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Alienware x15 R2 review: Lots of gaming power in a small package
Alienware x15 R2 review: Lots of gaming power in a small package
If you’re looking for a gaming laptop that’s powerful, but is also thin and light, look no further than the Alienware x15 R2. With a new quad-fan thermal design, it weighs five pounds and it’s under two thirds of an inch thin, and yet it still comes with up to a Core i9 and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. There are a few flaws, one of which is that it does get hot enough to affect performance after a time at heavy load. Also, while I love the design, I don’t like the way the ports are laid out, as they’re hard to see on the back with the lighting around the perimeter. .bestawarddiv { float: right; width: 20%; margin: 1em; margin-top: 0; } But I do love that design. This laptop feels modern and unique, something that I like to see in a gaming laptop. If you want portability to go with your gaming, this seems like the best choice.
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It starts at $2,149.99, and that will get you an Intel Core i7-12700H, 16GB LPDDR5 memory, a 512GB SSD, a 15.6-inch FHD 165Hz display, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060. While the base model is fairly expensive, it’s still pretty beefy, which is nice. Other gaming laptops will start at 8GB RAM, 256GB storage, and a GTX 1660, but not this one. The model that Dell sent me packs a Core i7, 32GB LPSSR5, a 2TB SSD, a 15.6-inch QHD 240Hz display, and an RTX 3070 Ti. That model, priced out on Dell.com, is $2,909.99. Alienware x15 R2 specs Processor 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H (24 MB cache, 14 cores, 20 threads, up to 4.70 GHz Turbo) Graphics NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, 8 GB GDDR6 Display 15.6″, QHD 2560×1440, 240Hz, Non-Touch, 2ms, Advanced Optimus, ComfortView Plus, NVIDIA G-SYNC Body 359.7×277.33×15.9mm, 2.27kg Memory 32 GB, LPDDR5, 5200 MHz, integrated, dual-channel Storage 2 TB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD Ports 1 USB 3.2 Gen 1 port with PowerShare 1 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port with DisplayPort and Power Delivery 1 Thunderbolt 4 port with DisplayPort and Power Delivery 1 Universal Audio Jack 1 HDMI 2.1 port 1 power-adapter port 1 microSD-card slot Battery 6 Cell, 87 Wh, Lithium Ion, Alienware Battery Defender Camera Alienware HD (1280×720 resolution) camera with dual-array microphones and Windows Hello IR support Audio Stereo speakers, stereo tweeter 2 W x 2 = 4 W total AlienFX Lighting Zones Programmable with up to 16.8 million distinct colors Input Alienware xSeries keyboard with per-key RGB LED AlienFX lighting Includes N-key rollover technology Multi-touch gesture Premium Precision glass touchpad with integrated scrolling Connectivity Killer Wi-Fi 6 (6E* Pre-certified) AX1675 802.11ax 2×2 Wireless LAN and Bluetooth 5.2 Case and color Lunar Light with High Endurance Clear Coat designed for stain resistance OS Windows 11 Home Price $2,909.99 These are the specs for the unit that Dell sent me. The base model is $2,149.99. Design: It’s under two-thirds of an inch thin
It’s also designed with thermals in mind. This thing is 0.63 inches thin and it weighs just five pounds, and that’s all while not sacrificing power. Under the hood, it actually has four fans, using a dual opposite outlet design, so the air is passing through the internals to through the chassis. There’s also a new Element 31 thermal compound that’s meant to provide a 25% boost in thermal resistance. The Legend 2.0 design looks sleek, futuristic, an unique./* Pull quote size and added line-height .wp-block-pullquote p { font-size: 1.75rem; line-height: 1.5; } */ figure.quoteright { margin-top: 0px !important; margin-bottom: 0px !important; } .quoteright { width: 50%; float: right; margin: 0em 1em; margin-top: 0px !important; margin-bottom: 0px !important; } .wp-block-pullquote p { font-size: 1.75rem; line-height: 1.5; color: #de7300; } figure.wp-block-pullquote.pullrightstyle { border-top: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; } blockquote.rightquotestyle { color: #006e95 !important; } @media only screen and (max-width: 600px) { .quoteright { float: none; width: 90%; margin: auto; } .wp-block-pullquote { padding: 0rem; } } So far, we’ve talked about how it’s stylish, how it’s thin and light, and how it’s designed for innovative thermals, and that leaves two things: ports and lighting. As you can imagine, there’s lots of RGB lighting on this gaming laptop – although it’s not overkill, which is nice – but the ports matter too. Aside from the power jack, which is on the right, and the headphone jack, which is on the left, all of the ports are on the back. There’s just one USB Type-A port, there are two USB Type-C ports (one of which is Thunderbolt), HDMI 2.1, and a microSD card slot. The whole panel is bordered by an RGB light strip that wraps around it. Honestly, I hate all of it. The RGB lighting is pretty for sure, but functionally, it’s a mess. Let’s go down with the list. Ports on the rear make a lot of sense when you’ve got things plugged in all of the time, such as an external monitor. Most companies do this leave a port or two on the side so you can plug in occasional peripherals like a controller, headset, or something else that you might not use constantly. What I absolutely don’t understand is having the power port on the side. It gets in the way, an issue that wouldn’t exist if the port was on the back. Moving back to the ports on the rear, that RGB lighting, while pretty, is a problem. One issue with having ports on the back of a laptop is that you have to know where they are. Lenovo solves this by putting labels above the ports. Not only are there no visible labels, but the light makes the ports hard to see. You just have to sort of feel around back there to find the hole that’s shaped like the one you’re looking for. Other than that, I absolutely love the design. It’s just a pleasure to experience, and having a gaming laptop that’s so thin and light is fantastic. Display: QHD, 240Hz, and quality
Personally, I like monitors that look pretty, as well as offer that performance you want for gaming. That’s what I’m finding from the screen on this unit, and it’s something that I’ve found to be a rarity in gaming laptops. Gaming laptops typically sacrifice everything in the name of performance and responsiveness, but this is actually a really good display, even if you’re not gaming at all. From my testing, it supports 100% sRGB, 90% NTSC, 92% Adobe RGB, and 97% P3. Those are really great results, even for a non-gaming laptop. That means that this is an excellent PC for creators that might be doing photo or video editing, at least as far as the display goes. Brightness maxed out at 417.9, which is solid, although the contrast ratio only maxed out at 860:1, which definitely seems low. The Alienware x15 has an excellent display for gaming and anything else.figure.center { margin-top: 0px !important; margin-bottom: 0px !important; } .quotecenter { width: 80%; float: none; margin: auto; margin-top: 0px !important; margin-bottom: 0px !important; color: #de7300; } figure.wp-block-pullquote.quotestyle { border-top: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; } blockquote.centerquotestyle { color: #006e95 !important; } @media only screen and (max-width: 600px) { .quotecenter { width: 90%; } } The screen has narrow bezels on three sides, and unfortunately, the webcam is still 720p. If you’re planning to do a lot of streaming, or even if you might use this laptop for video calls, it’s going to be an issue. After all, you probably won’t have separate laptops for gaming and work. It’s just always a shame to see 720p webcams in laptops still. It does, however, have an IR camera for facial recognition, which is awesome. Any kind of biometric authentication seems to never make its way into gaming laptops, so it’s nice to see. Keyboard: It has all of the RGB lighting
Like I said earlier, it really feels like the RGB lighting is just in enough places to feel good about it, but it’s not overkill. There’s the Alienware logo on the lid, the perimeter of the rear ports, and there’s the keyboard. You can control all of this via the Alienware Command Center application, which oddly didn’t come pre-installed. I had to get it from the Microsoft Store. You can also use Alienware Command Center to make custom power profiles, overclocking the CPU and GPU when you’re playing power-hungry games. The clickable touchpad is a bit small, and it actually feels undersized for such a large laptop. I’m a big fan of touchpads that make use of all of the available real estate, and this doesn’t really do that. It’s a good touchpad though, and it’s fine. Performance: It’s crazy powerful for how thin it is
While photo and video editing is fantastic, as you’d expect, I’ll talk about gaming. The main game I played on this unit was Forza Horizon 5 with its new Hot Wheels expansion pack (to be clear, it’s awesome and you should play it). My main issue was sustained performance. Upon launching Forza Horizon 5 for the first time, it suggests extreme graphics, which is no surprise given how powerful this laptop is, and when I first started playing, it was fantastic. After about a half hour, I ran into significant issues. The game froze and said that it didn’t have the CPU resources to play, a major issue on a gaming laptop. After all, if you’re trying to win, the last thing you want is this kind of disruption. After maybe 30 seconds of a frozen screen, I’d be able to drive again for a short period of time, but once it started, it didn’t stop. By this point, touching any part of the rear section of the laptop is super-clear that this thing is hot. Powerful performance, and you can still boost it with Alienware Command Center./* Pull quote size and added line-height .wp-block-pullquote p { font-size: 1.75rem; line-height: 1.5; } */ figure.quoteleft { margin-top: 0px !important; margin-bottom: 0px !important; } .quoteleft { width: 50%; float: left; margin: 0em 1em; margin-top: 0px !important; margin-bottom: 0px !important; } .wp-block-pullquote p { font-size: 1.75rem; line-height: 1.5; color: #de7300; } figure.wp-block-pullquote.pullleftstyle { border-top: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; } blockquote.leftquotestyle { color: #006e95 !important; } @media only screen and (max-width: 600px) { .quoteleft { float: none; width: 90%; margin: auto; } .wp-block-pullquote { padding: 0rem; } } There were some workarounds. Like I said, you can boost performance in Alienware Command Center. The other is that you can turn down graphics in the game to a lower setting. While I could replicate that issue in Forza pretty easily, I didn’t experience it in other games, as I randomly decided to play through all of the campaigns in Halo: The Master Chief Collection again. The bottom line on performance is that it’s phenomenal, but under heavy load for a period of time, you might have to make some adjustments. Alienware x15 R2 Core i7-12700H, RTX 3070 Ti Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Core i7-12700H, RTX 3070 Ti MSI Raider GE76 Core i9-12900HK, RTX 3080 Ti PCMark 10 7,141 7,076 7,820 3DMark Time Spy 10,443 10,391 12,287 Geekbench 5 single/multi 1,768 / 13,200 1,787 / 9,209 1,774 / 12,630 Cinebench R23 single/multi 1,776 / 16,182 1,714 / 9,549 1,833 / 14,675 VRMark Orange/Cyan/Blue 11,066 / 8,834 / 3,073 13,593 / 9,480 / 3,176 11,452 / 11,542 / 3,815 CrossMark overall/productivity/creativity/responsiveness 1,830 / 1,670 / 2,123 / 1,543 1,817 / 1,738 / 1,943 / 1,702 As you can see, it outperforms a similarly specced Lenovo Legion 5i by a bit. From a CrystalDiskMark test, the Micron 3400 SSD was a bit slower on read speeds than other PCIe 4.0 SSDs that I’ve seen in laptops, and the write speeds were right in the middle. Either way, with PCIe 4.0, you’re really not going to go wrong. It’s way faster than what we’ve seen in the past with PCIe 3.0, and you can look forward to short loading times. Should you buy the Alienware x15 R2? The Alienware x15 R2 is a fantastic gaming laptop if you’re looking for something thin and light. Who should buy the Alienware x15 R2:
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