
Rating 4.3 out of 5 stars with 203 reviews
4.3- Performance (51)
- Build Quality (27)
- GPU (25)
- RAM (18)
- Cooling (16)
- Battery Life (27)
- Weight (11)
- Software (5)
- Portability (3)
- Power Adapter (3)
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- Rated 4 out of 5 stars
A beast built like a tank
This is a very good 4000 series gaming laptop! The screen (at least on my unit) has zero backlight bleed and is sufficiently bright with great color gamut! The RTX 4080 GPU is extraordinary and a significant step up even from a 3000 series GPU. The keyboard is excellent to type on and Alienware/Dell have finally illuminated the secondary functions which is something they have neglected to do for the last couple of years in their Alienware lines. It's nice to be able to see which function key does what in a dim or dark environment. The cooling is very good and while the machine likes to go crazy on the CPU by ramping it up to well over 100 watts when you first launch a game it usually calms down after a couple of minutes. The GPU always stays cool, but the CPU fluctuates a lot in power and temperature depending on what's going on in the game. I know there's reviews out there about the 55 watt power limit that was put in the BIOS, but an update this past week seems to have reset that. You can of course go back in and set whatever limits you want as this M16 comes with a very customizable BIOS! On the negative side of things, I personally don't love the sound of the fans as they tend to be a little high pitched with a bit of a whistle at times. The other criticisms I have are that the trackpad is a little small by today's standards and not the smoothest. One more issue is that the laptop doesn't support USB-C charging for those times when you don't want to carry the literal brick-sized power adapter. The M16 is highly upgradable with space for three more SSDs (two are the shorty size) and the ability to swap out the RAM as well. Overall, this is a very good gaming and generally purpose machine. Windows Hello face login works super well, the keyboard is a joy to type on, the battery life is mediocre (but that comes with this class of laptop) and the build quality is excellent! If you want high performance for a reasonable price from a usually highly expensive brand this is it!
Posted by JavierM
- Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Power with(out) Portability
First things first, the performance of this laptop is exceptional. If maximum performance is what you are after, stop hesitating and just buy this laptop, if it's available still. Chasis: The shell of the laptop is of high quality metal with a semi-gloss coating and the interior features a soft touch material. Both materials resist finger prints, which is great. Keyboard and Touchpad: These both are great albeit the touch pad is on the smaller side. The keyboard has ample travel and I appreciate the touch of RGB. The track pad is not glass I believe but it feels high quality nonetheless. Display: Not much to say here: 1600p at 240hz with G-SYNC and ~100% P3 color coverage. My only complaint here is the display is about 300 nits, and brighter is always better. The matte coating does a good job with reflections though. (Fan) Noise: The fan Noise of this laptop is pretty reasonable, especially in the balanced mode which is my profile of choice as I don't need maximum performance all of the time. With that said, my unit has pretty audible coil whine (high pitched electric noise that sounds like buzzing at varying frequencies) and I'm not too happy about that. It's a minor inconvenience though as it does not impact the functionality of the device whatsoever. Battery Life: I was able to get about 4-5 hours by enabling power saver, throttling the CPU to 15W in Intel XTU, and setting the preferred graphics to integrated. All of these steps are a bit tedious though and I would rather just plug it in to be honest. The laptop weighs ~7lbs anyway, so not terribly portable. Performance: I mentioned it earlier, but holy smokes is this thing fast. I compared it to another laptop with an i7 11800H and 3050 mobile, and it is a bloodbath. It's multi core speeds in Cinebench R23 are some of the fastest I've seen and the single core at over 2100 points is insane. Time spy shows a similar trend, with the 4080 mobile at over 19k points in the graphics score, which is nipping at the heels of a 3090 desktop and I believe surpasses a desktop 4070. The CPU does not lag too far behind and I'm surprised how similarly it performs to the desktop 13900K since this draws considerably less power. All in all, performance is where this laptop shines, which makes since giving it's 4 fan cooling system and significant bulk. Conclusion: Buy this if the pros outweigh the cons I mentioned and especially if you plan to use it as a desktop replacement. It can serve as a day to day laptop; however, I would recommend something at least a little lighter and with better battery life for that purpose.
Posted by Blues
- Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Alienware M16 4080 240HZ 16GB RAM
Alienware has a great reputation for making really solid gaming desktops and laptops. I would like to address my main concern with this laptop and that was the brightness of the screen. I also have another laptop with 500 nits brightness that I used to compare this to. It is 300+ nits and is plenty bright. I was surprised how I needed to turn it down a few notches when gaming due to it being too bright so no worries about the screen brightness. The picture was very crisp and clear, so watching movies and gaming was a treat. l also ran a backlight bleed test and almost 0 backlight bleed. I would also like to give kudos to Alienware on the RGB and keyboard as they are very good. Typing on this laptop is really good and feels nice to the touch with good travel. The secondary functions are also lit up nice and bright. This laptop has great build quality (solid and heavy) and I think the color is awesome! No need to worry about the power when gaming on this laptop. Yes, the fans can get loud under load when gaming but that is to be expected. Yes, the battery life is not the best either under load. The 4080 with 12GB of VRAM is great. I did run a benchmark test on MW2 and the AVG was 204 FPS (please see picture). All I needed to do was run the normal updates and the laptop did the rest. After a few weeks of non-stop gaming etc. I can say I do recommend this laptop as I have had 0 issues with it. I hope this is helpful for anyone looking at this laptop.
Posted by Michael
- Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Pure performance, really good price
The specs are awesome. High-end machine with really good performance. The price is good for the overall package. Pros: very good performance (keeps up with a high productivity and gaming demand), reasonable price, the design is something special (take it or leave it). The QHD 240 hz screen is excelent. Cons: the overall design is kind of bulky (again take it or leave it), not a laptop designed for extreme portability. The power adapter is a brick, heavy and unconfortable. It gets warm pretty fast, but if you know how to tweak the fans config the temperature will run in the reasonable theshold. The screen brightness is high but default but it can be configured to your demand. Overall is a really solid option with a relative good price. Totally recommended
Posted by Arcanor
- Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Great laptop, using as desktop replacement.
Great laptop. Has some flaws in terms of Alienware command center not being updated yet and low wattage to the cpu out of the box, but these are things that can be fixed manually or will be fixed with software updates. Out of the box, no one will notice any limitations playing games. I benched m16 4080 at 106 fps in Cyberpunk with ultra settings, DLSS on quality, with DLSS frame generation on, and ray tracing on ultra. I am replacing my desktop with this laptop and I am perfectly content doing that with this machine. The screen is also bright, clear and colorful despite the only 300+ nits.
Posted by Saintus