It's not that good... Alienware M16 Review

Hey guys, just a couple misspeak clarifications (I dont use a teleprompter so it happens) When comparing to the Lenovo Legion I said that the Lenovo was $50 more than the Alienware, its actually $50 less! When talking about the fans taking too long to ramp up, I said that it takes a full minute for the fans to ramp when the CPU hits 60, I meant to say 100. Minor misspeaks but misspeaks none the less. Will try to do better!

At airport “Sir what is in your bag?” “Oh yeah thats just my m16.”

I grew up always wanting an Alienware desktop. I finally bought one when I got a big boy job and I spent $5,000 on a top of the line specced PC. It was the biggest piece of junk I’ve ever owned. It was after Dell bought them. The front cover was cracked, one memory stick was dead and causing constant blue screens and hard crashes. It was like pulling teeth to get Dell to fix it. I spent hours on the phone with customer support it was a complete drain on my life. Eventually after several weeks of being jerked around by Dell’s support team, I filed a complaint with the BBB. Someone from Dell called me and arranged to pick it up and issue a full refund. I will never buy anything from them again. It was a complete disaster.

I’ll never forget my 19”, dual gpu Alienware laptop running Windows XP. What a monster.

I remember back in the day I wanted one sooo bad. I finally got one and honestly it was pretty sweet. The M11x was wayy ahead of its time and I use the hell out of it.

I've had the M18 with the i9 13900hx and RTX 4090 for about 6 months now and it's an absolute beast. most of the time I use an external monitor (Alienware QD-OLED 34in ultrawide) and keyboard so the screen options didn't really bother me. using a 15 tcc offset (85deg target) in command center and a mild GPU overclock I don't notice any throttling in games ever. I do have some feet that keep the laptop off the desk, but I don't have to use a cooler at all. my use case is mostly a desktop replacement gaming rig (some VR, racing sim rig, and a lot of Destiny 2) that I can also use to tune my car in the garage or travel with.

This is interesting considering Alienware has burned me for life. Ended up with an Alienware laptop years ago when I did a degree and within 3 weeks of having it, it died and took over 3 months to get it fixed after multiable returns. They replaced every part trying to fix the problem apart from the chassis and the keyboard and it ended up being the keyboard that was shorting out the motherboard... which I figured out myself after having enough of their BS... that and it 100% really was capable of cooking an egg when not even under load...

I think we're in the same boat here; my last Alienware was an A51 from 2006. It had dual 8800's in it! Absolute powerhouse back in the day. A shame to see how the mighty have fallen.

Alienware always seemed a bit garish with their designs when I was younger, this looks quite nice aesthetically to me. Loved the Top Gun reference too!

It makes me so happy to see that you aren't just doing partnerships for money reasons, and you actually do them for good products we actually want. Big kudos to you and the team Jay!

i have a 2014 14 inch with a i5 4200m and GTX 765m. I upgraded it to 16gb ram and moved up to windows 10 and have loved it. I'm upgrading soon but considering the age this thing is awesome. My experience with my alienware has been fantastic, I would def recommend.

I respect Jayz for turning down the offer alienware provided. It proves he cares about products and what consumers pay for.

Still have an alienware laptop from back in the day and its going strong after all this time after a few upgrades of course. Back when Alienware was a solid brand 🙂 It weighs a bloody TON though

I was actually considering an Alienware laptop alongside the Asus ROG laptop I eventually purchased 2 years ago. Looks like I was trying to pick between "bad" and "worse", because the ROG laptop (True to Asus Quality Standards) broke within a year and Asus made me jump through all the hoops you could ever dream of just to get my money back.

I have an Alienware 17R4 with a GTX1080 from around 5 years ago and it runs great. I bought it as a student in the US and the customer support for Alienware was great. They had a separate call line for Alienware vs Inspiron and other Dell stuff. I had thermal issues on day 1 but I had a technician sent over in literally 3 days and had them repaste it for free with the Thermal Grizzly that I bought. Its been great since! I think its worth every premium penny I spent on it, I love it to death and its so easy to work on and upgrade. I really think you should give them another chance Jay! Ask them to send you a higher spec one, with the liquid metal stuff they add from factory. With Alienware the lower spec stuff really are trash - go big or go home.

I have a 3 year old Alienware m17 r2 and honestly yes it was expensive but it is the best built laptop I’ve ever had. It has a magnesium alloy chassis which makes it super rigid and it only weighs 5lbs.

Great look over, only issue I have about the Lenovo you listed is the RAM is soldered on so upgrading isn't an option for the RAM on that model.

AlienWare was awesome before Dell acquired them.

We purchased an Alienware M18 for my son as an engineering freshman. Availability of on-site service at his college was one of the main reasons we went with Dell versus another brand. Performance has been good but longevity and wisdom is still up in the air. Thanks for covering the M16 Jay.

Interesting review. I have the M16 with the 4080 in it and I can say that I'm very happy with it. For full disclosure I typically use a lapdesk when I use it that has ventilation on the under side of the board so allows further air flow. My experience with the M16 has been very solid. I was actually impressed with the thermals. My last laptop was an ASUS Zepherus with a 2070 in it and that sucker got so hot I couldn't even use some of the keys on the keyboard without extreme discomfort. I've ran my M16 for 8+ hours gaming and I've never had hot keys or anything of that nature. I find it interesting that my experience is significantly different then yours. Keep up the good work sir! Thought I would throw my experience out there.