Customer Ratings & Reviews

Specs are great, definitely able to play ANYTHING on the market.

When I was little, I *dreamed* of owning an Alienware computer. Every lawn mown, every weed pulled, every paid errand, every movie skipped with friends was a dollar closer to my goal. I had so many games that ran so-so on my DIY kitbash tower and those Alienware maxed out hardware with lights and cooling systems and non-beige-boxy decor.... c'mon, it'd open up a whole new world for me. That was a young gamer's dream. Fast forward to my grown self checking out this Alienware m16 and giving it a 3 star review. Let's start with the bad, to get it out of the way: - the m16 is unwieldy, somehow managing to be both slick and cumbersome at the same time. It has rounded edges (no boxes here) but the only logical places to grip it are right over the venting. It's ridiculously heavy, has a ruberized "boot" on the bottom to help keep it elevated with some airflow. Meaning: this is a laptop that is meant to stay put somewhere, ideally docked with a display (although the laptop's QHD+ display itself is VERY nice). - the power brick could literally be used to build houses. Or a nice driveway. It's literally a brick - as heavy, as wide, as tall, and as long as an actual brick. It has a massive power cord, a ridiculous circular power port which connects to the back of the laptop (again: not meant to be portable. It's meant to stay in ONE place). - the docking and layout of the ports: on the side, there's one USB-A, one headphone dock adjacent, and (this is the weird part) the network port for high-speed wired internet. On the back: ONE HDMI port, one USB-A, two USB-C, a DVI port, an SD card reader, and the large power port. - the front-facing webcam is nothing to write home about and you won't be able to use face recognition to unlock the laptop (there are also no other biometrics on the laptop). - the volume up/down/mute/mic mute buttons are all located along the right-hand side of the keyboard, making it stupidly easy for a klutz like me to accidentally mute the game while reaching for right shift or enter or backspace. - the trackpad is on the smaller size for a laptop this size, which makes me think palm rejection and/or longevity is something they have concerns about. - this laptop doesn't come with a cable lock spot. That's a must for any laptop that has a stationary home either in the dorms or an apartment. Now for the good: - the laptop is perfectly powerful for most modern games. I was able to run max specs for a number of my favs without kicking up the fans. MechWarrior + BattleTech maxed out with particle effects did just fine. The laptop doesn't seem to get hot quickly, which is a great thing. - The graphics card is a heavy lifter, to be sure, and doesn't overburden the laptop with too much heat for the dazzle it provides. Alienware laptops tend to be really well balanced between GPU and CPU power vs heat... and they even have on-unit software to help manage + regulate + balance with good presets that work behind the scenes to make the laptop perform pretty much exactly as you want. - the battery life is also pretty good, even with all the RGB-LED zones lit up and playing games at the same time. - the wireless networking seemed to be very speedy. This is an area where costs sometimes get cut on gaming laptops, and so having a modern-specification WiFi card is a must. - the RGB-LED zones are: keyboard, power button, WSAD, front alien icon, and the back port area, meaning: there are a lot of really cool effects you could pull off if you're a streamer with an external cam setup, JUST with the laptop itself. - the keyboard is responsive and has a nice feel to it, the key presses feel substantial. The trackpad (though I dunno why you'd use it for gaming) is OK and decently responsive. - the display (QHD+ 165Hz) is really good with great brightness. The bezel is reasonably small, and I'm wondering why they packed a webcam in at all. Per Alienware's design, the screen sits forward from the back of the laptop a smidge, which is a good thing for stability. - the design, if you plan to have it stationary, is slick enough - but half the fun of the Alienware laptop is showing off all the cool lights and design. - the heat dissipation - there's a ton of airflow for this laptop, so even if it does heat up it has lots of ways to move the heat away from the unit. When the fans kick up, the internal audio is still sufficient and the fans are not obnoxiously loud, especially compared to similarly sized models. You'll still want your headset, but it's nice to not HAVE to have it. - the battery life is good for a 16" gaming laptop, and it does tend to charge quickly thanks to the ridiculous power pack they ship it with. - 1TB of SSD storage out of the box. If only they'd shipped it with 32GB ram for that same price point this would be a 4/5 laptop... they DO have 32GB if you customize OR if you size-up to the 18" model. All in all: this is a nifty gaming laptop with good power, good storage, good heat dissipation, and really cool lighting. It's a great starting point if you don't plan to go anywhere with it because it's so freaking heavy and the power brick and cord basically require their own bag. For the most part, it'll serve well as a gaming computer for a stationary streamer. It looks really cool, assuming you can put it somewhere you can see all the LEDs. Alienware makes really good laptops and the internals are fantastic here.

Fast, powerful, responsive. Can be a little noisy when all the fans kick up into full blast, but that's expected cramming this much into such a compact space.

The first one has a terrible screen problem so BB replaced it without any trouble. The second one (and maybe the first) has terrible wifi reception. My other laptops sitting next to it get "five bars" of wifi power and this computer gets 1 or maybe 2 at best. There is no external antenna like older models seem to have, so maybe it's a deign flaw. Maybe it's just a crappy computer. Other than the powerful GPU, it's not as good as my other similar priced laptops.

Laptop is great and can run triple A games very well.

Absolutely love my new laptop. The graphics are awesome

When I first open the box I turn this computer on it was very very slow took over 8 hours for updating computer had five blue screens of death other problem is I am unable to play games on this computer any game I play from modern to new always lags and freezes up with no warnings or errors I try to reinstall the graphics drivers and luck I tried everything that Dale has told me to do and it seems like the computer just overheats haven't had any great experiences with it even lags when you're not playing games. Every word that I see nobody's having an issue is playing games on this laptop maybe I got a defective one I'm going to have to send it in for repairs and hopefully there's an issue with the board or something I tried cooling pad and everything nothing works I never use the original RAM that was in this computer I've upgraded it to 32 GB so hoping that's not causing a problem which I doubt it I will leave a better review if it is fixed with no issues

Purchased anopen box of this laptop! No issues so far but when I went to register the unit it says its already been sibmitted and expired 6 months ago! Buyer beware! Bestbuy selling out of warranty open box items! Their customer service is next to useless! Ill never buy from them again!

Bought this laptop for my son. This is his second Alienware laptop and loves the brand. He says there is no comparison to other brands.

bought this and im clapping mfs. easy to use and i think it is a good deal if you have to go for a cheaper option.

Well built laptop. It gets warm and is pretty fast. Good for gaming at 1080p no problem.

Really good laptop, you can play anything you want at the high quality

Excellent laptop for architects for rendering and VR

Perfect conditions and also came in the original package

Good price, great machine highly recommended by me

Great mobile gamer. My first ever Alienware and I will be looking at a desktop

Love the computer. Great to use for college and playing games.

Great gaming computer. Good for all applications.

The laptop was purchased 2 months ago, first month was relatively fine, just didn't shut down when the lid closed. For the second month blue screen starts to appear 3-4 times a day, with rebooting. The support of Dell is a kind of masterpiece, The first 5 times they just updated the software, then they proposed me to disassemble the laptop and remove the battery, hard drive, and memory. After declining to do so, the technician was scheduled to come, on 15 December I received notification that the technician would come on 12 December. Then the technician visit was scheduled for 18 December, I was waiting the whole day, and the technician didnt come. Then the technician came on 19th of December. And replace the two-month-old motherboard with a refurbished dirty greased and dusty one. As a result: I spent almost a month in conversations with DELL Support, but nothing was fixed. Moreover, now I have a laptop with a flickering screen and rebooting every few hours. The quality of the support and Dell laptop is very low.

PLEASE SAVE YOUR MONEY. Alienware products are either horribly built, or have catastrophic software problems that you WILL run into. To make matters worse you will not speak to anyone in the US. Their overseas customer service is AWFUL, with horrible technicians who care nothing about your situation. The managers are even WORSE. If you think you have a safety net for one year, you are WRONG. Please save your hard earned money and stay away. I wish I'd never purchased from Alienware. I'm stuck with a nearly $2k paperweight.