Faisal Ghaffar 
If you have been on the hunt for a gaming laptop, you will find the Alienware x17 R2 as a great fit because it is available in a number of configurations. You can find anything between a 1440p screen that has a refresh rate of just 165Hz and it goes all the way to a 1080p screen that has a refresh rate of a whopping 480Hz.
The Design
When it comes to design, you will find that Alienware has stuck to its basic one over the last couple of years. It still has the lunar white housing that has an alien’s face on the back and the laptop deck has honeycomb-like cutouts. However, the best part of the design is that almost all of the ports are on the laptop’s rear. This means that the sides of the housing do not have any ports, except for the audio jack on the right and the charging port on the left.
The ports that you will find on the rear of the housing are an HDMI 2.1 port, an Ethernet port, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a microSD card slot, a mini DisplayPort 1.4, a Thunderbolt 4 port with power delivery and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C with Power Delivery and DisplayPort. As far as the size and weight of the Alienware x17 R2 are concerned, it is a bit hefty, as it weighs between 6.54 and 7.05 pounds and measures 15.72 x 11.79 x .82 inches.
This size has a 17.3-inch display and there is a full-size keyboard and a decent trackpad to go with it, along with a 720p webcam.
Performance and gaming
You have the option of tweaking the components in the Alienware x17 R2, which means performance can be adjusted as per your requirements. The standard is a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H processor and a memory of 16GB DDR6 as well as 32GB of GDDR5 and 4,800 MHz. There is also an SSD of 1TB and the NvidiaGeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card.
Therefore, it is not surprising that when it comes to performance and gaming, the Alienware x17 R2 is a powerhouse. It can handle whatever you throw at it, whether you are multitasking, and streaming music, installing various games and apps and more. There are no hiccups where performance is concerned.
Battery Life and Software
Alienware has not given an estimate for the battery life of x17 R2, but there are different power modes that can be used to adjust battery life and performance according to your needs. In everyday use, the gaming laptop is likely to last a couple of hours of work before it needs to be plugged in.
When it comes to software, Alienwareremains light-handed in terms of pre-installed items and there are only a bunch of apps that you will find on the x17 R2. An AlienwareCommand Center can be found, along with a number of other Alienware utilities, but there is no antivirus software.
The Verdict
There is no doubt that the Alienware x17 R2 gaming laptop is a powerful one that does not have as high a price tag as some of its competitors, but it will still cost a bit. It can deliver a desktop-like performance with some minor changes in configuration.
