 Over the years, I've developed a pretty good nose for bullsh**t, and one of the smelliest things around tends to be mechanical keyboards on laptops. From Asus to Acer to Gigabyte to MSI and probably Alienware at some point, every laptop with a mechanical keyboard has sucked for one reason or another. I mean, some of them are okay for certain tasks, but not a single one of them has been better than a quality membrane keyboard, which is why when Alienware said they had collaborated with Cherry to make a mechanical gaming keyboard— Excuse me, sorry, I threw up a little bit in my mouth. I prepared for the worst. But as it turns out, this thing feels exceptional. Is that rose petals? Wow, yeah. Well, according to my writing staff anyway, it's really good, but I have yet to touch it. So, best of luck, Alienware and Cherry, and best of luck telling you about our sponsor, Pulseway. Pulseway is a remote monitoring and management tool that we use ourselves here at Linus Media Group. Control all your Windows, Mac, and Linux machines from one app by trying it out for free at the link down below. The development of this keyboard started three years ago when Alienware approached Cherry and asked if they could design a mechanical keyboard for their laptops with a small list of requests like, give users the experience they wish they had, and provide mobile users the true feel of a mechanical keyboard. It has to be good for gaming and for typing. Oh, and by the way, you have to do it without using up any more space than the existing membrane keyswitches do. Now, how exactly did they do? Apparently, I get a single sentence now to give you my thoughts. I can only type a single sentence on it. Yes, one sentence, then we're swapping it out for a bit. Oh, okay. Choose a good sentence. I'm gonna go with Quick Brown Fox. You're not gonna try and plug like LTT store or something? Um, no, I'm gonna type the quick... I gotta evaluate this thing in one sentence. I got work to do here. Okay. Am I allowed to backspace and retype things if I make a mistake? No. I feel a bit like a wine reviewer right now. It's got a strong tactile feel, heavy at the front end, and a pleasing mechanical sound, save for the slightly twangy end note. Um... Is that what you expected to hear? That's actually pretty accurate. Now, this has been billed as the world's first Cherry MX ultra-low profile mechanical keyboard, which is true, but there have been laptops before featuring Cherry MX switches, like this paragon of practicality. This right here is the Acer Predator 21X, possibly the most bat-sh** crazy laptop to ever exist. Oh, just a second. You need the wrist rest for the full typing experience. Right, you're right. Sorry, my bad. It's got features that even today you can't find, like a 21-inch curved ultra-wide display, two GTX 1080s running in SLI, more I.O. than probably just about any laptop today, and of course, a fully mechanical keyboard. Of course, this isn't here so I can talk about the room-filling sound, tasteful lighting effects, and integrated Tobii eye tracking. It's to talk about using Cherry MX Browns on a keyboard. And this is, you know, you joke about it, but this is a pretty good solution to the otherwise... It works really well....wrist-breaking, you know, difference in height between your table and the computer. It's... I mean, it's really better than any other keyboard on a laptop because it's full on Cherry MX Browns with, and get this, they weren't even using low-profile keycaps or anything. Acer went full bat. They saved absolutely no Z height. Of course, saving space wasn't really a priority when Acer was designing a product like this one. This is not really a laptop. It doesn't go on your lap. This is a desktop replacement. And for a number of reasons, this is a product category that has mostly evaporated over the last three to four years. A big part of the reason is that you can fit the same kind of features and performance, not to mention even things like mechanical keyboards, into much slimmer designs. Take this Asus Strix Scar 17 G733. This is probably the closest competitor to the M17 with matching core specs, 360 Hertz panel, RTX 3080 graphics, and an eight core Ryzen processor, with the big draw here being that it is just $3,000 because somehow that's a bargain compared to the Alienware's casual $3,600 price tag. One key difference though is that the Strix comes with an opto-mechanical keyboard. Those are actuated by blocking a laser beam as the key is pressed down for apparently some of the best response times possible. In practice though, ooh, man, this thing does not feel amazing. Nope, nope, I will give it some more time. I will give it some more time. I mean- Do you wanna boot up like Doom Eternal or something? I think it's not too bad for gaming. Yeah, I'll give you that, Alex. It doesn't feel nearly as bad for gaming, but what it doesn't feel like is mechanical. Now to be clear, mechanical doesn't mean anything other than the method by which the Switch actuates. And you can have mechanical switches in all shapes and sizes and sounds and feels. It's just that in the context of computer hardware, people have an expectation that a mechanical switch is Cherry MX-like in some way. So you've got a longer travel or you've got a tactile bump or a more satisfying consistency in the feel and the sound, right? So it might be mechanical in its way of operating, but it doesn't feel very good. Yeah, so I think I know why it doesn't feel very good. Yeah. I made this graph here. Ah, the force curve. So this is how far we have pressed down and this is how much force we're applying. So it goes from actuation to really quickly bottoming out because you have that much force on it to actuate it. That makes a lot of sense. It's too non-linear. Well, but I think the problem also is that it's too linear. Like you don't know where the actuation point is going to be. Wait, so the actuation point doesn't require more force. It's just there. You mean- Well, just press it. You can feel like there's a click in the middle. Yeah. It doesn't really make any sense. Yeah. Yeah. So there are a couple of problems here. Number one is that this doesn't really feel like much. It feels really soft. Then you get to this actuation point. This is the click. So down, down, down, click. It's a really strong click. And by the time you've applied this much force, you're basically going to jump straight to here because it's not like you can ride it out by applying just a little bit more, a little bit more. And then this is a big problem too, because your bottom out feels extremely mushy. So you've got mush here, this really strong click that on paper might seem nice and sounds nice. And then you've got this kind of mushy bottoming out and the whole thing just doesn't feel very good. You combine that with the inherent small amount of deck flex that you're going to have in any laptop that isn't just made out of a solid machine piece of aluminum. And it contributes even more to the mushiness. Yeah, so now you finally get to use this again. Okay, let's go back to the Alienware. This is a very cute little chart that you made. Thank you, Alex. Yes. It's those extra little bits of effort that set you apart from the other Alex's. JK Prime, you're great too. He also does nice little bits of extra effort, so. We ran out of desk pad space. Fortunately, we have these super wide ones, lttstore.com. Before I give any more impressions, I want to actually game on this thing though, because a good typing experience does not necessarily mean that it's a good gaming keyboard. And I prefer it, but I don't know that I can objectively say it's better. I just tend to prefer that, well, more desktop Cherry MX feel. With typing and gaming impressions under my belt, I can say with confidence that I like these a lot better than these, but these aren't necessarily my favorite style of switches for either typing or gaming, because if you look closely, they don't, they're quite stiff at the top of the keystroke. I can press on it quite a lot before, there, it goes, right? Can you hear that click, Brandon? Or is the whoosh of the fans too much? There it is. The bottom out is much more satisfying, not nearly as mushy feeling, but I do tend to prefer a tactile bump that's somewhere below the very top of the keystroke. And actually, Alex has a force chart that I can share with you guys. So you can see that's exactly what, yeah, man. I have typed on a lot of keyboards over the years. So you're pretty much putting all the force here and then it falls away on you. But the good news is that when it bottoms out, it doesn't have that same kind of mush to it. So from a strictly performance standpoint, if all I did was game, I would probably have to take these. But if I was me, and I know that I actually do type sometimes as well, I would absolutely take these first. Now let's talk about how these work, because while I have used kind of front loaded, heavier switches like these, I've never used these ones before because they are brand new. We got a little tester here from Cherry, number 39 of 80, apparently, that gives you a really good look, both with some clear key caps over top of them, as well as an exposed one. So it's actually a butterfly style mechanism that if you look at our microscope footage, we can see there's a little piece that slips off end. There it is. That's where you get your click. Then the spring in the middle brings it back to rest. So you could easily, that's actually interesting, you could easily adjust the tension on this thing by adjusting that spring. That's kind of a cool thought. Not that you would want to. Cherry always impresses me with their attention to detail. Are these steel? Yeah. 15 million clicks. And if Cherry rates it for 15 million, you better believe it. As good as a key switch might be though, as I touched on earlier, it can easily be let down by a chassis that is not stiff enough. And we saw a great example of this in the Galaxy Book Pro on short circuit about a week ago. Fortunately, Delalienware has done a great job of this with a unibody magnesium CNC chassis. But it is something to keep in mind, especially as these switches start to show up on other laptops as an option, because they're gonna cost you about $150. Another challenge for Delalienware is that they already had some of the best mobile key switches on the market before this collaboration with Cherry. Can they possibly be worth that kind of money? Oh, wow, look at this. We are so prepared for this video. To find out, I've got an M15R3 on hand. This is still not my favorite style of keyboard, because I type a lot, and that front loaded actuation curve is not ideal for it. But if you like that style, and for gaming, a lot of people do, the Cherry version is definitely better. If it's $150 better, that's more up to you. But for a lot of people, a good feeling keyboard is absolutely worth that kind of money, and this is definitely a lot better feeling. My notes just say, somehow use the OLED screen to segue into the fact that a keyboard is attached to a laptop, and the rest of the laptop has to be good for that to matter, ah, yes. So the M15R3 uses an OLED display. Oh, inky blacks, so good. Whereas the M17R4 does not. As far as I can tell, it's using the same 1080p 360 hertz IPS panel as what we had in the ASUS Strix Scar. Now you might think 1080p 360 hertz doesn't make a lot of sense in a laptop with an RTX 3080, because you're gonna be CPU limited in basically everything. You might say, oh, it probably makes more sense to get a 3070 and save a couple bucks, or better yet, go for a 1440p display. But if you are primarily planning on playing competitive shooters, and then just occasionally wanna turn RTX on in cyberpunk, this, not a terrible config. What's really impressive about the M17R4 though, is just how freaking powerful it is, especially the GPU. With 165 watts of power on tap, this is the fastest mobile GPU we've ever tested, and in games, it wins against the Scar every single time. For productivity, the Core i9 Intel processor does hold the Alienware back a bit, with the Ryzen 9 and the Strix pulling ahead. But in the coming weeks, we're expecting Alienware to be launching an AMD version of the M17 that should be the fastest gaming laptop on the market, period. Now, of course, with power like that comes cooling responsibility, and also airflow responsibility. So when you're using the M17, expect the fans to always be on, and during gaming, well, don't even think about using the speakers, however good they might sound, or open back headphones. But what Alienware has done with cooling here is still impressive, even if the CPU regularly gets close to 100 degrees Celsius. I mean, look, it's not even that thick. Also inside, we've got an 86 watt hour battery, and Alienware did warn me that the system was not optimized for battery life, but holy crap, I thought the days of gaming laptops with around two hours of battery had finally ended. Not here, maybe the AMD version will be a little bit better, but my hopes aren't super high, which means that even though it doesn't look as clunky as its predecessors did, this is still the modern day equivalent of a desktop replacement. And you know what? I kinda like this future. You still have to be plugged into the wall pretty much all the time, but dang, you got a lot of IO, they even worked in their proprietary external GPU dock thing, which is freaking awesome, you can all of course go Thunderbolt if you prefer that sort of thing. Wired ethernet, dang impressive, if you have $3,600 to spend, of course. Mind you, mind you, that pricing looks downright reasonable compared to what the Predator 21X costs. What was it saying, like 10 grand? Yeah. I don't know, something, something sponsor. Thanks to Ting Mobile for sponsoring today's video. Ting Mobile has new rates that make it easier to see how much you can save by switching, with data plans starting at $15 a month and unlimited data just $45 a month. And if you liked their previous pay for only what you use plans, they're still there. They're called Ting Mobile's flex plans and they charge just $5 a gig. Data can also be shared if you have a family plan, so you can connect more devices to save more. You'll still get nationwide coverage in the US and award-winning customer service and pretty much any phone will work with Ting Mobile. Ting is also giving away a brand new Galaxy S21 Plus 5G and some Ting swag to lucky fans living in the United States. So get $25 in Ting service credit and enter to win a Galaxy S21 Plus 5G at linus.ting.com. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe you'll also enjoy checking out, you know what? Go check out our original review of this thing. It truly is an utterly unique device. Anyone wanna buy one? No, we're not selling that Linus. Not on Craigslist. No, never. It's useless. It's beautiful. This belongs in a museum. Donate it. Someone takes up so much space. I mean, look at this, remember this? It's a track pad, you could flip it around to be a number pad.