Alienware m16 R1
Not the sveltest or the quietest, but still a solid choice for gamers looking to maximise their budget
PRICE As reviewed, £1,416 (£1,699 inc from dell.co.uk
The Alienware m16 R1 isn’t an easy laptop to evaluate due to its customisability. Hurl enough money at Dell and you could build one of the world’s most powerful gaming laptops. Instead, our review unit is the entry-level offering, so while its frame rates are poor compared to the Acer Predator ( see p56) and Lenovo Legion 9i ( see p58), bear in mind it ships with an RTX 4060 chip.
That’s matched with Intel’s Core i7-13700HX CPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 512GB SSD, and arguably it’s the last that will hold you back. Upgrading to a 1TB SSD costs £50, 2TB £180, and you can go all the way up to an 8TB RAID0 array for an extra £1,119. Other upgrades include a Core i9-13900HX, 32GB or 64GB of RAM, and RTX 4070, 4080 or 4090 graphics. You can even specify the Alienware m16 with an AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX processor.
After such a mind-bending mix of components, it’s almost a relief to find only two screen choices. Both are 16in IPS panels, so you choose between a 480Hz 1,920 x 1,200 display or a 165Hz 2,560 x 1,600 unit. Dell sensibly sent the latter, as it offers great clarity while avoiding overkill pixel density.
Those who like the vividness and rich blacks of OLED technology won’t fall in love with this screen, but 73% coverage of the DCI-P3 means colours look punchy. Accuracy is strong, too, with an average Delta E of 0.15. It would have been nice to go brighter than 290cd/m2 though.
Perhaps Dell spent its lighting budget on the keyboard, with the m16’s per-key AlienFX RGB effects giving you unlimited options. It’s great to type on, with real resonance every time you click and plenty of travel. The touchpad is less joyful to use, with a sluggish feel on occasion.
While I like the m16’s aesthetics – its brushed metal finish falls on the right side of premium – it’s a chunky beast at 3.3kg. Even the lid is heavy: without a divot to hook your fingers into, opening the Alienware m16 can feel like trying to prise open a particularly stubborn clam. Dell pays attention to the rest of the design, though, with a Dark Metallic Moon colour scheme that proved resistant to fingerprints. Dell sensibly puts most of the ports at the rear, avoiding jutting cables and USB sticks on the left and right. Two Thunderbolt 4 ports are joined by a pair of USB-A connectors, HDMI 2.1 and mini-DisplayPort 1.4 video outputs, an RJ-45 gigabit Ethernet connection, SD card slot and a 3.5mm jack.
The eye-catching vents hint at the cooling within, and they do their job well: all our gaming test results were in line with expectations for an RTX 4060 machine. I ran Forza Motorsport 8 and Alan Wake 2 at 1600p above 60fps with little reduction in quality thanks to DLSS 3.
In general use the Core i7 chip holds its own against Core i9 and Ryzen 7/9 configurations. Only its SSD disappoints, copying a mixed folder of 25GB files at 785MB/sec rather than the 1,800MB/sec or better we’re used to seeing from gaming laptops.
The worst element of the m16 is noise. Even seemingly undemanding tasks, such as downloading a game from Steam, can cause the fans to ramp up. Despite this, I don’t recommend cradling the m16 on your laptop, as it hit a toasty 49˚C in our tests. At least battery life was unaffected, falling in line with our expectations for a gaming laptop.
Sticking with mild disappointment takes me to the webcam. Despite being 1080p, retaining finer image detail is not this webcam’s strength. Even in my bright home office it produced pictures that looked muddy.
But let’s finish on a strength, for this laptop has one of the best speaker setups I’ve tested. Not only does it go loud but the soundscape is well balanced, without a hint of the tinny quality you hear on thinner laptops. Bass is deep enough to make listening to music a pleasure, too.
So where does this leave the Alienware m16? Weirdly attractive, despite its heft, and way too loud during the most unexpected, dull computing tasks. It’s a machine I both respect and am puzzled by. If I had a budget over £2,000, I wouldn’t consider it. However, at £1,699 for this spec – and with Nvidia’s AI learning techniques to help boost rates – it makes for a compelling “budget” gaming laptop. DAVE MEIKLEHAM
“The eye-catching vents hint at the cooling within, and they do their job well: all our test results were in line with expectations”
SPECIFICATIONS
24-core (8 P-cores, 16 E-cores) Intel Core i7-13700HX processor 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics 16GB DDR5-4800 RAM 16in 165Hz IPS non-touch panel, 2,560 x 1,600 resolution
512GB M.2 PCI-E Gen4 SSD Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.3 2 x Thunderbolt 4/USB-C 4 2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 HDMI 2.1 mini-DisplayPort 1.4 gigabit Ethernet port SD card reader 3.5mm headphone jack 86Wh battery
Windows 11 Home 369 x 290 x 25.4mm (WDH) 3.3kg 1yr Premium onsite warranty