The new Alienware m17 R4 suffers under its fast hardware

The Alienware m17 R4 stood out in the test with a good build quality and a unique, stylish design. Compared to its predecessor, the Alienware m17 R3, Dell has equipped it with the brand-new Mobile Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 or RTX 3070, and the refresh rate of the 300 Hz display has been increased to 360 Hz. Our white model is mainly made of magnesium and feels extremely high-quality.

As for the CPU, Alienware continues to opt for Intel, which is a somewhat questionable decision considering the extremely high operating temperatures and high power consumption of the Intel Core i9-10980HK. The new AMD Ryzen processors are faster and/or more energy-efficient, and they also produce less heat. The high operating temperatures of our test device could also be the cause of the screen flickering that we observed; not only did this occur in synthetic benchmarks but also when gaming. This is unacceptable for a gaming laptop with an MSRP of 3,799 Euros (~$4,574), and we hope that the manufacturer is able to improve matters soon with an update - ultimately, the system runs very smoothly apart from that.

The new GPU often achieves very high scores in our benchmark and gaming tests, which is likely due to the high TDP limit of 180 watts. Other laptops equipped with a mobile GeForce RTX 3080 usually can't keep up here either. The 360 Hz display with above-average contrast benefits from this, and in the native resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, frame rates that make good use of the display's advantages can often be achieved.

More information and benchmarks on the new Alienware m17 R4 can be found in our detailed review.