this it feels so luxurious when you're actually using the laptop but I'm going to warn you this does pick up fingerprints and oils and stains quite easily and can look quite grubby after a while but from an actual Everyday Use perspective I think I do prefer the feel of this than your rais blade although the rais blade will look better for longer if you buy the Mercury the black one is also a fingerprint magnet now you may notice either side on the blade 18 we got these lovely big speaker grills we don't see anything either side on the M18 now the any M18 has a couple of speakers in there whereas the razor blade has six speakers they sound like this speaker test of the razor blade 18 versus the Alienware M18 starting with the Raz blade both set to 50% volume now the [Applause] M18 now [Music] 80% M8 [Applause] wow a massive difference there the razor blade 18 sounds incredible full sounding great volume and really Crystal Clear whereas anywh M18 is a bit muffled and tinny and just didn't sound great at all speakers blade 18 clear win and as we move up to the actual 18-in panels in both of these laptops I want to quickly point out that the Raaz blade 18 only has one choice of panel and that is the 240 HZ 2560 by 16600 500 nit panel and it is a fantastic panel I've been using this a lot I love the color accuracy I love how fast and fluid it feels and I love that 500 nit brightness now on the alware M18 we get two choices of panels at least in the UK we get a 2560 x600 panel that's only just over 300 nits and it's only 165 Hertz or you can choose the 1200p 480 HZ Esports panel now it will be incredibly quick 480 HZ 1200p you can drive that with some really high frames per second would you really want a 1200p resolution on a massive 18inch panel I think You' have to be a real diard Esports player to even consider that option maybe some people do out there but for most people I think the higher resolution 2560 by 1600 is the better option now if you're in an indoor environment just over 300 nits is absolutely fine you have no problem but I have to be honest I do often work into some bright rooms and bright environments I absolutely love this 500 nits that you get on the blade 18 it makes a massive difference and this panel I would say in my opinion is a little bit faster than the 165 htz it's just a little bit more fluid so the panel is an easy win to the blade 18 in my opinion I I just think it's such an amazing panel they've put in to this laptop and I wish Dell offered a similar panel in the anywhere M18 and as we move above the actual screens themselves we we both have 10 HP webcam that look and sound like this this the test of the webcam and the microphones on the Razer Blade 18 in Mercury and this is the test of the webcam and the microphones on the Alienware M18 and both these laptops have Windows hello facial recognition so you can open the panel and they both log you in both work flawlessly absolutely premium feature that I love on both of these machines so moving on to the internals and the good news is both these laptops are easy to get into and to upgrade the RAM SSD and Wi-Fi is easily possible both these laptops have two ddr5 Ram slots and both of them also have two 18 mm m.2 SSD slots but the Alienware M18 also has the advantage of an extra two 30 mm m.2 slots on the 4080 and the 490 model meaning that you can have up to four ssds in the M18 now for some reason the alien have decided to give this option on the 4060 and 4070 leaving those with just two ssds but with the G to the ssds the M18 takes the clear lead looking at the fans we can see that the M18 has two large fans plus another two smaller fans to help dissipate the heat whereas the razor blade has two main fans plus one smaller fan in the battery to do the same but an area where the blade 18 pulls ahead is the fact that it has a vapor chamber facing the user unlike the vapor chamber in the MH which is on the inverted motherboard this means should you need to repace that blade 18 it's a very easy task unlike the M18 which means you need to strip the entire laptop down to get the motherboard out to repaste it now as mentioned they both have a vapor chamber but the M18 has the advantage of having the larger rear grills to pump the hot air out as opposed to the blade 18 which is pumping that hot air out through this hinge so that leaves us nicely into the performance section looking at the CPU first although we have a slightly better CPU option on the Razer Blade 18 they both have the same cores and threads and is only a couple of mehz high on that blade 18 so it shouldn't make a massive difference and when looking at the benchmarks the blade handly pulls ahead in geekbench 5 which is a very short single core multi-threaded and single-threaded test when we move to the longer test the cine R2 23 which is a 10-minute torture test the M18 pulls ahead because of its much higher long-term wattage Razer are much more conservative in the power budgets they give to their laptops and while it does mean you get a cooler running CPU it's at the expense of some performance on that long-term boost moving over to the GPU performance and both laps have advanced Optimus and GSE available to the laptop display they also both have a 175 wat tgp on that 480 so running synthetic benchmarks the blade 18 came slightly ahead and it also did very well in it Shadow the two maer Benchmark and its native 1600p but in long-term gaming the M18 does have the advantage because Dell just let that CPU Run free the CPU is allowed to boost until it hits 100° Centigrade which usually gives the system about 100 watt CPU budget as well as 175 W GPU budget now unfortunately the blade 18 only gets about 65 watts to that CPU whilst you're gaming now this does mean a much cooler running CPU as it only sits about 80c unlike the Alienware which can get up to 100 and talking of long-term gaming I've put many hours into both these machines and they are both amazing machines to Game On And The Fan noise is very similar between the two they both have quiet profiles at about 45 DB are balanced at 50 DB and they both max out at just over 55 DB and with regards to the external temperatures no problems here either with both of these machines the palmrest and the keyboard stayed equally cool which really surprised me is historically razor blades have always run hot on that palmrest and keyboard and I cannot stand that so enough of gaming let's take a look at the battery life and as expected neither were particularly good the blade managed 4 hours and 5 minutes on our usual YouTube streaming over wi-fi at 200 nits of brightness whereas the blade 18 managed 4 hours 23 so although a win it's nothing really to chat from the rooftops the M18 comes with either a huge 330 W brick or a 330 W slim Gan charger depending on the region that you're in whereas all of the razor blade 18s come with a compact 330 W Gan but the blade 18 also has the added benefit of 100 wat PD charging meaning I can power the laptop from a power bank a USBC charger or even my monitor and it's actually very usable at that 100 wat now the Alienware M18 has no power delivery at all Dell only allows the X Series to have B delivery shame on you Dell so now that we looked at the performance of these laptops I want to talk about the software because that is quite a big consideration between these two machines that also controls the performance and I have to be honest the Alienware Command Center has had a rewrite this year but is still in my opinion an absolute Abomination piece of software now I've tried and tried and tried to like this piece of software I cannot stand it so I would have to say with an Alienware set your profiles set your colors close the software and try and never use it again because it is really awful the profiles are not great I normally leave this in the quiet mode which is gives the best mix of performance and balance on a day-to-day use the RGB profiles are not easy to set up and I hate the way the games can overwrite some of your other profiles I personally think D need to get back to the drawing board with this command Center and totally rewrite it from scratch and just think about how it's going to best operate for the user now the Raz blade signups it's not perfect it is quite a bulky piece of software there's a lot of people that moan about it but in my use after the anyway Command Center I love this piece of software it's easy to set up all my profiles there some great inbuilt profiles for the actual keyboards I love the fact that I can customize the performance very very easily you got balanced silenced and custom and within that custom you can then choose the level of customization for the the CPU and the GPU that makes a big difference to how the laptop acts and sounds and there's a big difference between the profiles now I do often leave it in Balance mode because I love that like mix of good performance and good fan noise as opposed to maxing out the fans and performance which in all honesty I much prefer a quieter laptop but everyone's different You' got a full customization with this model I also love how well the razor signups fits in with any other razor peripherals cuz no doubt if you buy a razor blade you're probably going to use a razor Mouse and headset and keyboard they all fit in so well with this razor blade on sign apps whereas unfortunately having used some of the Alienware peripherals they don't quite work as well in Command Center so when we come to the software in my opinion it's an easy win for the signups on the blade 18 I just as much as I love Alienware and I love Alienware products they just cannot seem to do the command sensor software they really need to go back and fix that but when we look at warranty between these two laptops now this is somewhere where Dell absolutely exceed my expectations when you buy an Alienware you get on-site warranty which can be incredibly handy if this laptop breaks they will send an engineer out to your house or office and fix your laptop for you no sending your laptop back for weeks and ends and faffing around waiting to get your laptop back it is usually sorted in a few days they also have some great people that you can talk to that help you along the process and I've never had an issue when I have had to have an anywhere laptop fixed now the same cannot be said for the razor blade with its back tobas warranty which for us is such an expensive premium laptop is just so wrong in my opinion comes with a oneyear back tobas warranty means you have to send your laptop back hope you get it back in a working condition and it may take you a couple of weeks to do so and you have to liaz with the customer service which haven't been as on the ball or as good in my opinion as Dell so if warranty is a big consideration definitely consider the alien Wares so that takes me through to the conclusion and what can I say these are both fantastic machines gaming on both these laptops is an absolute Joy but there is a massive golf in the price between these two ,000 in the UK between these two models so is that better screen more compact chassis with better build quality on that blade 18 worth £1,000 it does have better features such as the power delivery that works so much better with a razor blade in fact it doesn't even work on the anywh M8 you have to have the anywh X Series to have power delivery working whereas with this I can use a power bank or a monitor and keep that laptop going add to that the better speakers the better screen the better software that makes it easier to customize and adjust the CPU performance does make this the better laptop in my opinion but I don't think it's a, better laptop I think if you're somebody that's going to pick up your laptop put it on a desk and just play a game and enjoy it the only way mat8 makes more sense for most people the user experience is fantastic with that amazing keyboard the lovely luxurious touchpad so for the extra ,000 saving you are getting unfortunately a slightly inferior screen and inferior speakers but it's still a fantastic gaming laptop to use it is quite heavy it is bulky it's harder to find a bag but once you've got it sitting on your desk and you're actually using this luxurious palmrest with this amazing keyboard I right the screen may not be 500 nits but still probably bright enough in most indoor environments and it's still a fast panel this makes an excellent desktop replacement gaming laptop that is just so far cheaper than the blade 18 and it also have a much better warranty as well should anything ever go wrong in the future so which would I pick from these two laptops and that was a real hard choice I have to be honest if money wasn't an issue I would pick the blade 18 I love the compact form factor I think it's an amazing laptop but ultimately you got to pay for these and these are really expensive so I think most of the time for most people I would take that Alienware M18 well that's my thoughts on these two laptops as always I'd love to know what you guys think put it in the comment section down below and let me know which you would pick and why and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Mash IT

Views: 53,300

Keywords: mash it, razer 18, razer blade, razer laptop, best gaming laptop 2023, gaming laptop comparison, gaming 2023, gaming, blade 18, alienware m18, m18, alienware gaming laptop, gaming laptops, gaming laptop 2023, gaming laptops 2023, alienware, intel, 13th gen, 4080, nvidia, rtx, 18, dell, alienware m18 review

Id: vwSDXsIRbaI

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 02 2023