The Alienware X15 is Too Thin

okay we need to talk about the alienware x15 so a month ago i did a review on this guy here the big boy x17 this was an all-new design all new chassis new thermal system for a thin 17-inch device alienware knocked this thing out of the park i was very impressed with this product and i think the overall reviews of this thing were highly positive and as i did my review of the x17 i couldn't help but just be excited for this thing because this is just the x15 it's the smaller version of that right it's just gonna be the same kind of thing but smaller but it's not quite so it's got some good stuff going on in it i'll talk about that but just up front this is too thin i think alienware was trying to chase that trend of like these thin light gaming laptops that i don't think alienware is good at doing they should have focused on what they're good at performance i'm going to start off on the topic of graphics so the x15 can be equipped with up to an rtx 3080 the x17 can also be equipped with 3080 but this device here caps out at 110 watts the x17 capped at 165 watts and the difference in performance is massive now i understand that this is a lot smaller right it's a much more compact and portable device than the x17 but the main reason why this is capped at 110 watts is because they were trying to keep this thing super thin so last year's m15 it's like the kind of predecessor to the x15 a little bit thicker that thing ran at 140 watts i think if i'm not mistaken either 140 or like 150 watts it was definitely more than 110 watts but the point i'm trying to make is that this is a graphical downgrade a very noticeable graphical downgrade compared to last year's model and it's only because they're trying to chase super thin and even though the x15 is so thin it's still a very big and a very heavy device like the razer blade but the same screen size is a lot more compact like i love thin laptops that's what i personally go for and i'm okay with losing some performance to achieve a thin device but it doesn't make sense to me to pursue thinness if the company has to keep the device big and heavy to hit it like the x15 doesn't even fit into my bag and that thing's designed to hold 15-inch laptops now it looks really good if i'm being honest this is probably one of the best looking windows laptops you can get right now right it's just like a really nice sleek device and the white color liz it's right up my alley right but you can't help but wonder what they would have been capable of if they'd only added another millimeter or two of height of like z-axis right even if they'd match this thing the x-17 this is not a thick device by any means but because it's a little bit thicker it has a beefier thermal system and it can make much better use of the exact same graphics card and when you're paying this kind of money for such a high-end gpu as a 3080 it just it pains me to see it being crippled and held back by brand like alienware it's so unlike what they normally do now in terms of the cpu performance this thing runs pretty hot and if you compare to the x17 i know it's bigger device but that thing's like a good 20 degrees cooler on the same kind of games now they're both running four fans they're both running that new gallium based thermal paste it's it's just disappointing to me because my hopes were just they were raised right i saw the x-17 i'm like that's what this x-series can do that's what it's capable of it can reach great temperatures with good fan noise awesome performance why can't this i'll tell you why it's too damn thin now i also want to draw your attention to the keyboard so the mechanical keyboard on the x17 is not available on the x15 apparently it's because this was too thin of a device but the keyboard is good otherwise like the the standard membrane keyboard has a nice feel to it it's got the standard kind of alienware layout it's a good keyboard the secondary function keys don't light up which can be a little bit annoying but you can change the colors of individual keys in the settings so you can more easily identify them in the dark and then the trackpad also lights up you can make it go wild if you want this trackpad i actually prefer it over the x17 in terms of the feel there's something about the way that this thing clicks it's just a little bit more concise to me but it is a little bit smaller but alienware usually puts small trackpads like this on their 15-inch devices in terms of the screen it's a 16x9 aspect ratio again you don't get the 16x10 goodness that a lot of other brands are doing i like this kind of screen size like when i'm playing games i want this i don't want that extra real estate um i think for people that video edit or people that do work on a device like this they would love that extra vertical space but for a gaming device i'm good with 16x9 but i did mention this the same thing on the x17 review if alienware wants to extend this in the future if they do want to start implementing bigger panels they can't like there's just no more room on this thing to put that bigger panel right so they'd have to redesign the the top panel which would probably be expensive which makes me think they wouldn't even do it down the line at least not for a while okay let's take a look at the inside so the x15 runs four fans and if i'm not mistaken this is the first 15-inch device i've had in here that had a quad fan system i've seen three fans i've seen two fans i've seen some laptops with zero fans but never a quad i don't think but despite having four fans and that new thermal compound the thermal performance isn't amazing right we've seen what the x-17 could do with something like this same kind of setup four fans new thermal compound that had amazing thermals like weirdly good this is kind of average and even the ram is baked onto the motherboard because it's such a thin device you do get replaceable nvmes and replaceable wi-fi but thicker would have been better in my opinion uh battery down here is pretty big 87 watt hours battery life was okay at around five and a half hours but that's with screen at 250 nits and all of the rgb lighting turned off so if you want to pump all that stuff on it's going to be noticeably less but the ac adapter is really nice on this system you're getting a 240 watt adapter that's small and compact and very nice looking and i think it's probably the best looking ac adapter on the market i wish more companies would build stuff like that but the speakers are garbage like they're surprisingly bad i had very low expectations but somehow somehow they managed to go below the expectations they're just weak and super tinny um okay just to wrap this up the ports they're all in the back i like them situated on the back here it doesn't have a ton of ports but i think most people should be okay but my overall thoughts on the x15 like it's a device that's very much alienware in some regards like the design aesthetic of it and the overall build of it like it's well built and it's tanky despite it being so thin but the performance element of it is just very unlike them normally when you go with this brand and you're paying that kind of money you get great performance but this time around because they're chasing that super thin form factor you kind of miss out on the performance but if that's what you've always wanted like a really brightly lit alienware rgb device and you don't care too much about like top end performance this is fantastic it's thin it's really nice looking that's what they're going for but if your performance fiend this ain't it at least not this year okay hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it i'll see you guys next time you

Channel: Dave2D

Views: 167,240

Rating: 4.9577813 out of 5

Keywords: Dave2D, Review

Id: _ofku--J9ps

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 06 2021