Dell Alienware m18 R2 Review: A Bold Desktop Replacement

When you think of laptops, even gaming ones, there’s always a sense of portability associated with them. That said, if money isn’t a constraint and you go all out on premium laptops, there are some big boys like the Dell Alienware m18 R2. As the name suggests, it comes with a massive 18-inch display and an equally bigger chassis.

The benefit is that it packs in the Intel Core i9-14900HX processor and GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, coupled with as many as four fans for cooling. You will have to compromise portability with it, but is the performance gain worth it? Is it all raw power, or does it bring other features to the table to justify its premium price? Let’s take a look at our in-depth Dell Alienware m18 R2 Review.

Design and Display

Starting with the design, the Alienware m18 R2 features Alienware’s signature futuristic design, with sharp edges, sleek lines, and excellent build quality. There’s the Alienware logo on the metal lid, followed by the LED-loop light around the rear I/O ports. The Dark Metallic Moon is the only colourway on offer, though I am not one to complain. The Anodised aluminium finish on top definitely looks quite premium, and the customisable RGB lights deliver the necessary gaming flair.



Compared to other beefy laptops, the m18 R2 still retains an essence of slimness to it, though that doesn’t really translate to it being a portable machine. At 4.23kg, the laptop is not something that you can carry everywhere. Add to that, how you carry it is another task since the laptop won’t fit most backpacks. You’d think that Dell would at least bundle a backpack for the price you pay for this, but you’d be wrong. Dell seems to believe that if you can afford this laptop, surely you can afford a premium backpack too.



Up front, the m18 R2 comes with an 18-inch IPS panel with 2,560 x 1,600 resolution. The display supports 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage, with the colours looking vibrant and accurate, making it a solid choice not only for gaming but also for media consumption and content creation. The 165Hz refresh rate coupled with support for G-Sync ensures smooth gameplay, reducing motion blur and making fast-paced scenes look crisp and fluid. Whether you’re exploring open-world games or editing photos and videos, this display will elevate your experience.



The panel bears a matte finish on top, which does a decent job of tacking glare from a window light. However, at nearly 300 nits of peak brightness, it leaves room for added brightness and cannot be used outdoors. Then again, as we have already established, the m18 R2 is meant to be a desktop replacement, not something that you carry to a coffee shop with you.



With that being said though, for a laptop that costs more than a kidney, I’d have preferred to see an OLED panel. It’s 2024, and even budget laptops come with an OLED panel now. There are options like the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 and the Razer Blade 18 that feature a mini-LED 18-inch panel, so it’s not like the tech isn’t there.



I will reiterate, the panel on the Alienware m18 R2 isn’t bad by any means. It’s just that for the price tag, they could have opted for something even better.

Ports, Audio and I/O

Moving on, Alienware has made good use of its big chassis for connectivity. The m18 R2 features dual USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports sandwiched between an RJ45 Ethernet jack and a 3.5mm headphone jack, on the left side.



Over to the right side, there’s a single USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port, preferably for connecting any modern peripherals.



The majority of ports are on the rear side inside the LED ring, comprising dual Thunderbolt 4 Gen 2 Type-C ports, another USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, an HDMI 2.1 port, a mini DisplayPort, a full-sized SD card slot, and the DC charging port.



The m18 R2 offers multiple ports of the same connector and leaves no room for complaints. There’s also a 1080p IR camera at the top with support for Windows Hello face unlock. As for the footage itself, it’s passable. The camera definitely struggles with background lights and HDR, and the image itself has equal parts grains and noise, but that shouldn’t hold you back from using it for the occasional video call.



Thankfully, the audio on the laptop takes things back to the positive side. The m18 R2 packs dual 2W speakers, and despite being bottom-firing, they have an excellent response. The speakers get loud, have a wide soundstage with pretty good separations, and the audio doesn’t creak at top volume either.



By default, the speakers have a natural and balanced tone, but you can use the Dolby Access app to fine-tune the speakers to your liking. Speaking of which, there’s support for Dolby Vision too, and combined make the m18 R2 an excellent laptop for entertainment needs as well.

Keyboard and Trackpad

One of the best things about premium desktop replacement laptops is the keyboard. The Alienware m18 R2 comes with a CherryMX ultra-low-profile mechanical keyboard, which should appeal to most gamers. It’s got a clicky feel to it that is a bit loud to my taste, but the tactile feedback is just a chef’s kiss.



Thanks to a big chassis, there’s room for not only a full-sized keyboard, but the keycaps themselves are big, thick, and well-spaced out. As a result, it’s quite easy to adapt to this and get to typing your heart out.



There’s AlienFX RGB backlighting as well, with support for per-key customisability, something that is to be expected from a premium gaming laptop. The lighting is quite vibrant, and the Alienware Command Center app comes with plenty of patterns to choose from for customisability as well. Apart from the keyboard, you can also change the LED ring around the ports, as well as the Alien heads on the lid and the power button.



Moving on to the touchpad, it’s good but doesn’t feel like an Alienware touchpad. I say that for the simple fact that there’s no RGB lighting here like we’ve seen on other Alienware laptops. Then again, that’s a personal preference. As far as the touchpad experience is concerned, it’s quite smooth, the gestures work fine, the click feedback is decent, and there are no complaints from it as such.

Performance and Battery Life

Powering the beast that is the Alienware m18 R2 is the 14th Gen Intel Core i9-14900HX processor coupled with a whopping 64GB of DDR5-5200MT/s RAM. There’s a 1TB PC801 NVMe SSD from Hynix, and for GPU prowess, the laptop comes with top-of-the-line NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 with 175W of TGP. Just to be clear, that’s more or less the same package as the Alienware m18 R1, with just the CPU being upgraded to the 14th-gen.

In benchmark scores, you can see the 14900HX manages to absolutely fly past everything you throw at it. We’re talking a whopping 26,429 in Cinebench R23 Multi-Core and 1,655 points in Cinebench R24 Multi-Core tests. Even in PCMark 10’s Extended benchmark, the laptop scores 12,222 points, which is top-notch.



However, to put things into perspective, I compared the m18 R2 with the MSI Raider GE78 HX 13V, which has the same specifications but features the older Intel Core i9-13980HX processor. As you can see, Alienware m18 R2 performs very well, and manages to come close to the performance of the much thicker Raider GE78. However, the m18 R2 redeems itself as a better overall package, with its excellent performance in PCMark 10’s benchmarks.



Moving on to the GPU, the RTX 4090 doesn’t disappoint at all, with excellent scores across all games I tested on it. Mind you, that’s at 1600p resolution with all the settings cranked to Ultra, and the m18 R2 didn’t break a sweat. The laptop runs all titles like Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Far Cry 6 comfortably over 100 FPS. As for competitive gaming, Valorant easily breached the 400 mark, at which point you might have to just lock the framerate.



To ensure that the laptop can sustain its excellent performance, Alienware has outfitted it with a total of four fans, including two big ones, coupled with two small ones. As you might have already suspected, the fans are quite loud, especially when you switch the laptop to either Performance or Overdrive mode. That’s a fair trade-off considering the laptop manages to tame its power-hungry hardware without any thermal throttling.

However, that power-hungry hardware will chug the battery life for sure. Despite featuring a 6-cell 97Wh battery, the m18 R2 lasted merely 90 mins in PCMark 10’s battery video loop test. That isn’t very reassuring, even for a desktop replacement.



As for charging, there’s a beefy 360W power supply, that ships with a larger 16A plug. You can choose to use it, or just replace it with a different 6A plug – it’s just a regulation factor but will have no impact on the actual charging output. There’s no Type-C PD support here, which isn’t that surprising.



While we are talking about the internals, it’s worth mentioning the storage solution, or solutions, that the m18 R2 offers. The 1TB NVMe SSD that the laptop ships with is quite excellent, as you can see from the CrystalDiskMark benchmark below.



However, the 1TB space can fall short, especially for larger game libraries, or creative projects. Similar to its cooling solution, the m18 R2 comes with a total of four storage slots, including two M.2 2230 and two M.2 2280/2230 slots. As a result, you can choose to have four SSDs, running in RAID 0 or RAID 1 as per your liking.

Verdict

So, at the end of the day, does the Dell Alienware m18 R2 justify its beefy price tag? Considering that it’s a desktop replacement, one can forgive the poor battery life to some extent, and make peace with the lack of an OLED display. Other than that, there’s hardly anything to complain about the laptop. It offers a premium design, an excellent keyboard, all possible connectivity ports you’d need, and flagship-grade performance which is complimented by a heavy-duty thermal solution. If you’re looking for a top-of-the-line gaming laptop, the m18 R2 is definitely worth considering.

Editor’s Rating: 8.5 / 10

Pros:

• Flagship performance
• Huge 18-inch QHD display with 165Hz refresh rate
• Comfortable mechanical RGB keyboard
• Comes with all connectivity options

Cons:

• Short battery life
• Heavy and not very portable
• Just 1TB of storage