Review Summary
Expert Rating
Dell’s Alienware is a name known for making premium gaming laptops that stand out with its flashy designs and excellent performance. Take the Alienware X16 R2 for instance. It’s the company’s most premium offering at this time, and for Rs. 4.62 lakhs, it better be. Whether you look at its design or its internals, everything screams premium.
I’m talking about an all-metal build, NVIDIA’s top-of-the-line GPU, as well as Intel’s AI-optimised Core Ultra 9 processor. There’s RGB lighting everywhere, and the laptop comes with an excellent display and keyboard too. However, does it do enough to justify its premium price tag, or is it more of a collector’s item? Let’s find out.
Table of Contents
Design and Display
Starting with the design, the laptop features Alienware’s iconic look in the Lunar Silver colourway. It has an elevated look to accommodate for good palm support while also giving enough room for proper airflow. The lid is made from anodised aluminum, while there is a solid steel frame around the keyboard for added sturdiness. Which definitely works, since there’s no flex or wobbling here.
Speaking about the lid, it features the Alien head logo, followed by the rear I/O ports. There’s the stadium lighting around the ports as well, powered by a total of 100 micro-LEDs. Of course, everything is customisable via the Alienware Command Center app, including some fancy effects as well.
Moving on to the front, Alienware has opted for a magnesium alloy palm rest, that genuinely feels premium. I actually prefer it over the soft rubber finish that most premium laptops have. This one feels smooth, doesn’t catch fingerprint smudges, and just feels good to use.
Sandwiched between the slim bezels is the laptop’s 16-inch QHD panel with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels. Thanks to 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage and support for Dolby Vision, the panel has excellent colour reproduction. The content looks vibrant, and you can easily watch movies or TV shows on this without any issues.
As for gaming, it supports a high refresh rate of 240Hz, with support for NVIDIA G-SYNC + Advanced Optimus. Tech jargon aside, that translates to a super smooth experience for both eSports as well as story-based games. There’s no screen tearing to be noticed, and the gaming experience on this display is flawless.
However, I have the same complaint with this laptop as I had with the Alienware m18 R2, which is that for this premium price tag, a mini-LED or OLED panel would definitely have been the better choice. The 300 nits peak brightness without HDR is already a letdown, but still opting for an IPS LCD panel feels outdated compared to what the competition offers.
I will stress the fact that is easily one of the best LCD panels on a gaming laptop, but there’s definite room for improvement, especially considering the premium price tag.
Ports, Audio and I/O
Moving on to connectivity and I/O options, Alienware has opted to position all the ports on the rear side. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack followed by a microSD card reader, a Thunderbolt 4 port with Power Delivery and DisplayPort, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port with DisplayPort, a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port, dual USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a Mini Display Port 1.4, and finally the DC-in port.
Opting for a microSD card slot as opposed to a full-sized card reader is a bit of a letdown, but nothing new since we’ve seen other OEMs also do the same. However, my gripe is with the fact that with all the ports located at the back, there access isn’t easy. More importantly, the company has opted to put the legend beside the ports, at which point you just have to pick the laptop up to see which port you are plugging into.
For context, take a look at Lenovo’s Legion lineup, which also has the majority of its ports on the rear. However, Lenovo puts the legends on the top, making it easier for the user to plug any peripherals or cables, without having to lift and rotate the laptop. That’s one thing that Alienware could definitely improve upon.
Also, for a premium gaming laptop, the lack of an Ethernet jack is equally disappointing. Credit where it’s due, the Intel Killer 1750 card comes with support for Wi-Fi 7, but that still doesn’t beat the reliability and convenience of Gigabit Ethernet.
Thankfully, the audio on this laptop is flawless. It comes with quad 3W woofers, coupled with dual 2W tweeters at the top. These are clearly among the best speakers on a gaming laptop. The audio gets loud, sounds crisp, has a wide soundstage, and there’s enough bass to deliver a punch. There’s also the Dolby Access app that lets one switch to different profiles, or you can just play with the custom EQ settings.
There’s also a 1080p webcam at the top, which is serviceable. The spec sheet reads it as an HDR camera, but that definitely didn’t work, at least in my testing. Thankfully, the IR sensors beside it did, quite seamlessly, I might add. Windows Hello with Face Unlock didn’t fail me even once, which isn’t a common occurrence.
Keyboard and Trackpad
Moving on to the keyboard, the X16 R2 comes with an Alienware cherry keyboard with per-key RGB LED AlienFX lighting. The typing experience is fantastic, and quite similar to the Alienware m18 R2 that we saw earlier. Of course, with the speaker grills on the side, there is no room for a numpad, but I do appreciate the dedicated media hotkeys on the right side.
As for customisability, there’s per-key RGB lighting, alongside plenty of effects to choose from the Alienware Command Center. The lighting itself is quite bright and easily shines through the premium keycaps.
Below it is the AlienFX lighting touchpad, with a glass surface on top, and RGB lighting below it. It’s easily one of my favorite touchpads on a Windows gaming laptop, and it performs very well while also looking quite good.
I would have preferred a taller trackpad than the one Alienware has offered, but that’s only because I have large hands. For the average user, this one should suffice easily.
Performance and Battery Life
Okay so let’s talk performance. Under the hood, the Dell Alienware X16 R2 packs in an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor coupled with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. There’s 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM clocked at 7467MT/s, and a 1TB NVMe SSD from KIOXIA. That’s a Gen 4 SSD, and as expected, offers Sequential Read speeds of over 7000MB/s.
There’s room for an additional SSD here, but everything else, including the RAM, is soldered on. The quad-fan setup definitely looks interesting, and the company has coupled it with the Element 31 thermal material as well as a Vapor Chamber with improved heat pipes to keep the temperatures in check. All combined do a commendable job of keeping the temps in check.
In ideal usage, the fans are mostly quiet. Even when you start gaming, it takes a good 10-15 minutes for the chipsets to warm up, after which the fans do kick in. The fans do get quite loud, and the CPU does occasionally breach the 95-degree Celsius mark as well, but cools down quickly too. As for the surface temperatures, the laptop heats up more towards the display half of the chassis, with the keyboard and palm rests remaining comfortable to the touch.
So how are the numbers then? Taking a look at the synthetic benchmarks, both the Ultra 9 185H processor and RTX 4090 perform very well. The laptop managed a score of 1,023 in Cinebench R24 Multi-core, as well as 12,110 in 3DMark’s Fire Strike Ultra benchmark. A PCMark 10 Extended score of 11,178 is also worth boasting about.
However, those are not the best scores in the field, especially in the CPU department, with Intel’s HX-series processors holding that throne. As you can see, compared to the GIGABYTE Aorus 16X which houses the Intel Core i9-14900HX and the Lenovo Legion 7i powered by the Intel Core i7-14700HX processor, the Alienware X16 R2 definitely lags behind.
The difference isn’t that noticeable in gaming, with the X16 R2 easily running most AAA titles with Ultra settings at 1600p resolution well above 60 FPS. You can fine-tune a couple of settings to enjoy a stable 120 FPS experience as well if you wish. As for competitive titles like Valorant and Deadlock, the 240Hz refresh rate is easily matched with a similar number of frames for a competitive advantage.
A couple of the “core” advantages of the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor are its efficiency and integrated NPU. The latter half holds true for content creators who can leverage AI tasks to get better results at AI generation at a swifter pace. However, the efficiency part didn’t hold true, at least in our testing.
The laptop’s 6-cell 90Wh battery lasted a little under 2.5 hours in the PCMark 10 Battery video loop test. That’s not impressive, considering you’re already trading the performance of an HX processor for the Core Ultra chipset.
Verdict
This brings us to the main question: Who is the Dell Alienware X16 R2 for, and is it worth it? Well, if you look at it as purely a gaming laptop, there are clearly better options available that offer much more performance with a handful of savings. However, Alienware’s philosophy is a bit different. The uber-classy design coupled with RGB flair, mechanical keyboard, and a satisfactory flagship performance should cater to enthusiasts who not only want to enjoy their gaming laptop but also want to flaunt it. Additionally, the Core Ultra processors are more stable compared to the HX processors, and the integrated NPU means AI-related tasks will perform better on this laptop compared to its counterparts.Long story short, if you want a laptop for AI tasks, which will be coming in future Windows Co-pilot updates, the X16 R2 is easily one of the most stylish, powerful, and premium laptops to opt for. On the other hand, for pure gaming, you’d be better off sticking with an HX-series processor, be it even the 13th-gen.
Editor’s Rating: 7.5 / 10
Pros:
- Premium, attractive design
- Excellent QHD 240Hz display
- Plenty of RGB lighting
Cons:
- Very expensive
- Outperformed by lower-priced gaming laptops