Pros: This thing is great, I wanted to pick up something for the living room, but i am not totally sold on xbox and ps4. You have your desktop still so you can surf the web and so on. I play Elder scrolls online on Max graphics and it runs immaculately. I did upgrade the RAM to 8g because why not, and will hit the hard drive eventually. It does run a bit loud due to the fans but I cant complain that it is keeping it run cool.

Cons: Slow stock hard drive, also needs more RAM.

Other Thoughts: Great purchase, but you will need to upgrade if you want to play on max settings on certain games.

Pros: Small size, silent, attractive design, upgradeable, kid friendly. My 12 year old LOVEs this PC. With Win 8.1 installed, it plays all his Steam games and productivity software (MS Office) for school online with Blackboard for school assignments. Added a portable LG USB DVD-Writer to load software from disk or burn CDs. So far, it's worked perfectly.

Cons: Slow stock hard drive, no second sata drive bay, graphics upgrade unavailable.

Other Thoughts: One of the first things to do is replace the slow 5400 rpm drive. The i3 system comes with a Seagate ST500LT012 Laptop Thin 500GB hard drive. It's ok for storage, not so much for performance. I swapped it out for a WD Black 750GB (WD7500BPKX) 7200 rpm drive. With laptop drives being so thin, it would have been nice if they would have added just enough additional height to the case to have a both a primary system SSD and secondary storage drive for game, software, etc. A 128GB SSD drive is cheap and would boot the system far faster than any standard HD. Since that is not the case, I'll probably go to a reliable SSD once the 500+ capacity drive prices fall some more. But for now, this will do. Add another stick of 4GB memory (more the merrier). One note about the graphics, it you are using a Samsung monitor/TV type display and you are getting an output that is NOT 1080p clear, rename HDMI the input to the TV from HDMI to PC. That will clear the oversampling problem and your display should be crystal clear.

Pros: -fast cpu
-gtx 860m
-upgradable hard drive, cpu and gpu and memory.
-5ghz wifi..... ps4 only capable of 2.4ghz
-xbox 360 controller that just works no driver hunting required, also has a cd included for the drivers if you would like to use it on another pc.
-windows 8.1 you can play any of your pc games.... STEAM sells make this amazing games that cost 16-30 bucks on older consoles are on steam for 3-15 bucks.
- you have the choice of an xbox controller or a keyboard.
-you can upgrade hardware without voiding warranty

Cons: -SLOOOOW hard drive, the hard drive is so slow it can cause some stuttering, i understand that dell had to make a cut someplace, but at least they didnt go cheap on the cpu or gpu.

Other Thoughts: Originally i was going to do a custom build small itx form factor pc for mostly streaming games and videos to my living room, but after pricing all the pieces out and finding out it would of been closer to 750-800 without tax or shipping to build a pc to be equivalent to this. i decided this is a great option and i couldn't beat the small form factor. great deal if you add up that this thing has the equivalent of a gtx 750ti inside of it an os and wifi with xbox 360 controller its hard to beat. Also i would like to add i don't like alienware or dell i have been an avid custom pc builder for the last 13 years so understand that this thing really impressed me.

Pros: Very small makes ps4 look huge.
Very good xbox controller that actually works with rumble in some games... to my suprise.

Built in 5ghz wifi .... coff coff ps4 only has 2.4ghz slowness.
Very ez to set up.
Windows 8.1
Very low power consumption.
Came with Duracell batterys .... lol sorry used to batterys being from some unkown origin.

Cons: Hdd 500gb slow fest really holds it back and for me caused some stutter... change this thing first.

Other Thoughts: Let me say i never support alienware and i always thought of them as overpriced snake oil. But lately i had been using an old laptop streaming games from desktop to living room and it wasnt the best. So i went looking for a small form factor itx build. And ran into this. Which btw to get the same performance with windows doing it myself withought all of the built in features would easily costed closer to 600 not 500. Well in closing happy with my purchase hope to see alienware improve on this product. Btw thing can play all current ps4 titles at higher res and if your looking to get into pc gaming this is a great way to start.

Pros: Plays games, movies, music, pictures! Perfect for my entertainment needs!

Cons: None

Pros: -Small.
-Easy set-up.
-Pretty quiet, doesn't get too warm.
-Can run non-open-world games at decent speeds and frames, usually.

Cons: -Only three USB ports.

-Glitchy AlienFX (lighting).

-Windows Explorer generally lags when doing simple things such as using the windows search engine or opening folders.

-Lags terribly in open-world games such as MMO's. It can generally run the games themselves at the highest of settings, but as soon as you make an attempt to move around, you're met with an unplayable frame drop (even on the lowest of settings).

-Doesn't include nearly as many options as it claims to do in the Alienware Alpha User Interface (Basically it just allows you to play around with the lighting, which often doesn't work).

-Get's random framerate drops in resource-light games such as Half-Life 2.

Other Thoughts: I really wanted this to be a good device, I really did. But for only $550, I'm not sure why I expected so high. The Alpha can handle running games without a problem. But as soon as you try to move around in a game, the machine becomes useless. Games like Planetside 2 or ArcheAge are unplayable. Even Grand Theft Auto IV has low frames when moving around. If you're looking for something to play games that don't require a whole lot of strength, this is the machine for you. Otherwise, I would recommend saving for a proper device.

But if you want a $550 machine to watch Netflix on, this might be able to pull it off.

Pros: Can be used as a regular PC. You will not get better gaming performance for the money, even if you build your own system. I got mine for $407 after tax and free shipping. Check the forums for coupon codes and sales.

Cons: The base model should have 8GB RAM, but that is an easy fix. Same with SSD. I bought the matching 4GB RAM stick (Samsung M471B5173DB0-YK0) for $25, and $180 for the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD, and this system rocks! Only other con is the GPU cannot be upgraded, but according to multiple forums, it can be safely overclocked for a nice performance boost of 5-10 FPS on most games at 1080p.

Other Thoughts: The Alienware UI is buggy and tedious - uninstall it, and use the Alpha as a regular PC in desktop mode, preferably after installing the additional RAM. Buy the base model, the matching RAM stick (Samsung M471B5173DB0-YK0), and a 500GB SSD. Those are the highest value for cost and performance. If cost is an issue, go with a 1TB 7200 SSHD instead of SSD, as multiple forum users have been happy with that set up. The i5 and i7 processors do not add much to gaming performance, and not worth the cost. Maybe 3 FPS improvement over i3 according to multiple users.

Pros: Small Form Factor
Can find it $100 below retail in some places
Upgradeable CPU, RAM and HDD

Cons: Can't upgrade GPU (860M)
Alpha UI somewhat buggy at times
One time selection of which mode it starts in can't be changed
Possible thermal issues longterm

Other Thoughts: Don't let the Alienware hate fool you. If you can find it around $450-470 this is quite a value. You simply can't build a better performing PC in this form factor for the money. It's almost smaller than a Wii U! Since you can upgrade the CPU, I do believe it's a better value than an equal spec laptop as well.

Google "arma 3 on core i3 alienware alpha w/8gb" to get an idea of how it performs. Not a stress test by any means, but you can get the idea. 720p above 40fps in campaign mode in Arma 3. And with a controller if you are so inclined.

Pros: After buying this and getting it two days later without paying for two-day shipping, I've spent some time using it and I haven't had any problems. The set-up was easy and painless but it did take a few minutes. Since then, I've been playing games on high or ultra quality with very good FPS.

-Quiet.
-Easy, painless set-up.
-Nice Lighting.
-Doesn't get too hot, even while playing resource-heavy games.
-Very easy to switch from Steam OS to Desktop Mode.
-Controller comes with batteries.

Cons: No cons, however when I switch to desktop mode, the lighting on the Alpha changes to the default blue.

Other Thoughts: For the price, I think this is an amazing machine. I can play every game in my massive steam library with no trouble. I was ready to buy an actual PC however I ended up buying this and I'm completely satisfied with my purchase.

Pros: The system boots up quickly despite the 5400 RPM 2.5" HDD
It has 4 GB in a single stick of ram so its upgradeable
The system is whisper quiet (does this count if the fan isn't spinning?)
takes only 4 philips screws to open (best part)
GPU performance was OK... on par with a Single 800 series nvidia card (last gen)
Came with the windows XBOX360 wireless dongle and controller for PC

Cons: System lasted 2 days
Farcry 4 played on medium settings and no anti-alaising at 46-58 FPS
Dragon Age : Inqusiotion wouldn't run at all (driver issue)
The GPU uses CUSTOM DRIVERS, IE: you cant update them until LONG after the stock ones come out.
The I-3 CPU was a little sluggish, launching apps had an irritating delay
The XBOX360 controller was squeeky and thumbsticks were "sticky" (to the edges of the opening, not tacky sticky)
Minecraft with medium and Low shaders ran at 30-44 FPS (this is SAD on a single 970 it runs at 55-75FPS)

Other Thoughts: The Customer Experience:

I bought this for my sons 10th birthday, I paid extra for over night shipping to try and get it in time and had even called and spoke to a dell rep and asked if they thought we could get it in time and i was told "easily", despite was i was told It didn't ship very quickly at all and took 4 days to ship but i did receive it the next day after it finally had shipped. We did not receive it in time for his birthday, but he got to open a nice box with a picture of the present inside! I'm sure you can imagine how well that went ... he was still grateful but not as excited as if it had been on time.

When it arrived I open the box which was packed well, setup the console and the Alienware UI immediately said it wouldn't start until it updated the interface, We have 3.0 Mbps DSL so it took 1 hour to get to 86% were it froze up and I hard to hard reset the console, it restarted at 0% and 1.5 hours later finally completed and installed. Once it was running, I setup steam and copied all the games over from another computer on the network, installed malware and virus protection I left for work.

I came home 10 hours later and the system was off. I thought it was strange but i powered it on.
It displayed an error that said... "CPU FAN FAILURE".
I opened the system swapped the GPU and CPU fans and powered the system on for a few seconds, the GPU fan in the cpu power plug worked, so the CPU fan was truly dead and defective.

Next I called dell, and after 5 transfers and 1.5 hours on hold collectively another (rude) tech answered he asked for my information for the 6th time (E.S.C., name, and email address) He told me once again i was in the wrong department and was about to transfer me again and like the all the other techs, INSISTED i was giving them the wrong express(lol) service code.

After he picked up that i was CLEARLY not happy thus far with dells support he said he would help me if i had registered the new computer online. I told him i had not done that yet as I hadn't had it long enough to do so, in response he informed me he was going to disconnect so i could go online and register the new computer, and it could take up to 10 days for the process to complete before i could place a service call again... Needless to say, I lost my cool a bit, I explained that was unacceptable and I wanted help right away.

He was rude again but told me he would reluctantly help me if I would power on the system again and run a battery of tests.
Shocked at what he was asking me to do, I informed him I am a network engineer for a living and that i have 25 years of hardware and networking support under my belt, Including sub-contracting to dell warranty for a while.

I was not about to power on a system with no CPU fan so i could cook the CPU and motherboard.
After Boldly exclaiming that it wouldn't happen and even if it did dell would still honor the warranty (guess he forgot I used to do work for them) Next He began to shut d