Overall, impressive laptop. There were a few minor snags right out of the box which took several hours to resolve (super annoying)- apparently there is a KNOWN problem with the Killer wireless adapter and Windows 10 which = no wifi until fixed. It appears the most recent driver on Dell's site fixes the problem but you have to uninstall, reinstall, etc. the out of the box driver.There are also several other pretty important updates that don't load automatically when connected so you have to go in and do them manually either from Dell's site or the device manager (ie an 11/2015 BIOS update, audio drivers, etc.).
I get having to do updates out of the box but this seemed much more intensive and time consuming than the several other laptops I've purchased (and built, and rebuilt) in the past. It seems to be Windows 10 growing pains from what I can tell BUT once all that was taken care of, it's been running flawlessly. I want to give the laptop 4.5 stars, so I opted to give it 5. Windows 10 is the love child of 7 and 8. I'm still getting used to it but it's not too bad other than the SNAFU with the networking/wifi out of the box.
The sound is incredible for a laptop- normally I couldn't care less about this but i was immediately impressed.I'm glad I went with the FHD display instead of UHD, based on some research. Basically, the FHD is a nice, non-glare matte screen with more true to print colors whereas the UHD is glossy, ultra saturated for movies/media but images looks completely different if/when printed than they do on screen.
The keyboard is solid and non-cramped. And, I freaking love the the customization options with the backlighting and you can easily turn it off with a key stroke. The touch pad is responsive and easy to move or do gestures on (and yes, you can also have this light up too).
While I was installing the bazillion updates and rebooting several times, it did seem a little slow for an SSD. However, from a powered off state it takes seconds until you hit the login screen. I believe you can adjust to a quick boot in BIOS but I haven't checked yet to see if that solves the lag on the reboots. Battery life is also impressive for the size and power of the device. I had 5 or so hours on battery and still had about 20-25% remaining while doing all the installs, updates, etc.
I'm not a gamer but use some heavy programs simultaneously. Even with the downloading, updating, several processes, browser tabs, etc. open this beast didn't slow down one bit. It's quiet and the cooling seems to be top notch. I may see if a cooling pad I have helps even more but so far I haven't needed it at all. My only minor gripe is that a 15+" laptop really should have it's own CD/DVD drive but that didn't seem to be an option on any of the AWs.
I was torn between a 13" and 15" AW but getting the specs I wanted either wasn't possible in the 13" or made it so much more expensive, I may as well go with the 15". Overall, I'm glad I went with the 15- there's a heck of a lot of screen real estate considering the couple inch difference. Initially I had been looking at the Microsoft SurfaceBook but once I stopped laughing at the insane price (~$3k for similar specs to this AW), I started researching the various Alienwares, MSI, HP ZBooks, etc. Yes, you can get similar specs but I found I had to compromise in one area significantly to get another spec I wanted- especially on the processor or RAM, neither of which were something I was willing to compromise on.
Compared to several other high end laptops like this one that I had been researching, this one seems to provide more value for the $$$ unless you have no issue paying $2-3k for a laptop. Will definitely update if anything changes but this thing is freaking phenomenally fast. Love it.
| Standing screen display size | 15.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Processor | 2.3 GHz core_i5 |
| RAM | 16 GB |
| Memory Speed | 2.5 GHz |
| Hard Drive | 1 TB SATA |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M with 2GB GDDR5 |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 2000 MB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 4 |
