Surprisingly Useful AI Article Enhancements
With Black Friday upon us there are many great laptop deals to be had and any prospective buyers should check out our exhaustive Laptop Group Test to find the best models on the market (it will be updated throughout the holiday period). However, at High Performance Laptops, we take a keen interest in what Dell is up to and it seems that many potential buyers will be avoiding their cheap laptop deals (especially in the flood of advertorial articles promoted with affiliate sales links on tech publisher listicles) in the Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Holiday Season sales.
As we saw recently with Dell’s tragic, historically low, 1.4 /5 Product Review score from actual Dell Laptop customers, who’d actually lived with their purchases, many buyers are taking to social media with complaints about Dell Laptops, as well as Laptops from its Alienware gaming range. There are repeated complaints from commenters regarding sales, delivery, non-functional products, used items being sold as new, overheating, delays in deliveries (that lead to cancellations and the reversion of on-sale prices), along with general product quality issues… it’s a mess. So, what are they saying?
Many of the recent issues appear on Reddit’s Dell and Alienware forums. However, Dell employees have recently infiltrated the Moderation of these communities which typically results in the manipulation of user posts, comments and votes. However, there are still many complaints getting through and they’re featured on the /r/dellcomputers and /r/failienware subreddits. We’ll be continually updating this article over the coming weeks.
People (Still) Can’t Decipher The New Model Names
A recent poster once again alluded to Dell’s ridiculous decision to rename it’s entire laptop range using Apple’s MacBook terms. This was widely mocked at its own press conference.
The new tiers don’t even simplify things for buyers, because all three tiers are sub-divided into Base, Plus, and Premium variants. Is a Pro Plus better than a Pro Max Base? How about a Pro Premium versus Pro Max Plus?
Can’t Tell If New Laptop Is Actually 2nd Hand Or Built Badly
This buyer spent $3,500 on an expensive Alienware 18 Area 51 gaming laptop but noticed that it looked well-used, that screw placement was amateurish and that panel gaps were not what you’d expect from a so-called premium gaming laptop brand.
Buying The A Battery Replacement Goes Worng
Some issues should not be possible. Dell laptops have a service tag that lists compatible replacement parts for each model sold. That’s why there’s incredulity among the comments about how Dell could possibly send out the wrong part – and yet that’s what it did. Worse, Dell support didn’t acknowledge the problem leaving the customer out of pocket.
Appalling Customer Service
Tales of Dell’s collapse in customer service are all over the internet and it coincides with the company replacing many of its human teams with with Ai in 2024. The remaining overworked (and often overseas) staff now have to face increasing laptop issues from customers which likely led to the circular merry-go-round and bare-faced lies that this user rants about, while providing supporting documentation.
Lack Of Upgradability
While many PC integrators use premium components from specialist brands, Dell cuts costs where possible. As such, on Desktop PCs you’ll find Power Supplies with weird power ratings that are tailored to the components at the time of purchase and don’t suit significant upgrades over time. It’s a similar case with laptops where, for example, despite there being space for adding a hard drive, the connector has been removed so this can’t be done. This user just wanted to put their old SSD in a new laptop to make data transfer easier, but it wasn’t possible.
As one commenter put it:
Dell is one of the largest OEMs in the world for desktop and laptop PCs. Of course they design every platform efficiently for new sales. They aren’t in the business of selling people an upgradable machine. That’s why you find desktops with PSUs that are 267W or 383W. They are literally buying and designing the system to the bare essential need to deliver the performance advertised. All those nickels on 383W PSUs instead of 500W Gold PSUs makes a difference. Can’t upgrade your video card, but they didn’t sell that, they sold what was there.
Secure Boot Support Stopping For Older Models in 2026
This recent thread sees OP discuss how Dell’s top-line Latitude laptops will no longer get BIOS support for Microsoft Secure Boot Certificates from 2026. The full list is here and includes many models from Dell and Alienware. Dell’s official reasoning behind it can be found here but its loyal customers are not amused.
Sometimes, Just Everything Goes Wrong
This poor user’s wife recently had issues with her expensive Dell 16 Premium DA16250’s delivery, hardware, support and power supply which spiraled into more issues. The long post is titled, “How dell’s purchase failed several times in a month”
Buyer Beware
Dell recently experienced a “Horror PC Slump” so beware of on-paper huge discounts and remember that there’s more than one reason why the prices are actually so low right now.
Last Updated on November 26, 2025 by Nick Ross
