Customer Ratings & Reviews

Great battery Life, Amazing Screen, Customizable RGB and a Sleek design! Performance gets the job done on the go, even playing the latest AAA Titles. Also, my cat approves.

Run most of the major games well, GTA V, WRC, CS2, Battle Ground 6 Beta, the only draw back is the noise level of the fan.

Great laptop. Fast and colorful keyboard. My grandkids love to play Minecraft and other games on it. They’re ages 5-10 to give you an idea of their experience level. They like the alien heads. I like the screen size for streaming movies. I’m not a gamer so I can’t speak to those features but I’m happy with it. The audio isn’t bad but I hooked up a blue tooth speaker to watch movies on vacation. The kids don’t usually bother with that at home and are content with the built in audio.

This laptop can run everything, I've upgraded the RAM to 64GB, added a 4TB Samsung 990 Pro, unfortunately the keyboard is actual trash. First, the A key seems to have the hinge fused to the key itself, so it keeps popping off, the left side of the spacebar seems to have the same issue and it frequently sticks down unless i hit the right side of it. Now the W key is starting to do the same, as well as the D key. The A key initially started about a month after i bought it, no spill damage, nothing. Clearly a manufacturing defect. Unfortunately, Alienware warranty does NOT cover keyboards and they want to charge me $300+ and shipping it for 2+ weeks to them for them to 'fix it'. There's no replacement keys or hinges i can buy anywhere. My local Geek Squad doesn't have a repair place so all they can do is the same thing Alienware can do, have me send it out for a complete repair I have to pay $300 for. I have owned many, many laptops and this is the first time i've bought a 'premium' brand. I will never ever again purchase anything from Alienware as their customer service is useless and their warranty doesn't actually cover anything.

Excellent product, a fast gpu, a nice keyboard and amazing design. I update the ram to 64gb and its very powerful.

Love it! Super fast, very comfortable for work and gaming

Great gift to my family, absolutely amazing and good investment.

Excellent Laptop! Top Performance for any game! I love it for World of Warcraft

It was working beautifully… I know it’s a gaming laptop but I don’t use it to game, but do the streaming for the games. And it was good for a while and I don’t have much on it. Its going black screen, not responding, seems to always have an update (the same one everyday). Ive had to factory reset it and it’s still acting funny. I’ve only had it a couple months. Again I only use it for streaming so obs, TikTok studios, and chrome browser are the only things on it that are usually running, I’m just annoyed. Other wise everything else was working fine it’s just now acting up. Probably won’t buy Alienware again.

It was a really slow computer from the get go and extremely expensive for the hardware. Most of this is older generation hardware too. The cpu and gpu are high end however they don’t perform the same as a desktop. Battery life wasn’t very good either. The keyboard software was slow and buggy

The laptop arrived very fast and has no issues. It is very smooth and stylish to use.

This is the best laptop config i was looking for its work really awesome. Just need a laptop cooler for best gaming experience

I expected something a little better but it still being a top tier for me, i can’t complaint.

It works well but occasionally there are weird bugs where it’s really slow and not as strong as advertised

This machine is amazing. I've never had a computer as powerful as this one. I've already installed a 4 terabyte nvme m.2 and I plan to upgrade the RAM to at least 32GB.

It's a great gaming lap, the graphics and response time is wonderful. The graphics are beautiful and i like the feel of the keyboard. I dislike the sound, but if you plug it into an external speaker it's pretty good. i also like how easy it is to get in and upgrade the ram and add extra storage.

Pros Sturdy chassis No deck flex Heat is well isolated from the dark only getting warm More compact design Metal outer shell Fast SSD Upgradable SSD, RAM, and Wi-Fi Dual SSD slots Wi-Fi 7 support with Intel Chip Very nice typing experience Good trackpad Subdued design Stealth mode keeps things cool and quite for basic tasks Relatively small power adapter Ethernet jack Fast screen with no perceivable lag No need to restart for MUX switch Cons Trackpad rattles making it feel cheap Fans very loud during heavy tasks Mediocre speakers Display is too dim Poor contrast ratio of screen Poor webcam Heat exhausts to the sides on your hand when using a mouse All USB-A ports on right side Slow to wake from sleep The Alienware M16 R2 is the successor to the M16 R1 which had the unusual design with the “Thermal Shelf” which is Dells word for the unique protrusion at the back of the older series. With the M16 R2 they have removed the thermal shelf, which reduces cooling slightly meaning you can’t get the highest tier GPUs, but it also shrinks the overall footprint of the laptop significantly. The bezels of the screen have also been greatly reduced for an overall more appealing design. Finally, the keyboard has been pushed more to the back allowing for a larger trackpad and more space for a wrist rest. The function keys on the top of the keyboard also serve the purpose of controlling Performance Mode, Stealth Mode, as well as screen and keyboard brightness. Volume controls are on the right side of the keyboard arranged vertically. Taking the laptop out of the box you immediately notice the reduced footprint. While still on the heavy side it doesn’t feel excessively heavy for a gaming laptop. It also feels very sturdy with no hint of chassis or deck flex. Screen hinge is tight as well as the screen has minimal flex. The outer shell is metal but has a coating on the bottom that makes it feel somewhat like plastic. The deck has the same soft texture finish that Dell also uses on their XPS lineup. It feels comfortable to your wrists, but it does tend to show marks from oil on your skin. With the matt finish they are bit hard to clean off. Thankfully they are only visible at certain angles. For the ports Dell put the USB-C, Thunderbolt, and HDMI on the back which is nice. However, the USB-A for a mouse or other peripherals is on the ride side where most users will have their mouse. Left-handed might be happy but then they also put the ethernet jack to the middle left instead of the back which would make more sense. Included in the box is a 240-watt power adapter. This means you can run turbo for both the CPU and GPU simultaneously. For the output the power adapter is also quite compact for the output, so you don’t need to sacrifice performance or portability. The only downside is because of the power draw of the system Dell opted not to offer USB-C charging support meaning you are going to have to bring one more power adapter in your bag. Thankfully the reduce footprint and reduced weight for the specs make the whole package far more portable than previous generations. Display 6/10 Let’s start by highlighting the odd compromises. On paper the display seems pretty good but maybe a little on the dim side for modern upper midrange gaming laptops. In practice you will likely never take it off max brightness even in a dark room. This isn’t an HDR display either so expect gaming with dark scenes to be hard to make out details. If you like slow paced games like Minecraft, the RTX4070 will easily handle nearly any texture pack but the screen will make textures look washed out and colors hard to discern. Contrast is similarly sacrificed as well. In games like Doom Eternal the reds just don’t look as vivid as you expect. This of course also extends to work. If you do any creative work with colors, expect to be underwhelmed as the display just doesn’t have range. However, if you mostly play fast-paced games and mostly in the dark the tables turn. The display doesn’t show the slightly bit of lag or ghosting. While Doom Eternal didn’t look the most vivid it played buttery smooth. The same went for Halo Infinite. While this is marked as an all-around laptop, the screen says it is more an FPS gaming laptop. If that is your wheelhouse then you might find the responsiveness worth the tradeoff. Speakers 4/10 The other weak area for the M16 R2 is the speakers. They are both quiet and lack range. There is no bass at all and midtones are underrepresented. The highs are good and so voices and positional audio is decent but not a standout. They get the job done but they are not what you expect from an upper midrange gaming laptop. Webcam 6/10 It seems webcams on laptops are still not a high priority in 2024. While it is a 1080P webcam it has a lot of noise in anything but bright light and overall has a soft appearance. That said, it gets the job done and as a bonus works with Windows Hello. It might work for a start if your are streamer but separate webcam should be on your list of upgrades. Cooling 8/10 Cooling is both a good and a bad and may explain why not much was put into the speakers. In Performance mode the fan profile favors maximum cooling, and they can shed lots of heat. The system is automatically overlocked. You will get higher performance while keeping heat in check, but it is loud. At full tilt the family could hear the M16 R2 running from the next room. It wouldn’t have mattered how good the speakers are because the fans all full tilt require headphones. It is mostly a loud air rushing sound, but one thing Dell has not mastered yet is bearing whine. If you have more sensitive ears, you can hear fan bearing whine as well as a slight subtle whistle as the air exhausts. It also shoots that air straight out to the left and right which can get your hands pretty toasty. That said, if maximum stable performance is your goal the fans can handle the job. The good thing is on stealth mode the M16 R2 is extremely quiet for such a beefy gaming laptop. The colors switch to plain white and the fan profile favors silence, and it shows. Performance drops but still holds outs well for short bursts. Keyboard 10/10 While not a perfect keyboard, it comes extremely close. The keys have good travel with a distinct activation point and linear movement. The deck feels solid with no noticeable flex and the heat seems to be well isolated from your hands. Spacing feels very similar to a standard keyboard to adjust time is short. Typing is fast and accurate and so far, there hasn’t been a hint of ghosting. Even though it is a gaming first laptop the responsiveness of the keyboard works equally well for business. The typing experience would be considered respectable even if this was an independent keyboard. The keycaps are visible without backlighting and the backlighting is uniform with no visible hot or cold spots. Trackpad 8/10 The trackpad is good but feels a bit cheap. It has a semi smooth server, so your finger doesn’t glide silky smooth like some, but movement is very good overall. While it does not indicate it is a precision touchpad it feels very much like one. The main thing that degrades the experience is the rattle. When you tap to click the touchpad rattles. It doesn’t rattle like something was assembled wrong but like the mechanism allows too much play. It in no way affects the functionality but it does take away from the feeling of quality. Battery Life 7/10 Intel made a lot of noise about the new CPU chiplet design being more power efficient, but Intel still is last when it comes to laptop battery life. The best the M16 R2 could do was near 6 hours of battery life on stealth just typing. There wasn’t a chance to test the exact time but after 4 hours of usage the battery life each time would indicate the system could last overall about 6 hours to slightly less. It is ok battery life for a gaming rig but doesn’t seem like an improvement over prior generations. Gaming battery life would be harder to pin to a specific timeframe as it really depends on what game it is. That said, it is safe to say if the game can’t run on the iGPU then battery life will be extremely short. MUX without reboot 10/10 The RTX4070 supports Nvidia Advanced Optimus which in short means there is no need to reboot to use discrete graphics directly. You can leave it on default or choose manually which apps use the iGPU vs the dGPU. When you launch a game set to the dGPU there will be about a 3 second hang on launch and the game will run straight via the GPU without a reboot. At first it seemed like something was wrong but after learning what it was doing this is far better than requiring a restart. When docked you don’t even need to worry about that. One of the USB-C ports is also a Thunderbolt port with direct access to the dGPU. Final Thoughts The Alienware M16 R2 is a good system that could have been that could have been near perfect with a more modern screen and better speakers. It really depends on how important those features are to you as the rest of the system is solid. If your main focus is a compact laptop that focus first on maximum performance and FPS over other specs but would like something that can get work done too then the Alienware M16 R2 could be a good fit for you.

Alienware m16 r2 - QHD+ - 240hz gaming laptop - Intel core ultra 7 - 16gb memory - Nvidia Geforce RTX 4070 - 1TB ssd Its Alienware quality!

My son loves his new gaming laptop he says he’s the goat in the games he plays lol.

I was betyer off just buying a generic gaming laptop for 500. This thing sucks. Was good yhe first 2 month's then my screen started glitching and it does that from time to time . Now for the last few months my screen stay black when i turn it on. I have to constantly turn it off and on or try to close and re open laptop. Now i have to most likely buy parts online to replace/fix the screen issue. I work typically 10 hrs a day n hardly game on it. What a waste of money i didn't get warranty either. Beware of this trash . Go buy a 400-500 laptop that does the same thing and probably will be better.