Alienware 17 R4 2017 Gaming Laptop Review: Powerful And Refined

Dell updated its Alienware 17 gaming laptop at PAX West 2016 with NVIDIA Pascal graphics, but at the time Intel’s quad-core Kaby Lake mobile processors weren’t available yet. It was a short-lived update, however, as the Kaby Lake-powered Alienware 17 was announced a short time later at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show this past January. Today, we’re checking out the newest Alienware 17 R4 gaming laptop featuring the latest of both technologies. The chassis may look familiar, but its all-new on the inside with two 7th-Generation Intel Core i7 processor and four NVIDIA Pascal graphics options.
  
The Alienware 17 R4 is a full-fledged desktop replacement that packs serious hardware beneath its trademark alien head logo. Intel’s Core i7-7700HQ that turbos up to 3.8 GHz is the standard Alienware 17 R4 processor, but adventurous enthusiasts can spend an extra $100 for the overclocking capable Core i7 7820HK. You can have almost any modern mobile graphics processor you want, too. The complete NVIDIA mobile graphics lineup is available, including the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, 1060, 1070 and 1080. The Radeon RX470 8GB is the sole AMD graphics option.

Alienware 17 R4 2017 Specifications & Features

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Pricing for the Alienware 17 R4 starts at $1,349 for the budget configuration and maxes out at $4,399.99, but, let’s check out the video roll to let that sticker shock sink in before we dive deeper into this behemoth.


Alienware sent over a high-end configuration with an Intel Core i7-7820HK quad-core Kaby Lake CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB GPU, 512GB PCIe NVME SSD, 1TB hard drive, 16GB of RAM, and a WQHD (2560x1440) display with G-SYNC. The system rings in at an as-configured price of $2,949.99.

Budget conscious buyers can opt for the base configuration, which starts with an Intel Core i7-7700HQ, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 2GB graphics, 1080p display, hard drive and smaller 68 Wh battery. Tobii eye-tracking is available as an upgrade for the 1080p display option as well, but is bundled with the G-SYNC QHD and 4K UHD display upgrades. The 4K UHD display is an available upgrade with all GPU configurations.

RAM options start at 8GB standard and go up to 32GB in 2400 MHz and 2667 MHz flavors, but the latter speed maxes out at 16GB. A single 1TB 7200RPM hard drive is the standard drive, but dual and triple storage configurations are available with up to two 1TB PCI Express SSDs and a 1TB hard drive.