My New VR/MR Portable Developer Setup (Alienware x16 R2 First Impressions)
I briefly talked about getting a new Alienware x16 R2 recently and how much I needed a powerful laptop for XR (AR/VR) development. Well, I found that laptop, and here's a small video about it.
As far as pros and cons of using this laptop for XR development, here's what I’ve experienced in these last 2 weeks:
Pros 👍:
It is portable. I can now take it anywhere, unlike my previous main machine, which was a desktop. It was hard to work on XR projects unless I was using a powerful desktop.
It allows me to run Meta Link incredibly fast compared to my older desktop running a Titan GPU + 64GB + i9 versus the i9 Ultra + 4090 GPU + 32 GB on this laptop.
Large Unity projects open incredibly fast, I would say 50% faster than on my MacBook Pro (Apple M1 Pro 2021).
The keyboard feels like a full-size mechanical keyboard and is very responsive.
It has the ability to change between performance modes (battery, quiet, balanced, or performance for more high-resource experiences).
Customer service from @Dell @AlienwareChannel is amazing; they’re very responsive and willing to help right away.
Cons 👎:
Although it is portable, it doesn’t fit in a regular-sized backpack. You need a larger backpack or an Alienware Backpack, which works very well with this laptop. This is a con, but the Horizon Slim Backpack is awesome and very affordable at $38.99 USD.
It is a bit loud, but honestly, I wouldn’t expect less since it is portable.
The price is pretty high. I can justify it due to its portability and the ability to use it during conferences and trips, but for the average XR developer, this may be too expensive.
When I initially received this machine, there was screen light bleeding. However, I was able to get an exchange right away, which was delivered within 3-4 days from my initial request.
Overall, I am pretty happy with this purchase. I had a Razor Blade prior to this (with very low specs), and it became outdated too fast. For that reason, when Meta Link (aka Oculus Link) got an update, I couldn’t use that feature after one year of purchasing the laptop. This is the main reason why I decided to get the highest spec version of the Alienware x16 R2.
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