Ultimately, if you want the design, can live with the mild heat and mediocre battery-life issues and can find it at a price that suits you, it’s still a good buy.
It looks great and performs well, but the latest m16 R1 still has a few niggling issues.
- Looks good and is well-built.
- The Alienware Command Centre app is greatly improved.
- Portability is hampered by poor battery life and being heavy.
- It runs warm and the fan is often audible to some degree.
Alienware’s gaming laptops have a history of looking great and being fast to the point where they can become unstable. Here’s the new 16-inch m16 R1 which features both an Intel 13th-Gen processor and an Nvidia 40-series graphics chip. Can the latest-gen silicon fix a few failings of its forebears?
Design and build quality
We weren’t surprised to see that the fabrication of the m16 matched its awesome looks. The alien-grey lid, with black chassis and illuminated RGB details look like an alien ship and feel almost bombproof in their construction. Details include the Alien head lid logo and the “Stadium” base which surrounds the exhaust port like something that’s about to go into hyperspace. It’s all understated but seriously cool.
Opening it up reveals the black palm-rest, keyboard, screen bezel and stylish hexagonal vents. RGB details illuminate each key and also the Alien head power switch. We love it.
Features
The Scrabble-tile keyboard looks good when all lit up. It’s a bit firm for prolonged typing but at least all the keys now register well. There are full-sized arrow keys and a useful selection of media keys which are convenient spaced. The trackpad is smooth and accurate while the buttons have a smooth (if slightly heavy) action.
There’s a Full HD webcam above the screen which captures an impressively sharp image, even in low light, while the surrounding microphone array does an excellent job of cancelling out background noise when capturing audio. It also has an IR, partner camera for Windows Hello, facial-recognition login.
The audio emitted from the speakers was a bit disappointing, mind. It gets loud, but there’s a disappointing lack of bass. We’ve heard much better from much thinner laptops including parent-brand, Dell’s own ultraportable XPS 13.
The 16-inch IPS screen is impressive. It’s bright (300-nits), has a UHD, 2,560 x 1,600 resolution and this displays a sharp Windows Desktop. Multimedia looks good with vibrant colours and good contrast (details remain visible in bright and dark areas). True blacks are, perhaps a little washed out, but at least enemies won’t be surprising you by jumping out of shadows. There’s often some fine banding in both colour and monochromatic gradients but it’s not terrible and we’ve seen far worse on other gaming displays.
The screen also has a 165Hz refresh rate to keep motion looking smooth. However, it doesn’t have the fastest pixel response time meaning that some particularly fast-moving objects can blur a bit. However, only the likes of competitive FPS players would complain, but we’ve seen better elsewhere.
Performance
The Alienware m16 is powered by an Intel Core i7-13700HX processor which has 8 Performance and 8 Efficiency cores and runs between 3.7 and 5GHz. It’s backed up by 16GB of DDR5-4800 RAM and a 1TB hard drive. These combine to provide impressive 2D performance that can handle any general-computing and rendering tasks at around the speeds we saw with laptops wielding Intel’s last-generation (12th-Gen) top-end Core i9 processors. It’s no slouch.
3D Performance is handled by a mid-range Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics chip. In our gaming tests it showed it could average around 60fps with the latest and greatest games. However, some of the super-complex newer titles, with ray-tracing, will likely require you to dial down some settings to keep things smooth.
As for stability – something which plagued its predecessors – there have been significant improvements but not everything is fully fixed. One of these is the contoured rubber base which helps channel airflow when it’s on a flat surface.
Nonetheless, even when it’s off, the m16 R1 is warm to the touch. The fan can ramp up under minimal use, in Balanced-power mode, but when it’s maxed out, under load, it does a good job of keeping everything cool. It was often emitting a quiet, fluctuating, high-pitched whine, though.
The Alienware Command Centre app has been updated and offers much less of an unintuitive, alien-like user experience. However, there are so many things to update – and some require updates in other apps without you being told what they are. We found ourselves testing this laptop several times, in between updates, and getting different scores each time (some faster, some slower). There’s no obvious thermal throttling like we saw in the old days, but stability is still a question that’s not been full answered.
Ports and connections
The Alienware m16 R1 has Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless connectivity. Meanwhile, all wired connections are spread around the left side and rear. There are two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports (one with PowerShare), an SDcard slot, HDMI 2.1, miniDP, a 3.5mm audio jack plus a 2.5G network port. That’s a very complete complement of connections.
How portable is the Alienware m16 R1?
The m16’s robust build quality tells us it should easily withstand life on the road. It’s not light though: 3KG for a gaming laptop is what we expect to see with 17 and 18-inch models. The slim power supply and cables add an extra 810g to this bulk which isn’t light, but we’ve seen much worse.
We were disappointed in our battery tests where we’ve seen latest-generation, Intel-Nvidia-combo laptops push 10-hours of battery life. However, despite running the test numerous times, the 86Wh battery only lasted five hours. The cooling and power management still aren’t quite right.
Overall
SmartHouse is so early to review the Alienware m16 R1 that we still don’t have a price for this model. It’s in a competitive space – up against the likes of the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro, Asus Zephyrus m16, MSI Raider and (if you can actually find one in a store) the Acer Predator Helios range. Many people will prefer the design of the Alienware but, while it’s not the hot mess of its predecessors, it can still be a bit of a luke-warm muddle.
Ultimately, if you want the design, can live with the mild heat and mediocre battery-life issues and can find it at a price that suits you, it’s still a good buy.
It looks great and performs well, but the latest m16 R1 still has a few niggling issues.
Ultimately, if you want the design, can live with the mild heat and mediocre battery-life issues and can find it at a price that suits you, it’s still a good buy.
It looks great and performs well, but the latest m16 R1 still has a few niggling issues.
- Looks good and is well-built.
- The Alienware Command Centre app is greatly improved.
- Portability is hampered by poor battery life and being heavy.
- It runs warm and the fan is often audible to some degree.