Alienware M18 R2 Gaming Laptop, 18" QHD+ 165Hz Display, Intel 24-Core i9-14900HX, GeForce RTX 4080, 64GB DDR5, 4TB SSD, Wi-Fi6, Backlit Keyboard, Windows 11 Pro, with Microsoft Office Lifetime License

I've had this for a little while now so feel I can write an honest review of this product. I primarily use this laptop for watching TV and gaming daily. To give you an idea, I've played games like Palworld, Path of Exile 2, and Monster Hunter World so far on max settings. It has run smooth with no issues (expect one thing you can read below). This laptop seems to have a reputation for having heat issues, but I have not experienced any of that. My temps were always around 70-85c for both CPU and GPU under full load. I did not overclock anything. Idle temps are a little higher than I'm used to on my desktop which sits at around 50-65c. But products these days can withstand temps of up to 100c (under heavy load) from what I've read. Some sources even say you're actually not getting full use out of the GPU or CPU unless you are pushing it so hard it goes to 100c. But what I want to share with you is that I haven't run into any heat issues under full load. The bottom of the laptop does get hot though. It may be uncomfortable if you use it on your lap. As for the size and weight, it's big because it has a big screen (it's wide), it is not thick at all (I can't tell from pictures), maybe compared to one of those slim laptops it is but this is a desktop replacement laptop it's much more powerful. I was actually surprised how thin this was with all the performance packed into this thing. It is heavy though. I think it would be very burdensome if you have to carry this around constantly. The fans are not as loud under full load as some people say. Sure, you can clearly hear it, but it doesn't get in the way of hearing anything else. I don't even notice it while gaming most of the time which is the only time the fans would make any kind of noise. It is dead silent if you are not gaming and putting your laptop under full load. It won't disturb anyone, even in a library, unless you are gaming in there. Only then maybe it could. The fans aren't loud enough while gaming for me to confidently say it will bother everyone. When gaming, it's not like it's some satanic noise that comes from the fans and will disturb others and destroy your eardrums. It just sounds like air is being pushed out of something maybe like a little quieter blowdryer on low. I have to stress this point, the laptop is dead silent unless you are gaming putting the laptop under heavy load and the fans go full speed to keep it cool. This is the one and only time it makes any noise ever. The screen is good. Keep in mind I consider myself maybe barely more than an average gamer/computer enthusiast. I'm not hardcore like someone who seems to be able to notice a single frame drop or count the frames that fly across the screen and somehow it will effect the quality of their gameplay or notice how a shadow that looks a little darker or lighter than something else and deserves a demerit. I don't notice any of that or any ghosting. It doesn't look washed out either. Everything looks beautiful and smooth to me. I haven't noticed any kind of glare off the screen either. The built-in camera isn't bad but it isn't great. You look better before you take the picture than the saved picture. To give you an idea, the photo quality is not nearly as good as my iphone 11, but it's not completely ugly either. It's useable. The audio speakers sound good to me. It doesn't have the same effect of a 5 speaker surround sound home entertainment system that I have on my desktop at home where you can hear exactly the direction someone's footstep is coming from but I don't think it's meant to. The quality of this hasn't reduced the enjoyment of listening to music, movies, or games at all. The volume is great. It can get very loud if you want it to. I usually have it around 50% and it's plenty loud. I haven't tried using the headsets on this yet so this is just about the speakers. The wifi is good and I haven't had any issues with it. It's actually more advanced than what my router is capable of apparently. A program on here sent me a notification saying I need to upgrade my router because of this. Ofcourse I'm not going to because my wifi runs at max download and upload speed currently. The HD is an SSD so it's fast and it's awesome. Everything loads, installs, and uninstalls very quickly. The laptop feels very durable. I haven't accidently dropped it yet, so I can't speak to the actual durability of it, but it feels like it's good.A couple bad things.99% of the time I use my laptop plugged in so I haven't really tested the battery life much. With that in mind, I used the laptop to browse the web only maybe two or three times with the battery. Maybe 2-3 tabs open at most at one time. Not streaming or downloading anything. All settings set to lowest power/energy saving. I noticed the battery drop like 1% every few minutes until it got to around 20% when I stopped using the laptop. It was maybe 2 hours of use I honestly don't remember exactly but it was not long. I don't think it has the 7-8 hour battery life it says it has. I thought maybe it could be a faulty battery so I used the Dell Support Assist to check the hardware and everything came back with no issues. So there's that for whatever it's worth.The following may not be a "laptop issue" but more of an issue with the preinstalled software, but it is still a problem I had with this laptop. When I first got this laptop, I had problems with this laptop stuttering and everything just freezing up for around 30 seconds at a time no matter what I was doing and this was constant. I mean all the time. From just browsing to playing games this would constantly happen. I tried everything I could find on the web to fix it but nothing worked. So I contacted Dell support for assistance. They were quick to respond. It took a few hours of them remotely taking control of my laptop to fix this issue. The issue was something about the Dell Support Assistant which came preinstalled. I had a good experience with Dell support. My laptop still freezes up every once in a while but it's not constant like before or even a regular occurrence but the stuttering is completely gone. I still don't know why this continues to happen. I've also done a reinstall of windows which seems to be the most common solution to this issue but it didn't work.This next thing isn't a bad thing but something you should know.For the lifetime MS office that comes preinstalled you should know that you don't get a key with it. It will not register as an owned product with Microsoft for your account. So you can't just install office on another computer and put in the key to activate it because you won't get one. It's Microsoft Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 that's installed. No keys are given with this product apparently. It only works with this laptop. I haven't looked into how I would reinstall it if I had to reset my laptop.One thing I wish Amazon or Dell would have done better is to include the mechanical keyboard option to this laptop on Amazon. It was only available on the Dell website. It's only an additional $50 for the upgrade if purchased directly from Dell, but the overall price with Dell was around $600 more expensive than Amazon if I wanted the mechanical keyboard plus for the same things Amazon offered and without the lifetime MS Office. I love mechanical keyboards, but not $600 worth. So I just went with Amazon. The regular keyboard feels fine though. There's nothing wrong about the quality of the keyboard.Overall this is a fantastic laptop. I am very happy with the purchase. It has exceeded my expectations. It really is a desktop replacement. I just hope it lasts for years to come. I would recommend buying it only if you plan to game on it however. It's overkill for other things especially considering the price tag.

For the price of this laptop & the reputation, we were shocked when it stopped loading after having it less than a month. So we returned it and bought a Lenovo legion pro7