Alienware m17 R5 Review | PCMag

The latest entry in Alienware's M series of full-size high-end gaming laptops, the m17 R5 (starts at $1,599.99; $2,799.99 as tested) pushes the power envelope with an under-the-hood update to the m17 R4. Our review unit is an all-AMD model with an eight-core Ryzen 9 6900HX processor and Radeon 6850M XT GPU, which teamed up for some very potent performance numbers. Playing demanding AAA games is a breeze on this big-screen laptop, and while our unit sported a 4K resolution display with a 120Hz peak refresh rate, 1080p players can choose a mind-blowingly fast 480Hz panel instead. Alienware's unique sci-fi styling remains, and the m17 R5's surprising battery life belies its weight and bulk.

An enthusiast laptop through and through, the R5 is actually reasonably priced relative to its competitors, with a starting price and configuration options that give lots of flexibility. All these factors make it our newest Editors' Choice winner among high-end 17-inch gaming laptops. MSI's GT77 Titan, reviewed a few days earlier, retains its own Editors Choice award for the ultimate high-end laptop, with its Core i9 Intel HX CPU (more about which in our testing section). But the Alienware should prove the more popular choice for modern budgets.

The Design: Big Power in a Big Package

Stylistically, the Alienware m17 R5 pretty much retains the design of previous versions, so there isn't much new to say. That's not a bad thing: The sci-fi style with ringed rear LED light and futuristic lid logo are unique and signal that this is a gaming PC without being garish. The R5 is only available in Alienware's Dark Side of the Moon color scheme, not the white Lunar Light we've seen in past reviews.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Alienware may be touting its more streamlined X series nowadays, but the max-power M series remains the performance preference at 15 and 17 inches. The m15 and m17 have been among the frame-rate leaders in their respective sizes, while the X models focus on thinness at the cost of raw power. With the m17 R5, that separation continues.

That's not to say the R5 is ultra-thick, though I'd never call it slim. Compared to the beefy 17-inch gamers of years past, it's relatively trim at 1.05 by 15.6 by 11.8 inches (HWD). That's roughly in line with another of our favorite jumbo gaming rigs, the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17, which measures 1.11 by 15.6 by 11.1 inches.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

By contrast, the Alienware x17 is thinner (0.82 inch), but we'll see the tradeoff in performance in the benchmark section shortly. The m17 R5 is actually thicker than its R4 predecessor, increasing the delineation between the X and M series.

It definitely takes a commitment to carry the R5 with you; it weighs 7.3 pounds, a full pound heavier than even the mighty Strix Scar. You definitely won't want to make this laptop your everyday commuting partner, or even use it on your lap instead of a desk or table. The upside is the power, which dwarfs most 15-inch systems as well as the few 17-inch gamers that offer a smaller footprint (like the Acer Nitro 5) and the increasing number of 16-inch laptops that try to split the difference between power and portability.

That said, even the m17 R5's ponderous weight may be perfectly fine for most users; big-screen gaming notebooks usually serve as desktop replacements that can be carried occasionally but stay in one place most of the time. The 17.3-inch display is part of what makes that so appealing, getting as close to a desktop monitor as possible, so let's see what this one has in store.

Refresh Rates and Resolutions: 480Hz, 4K, and More!

As mentioned, our test unit's screen combines 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) resolution with a 120Hz refresh rate, which is enthusiast-grade on both fronts. Quality is good, as well, with a bright, vibrant, and sharp picture. Playing the most demanding 3D games at 4K remains difficult, but you'll appreciate the 120Hz view for less taxing titles. If you manually set games to lower resolutions, you may wish for a higher refresh rate since the system's easily capable of hitting 144 or 240 frames per second (fps) at 1080p or 1440p.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Alienware offers a choice of three full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) panels with refresh rates of 165Hz, 360Hz, and 480Hz. As an all-AMD unit, our system came with a screen supporting AMD FreeSync and SmartAccess Graphics, which automatically switches the system to the discrete GPU for graphics-intensive applications. The technologies' Nvidia equivalents are G-Sync and Advanced Optimus. All models include a MUX switch that lets the GPU control the panel directly rather than translate through the on-chip graphics to minimize loss of performance.

Otherwise, the laptop's build is much like the m17 R4's. That includes one of the optional highlights, the Cherry MX mechanical keyboard that we called a surprisingly great feature of the R4. Many gaming laptops have offered pseudo-mechanical key solutions, but this one (which hails from the leading name in mechanical switches) is the real deal. You won't find quite as much travel as on a desktop keyboard, but the clicky feel and tactile feedback are satisfying. Each key is individually backlit with customizable RGB lighting.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Ports are spread around the chassis, with fewer concentrated at rear than in the past. The left edge holds Ethernet and headphone jacks, while the right flank has two USB 3.2 Type-A ports. The rear thermal block houses the rest, including the power jack, another USB-A 3.2 port, a USB-C port, and an HDMI video output.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

The webcam has only low-rent 720p resolution, which is disappointing for the price even if video chatting isn't likely a primary use for this laptop. There are also some additional features that certainly contribute to the high price but which you may not see right away. These include an advanced cooling system—our model features Alienware's Cryotech design with a larger vapor chamber than the R4, smaller and more efficient CPU and GPU fans, and Smart Fan control to dynamically tune the speed of different fans. There's also the abovementioned AMD graphics technology and the Alienware Command Center app for setting the lighting, managing your game library, tuning power management, and more.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Component Check: Ryzen CPUs, Plus AMD and Nvidia GPU Options

Our test unit is configured toward the top of Alienware's possibilities for the m17 R5, but not all models need be quite as souped-up, nor do they need to be AMD-exclusive like ours. Several Nvidia GPUs are available. Prices on Dell's site start at $1,599.99, which is midrange shading toward the high end, but that's not surprising for this system. It includes an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB solid-state drive, the 165Hz full HD screen backed by an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU, and a non-mechanical keyboard with single-zone RGB lighting.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Soaring upward in price and power, our review unit combines a Ryzen 9 6900HX processor, 32GB of memory, a 1TB SSD, and AMD's Radeon 6850M XT GPU in addition to the 4K display and Cherry mechanical keyboard, bringing the total to $2,799.99. The GPU is configured with a whopping power ceiling of 175 watts, which is a big factor in the performance numbers below.

Naturally, there are several options between the base model and our unit and even above the latter. Middle-of-the-road GPUs include the GeForce RTX 3060 and Radeon RX 6700M, with the RTX 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti for Nvidia fanatics. SSD sizes rise to 2TB and 4TB.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Testing the Alienware m17 R5: All-AMD Affair Delivers Fast Frame Rates

We ran the Alienware m17 R5 through our usual benchmark suite, pitting its performance against a group of other expensive gaming laptops. You can see the contenders' basic specs in the table below.

Two of the four comparison systems are also Alienware laptops, the previous edition of the m17 and the slimmer x17. Joining them are powerhouse offerings from Asus and Origin, making for formidable competition in the unlimited-plus-sized gaming tier.

The MSI GT77 Titan, meanwhile, is in a whole other league, at $5,999 in our test model. We just awarded it an Editors' Choice badge for topping out our charts and being the ultimate cost-no-object gaming laptop of the moment. We included it here to see how its new Intel Core i9-12900HX CPU stacks up what's in elite AMD and Intel muscle machines that are still well below it in price.

Let's see how they stack up.

Productivity Tests

The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10's Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a laptop's boot drive.

Three other benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Our final productivity test is workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The m17 R5 did very well in these tests, though it wasn't the fastest. This is of course a blazing group of laptops, so virtually all the results here are phenomenal if you're planning to do some digital content creation or media editing when not gaming. If you’re looking for the ultimate performer (price no object), look no further than the MSI GT77 Titan and the HX-family Core i9. The Origin and Asus, though, and in places the Alienware x17, edged the m17 R5, showing how Intel's 12th Gen CPUs have caught up with AMD's Ryzens.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark: Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Two more tests from GFXBench 5.0, run offscreen to allow for different display resolutions, wring out OpenGL operations.

In addition, we run three real-world game tests using the built-in 1080p benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege. These represent simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive esports shooter games respectively. We run Valhalla and Siege at two different image quality presets and F1 with and without Nvidia's performance-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing or AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution enabled.

These results are gaming laptops' reason for existing. The m17 R5 proved about level with its peers in the synthetic tests, but soared in our actual game benchmarks. If you thought Nvidia was the only option on the top run of mobile gaming, the Radeon 6850M XT will make you think twice. The R5's average frame rate in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla—the most demanding title here—was the best of the bunch. Its Rainbow Six Siege frame rates were also a dream come true for competitive multiplayer gamers (even if our unit's screen refresh rate couldn't equal them, and the MSI GT77 flew past them). All these systems are expensive (the MSI, wildly so), and the m17 R5 wasn't the winner in every event, but it gives you plenty of power for your dollar.

For the record, we ran these tests in Alienware Command Center's default Performance mode. You can opt for Balanced or Quiet modes for desktop browsing or use on battery power or step up to the Full Speed mode, but when we tried the last we saw only a negligible change in benchmark performance for a very noticeable increase in fan noise and heat output. In Performance mode, the fans were certainly audible, but nothing out of the ordinary and quite tolerable.

Battery and Display Tests

We test laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

The R5 clearly has an advantage in unplugged stamina, outlasting the others and showing a big improvement over the R4. The laptop's actual size and weight may prevent you from doing a lot of traveling, but if you do take it out (or just to your couch), it'll last longer than you'd think.

Upping the Alienware Ante

The Alienware m17 R5 doesn't exactly reinvent the R4, but more advanced features and higher performance are what you want from an iterative release. With the x15 and x17 representing slimmer choices among Alienware's offerings, the m17 has room to breathe as the brand's largest and most potent option. It delivers in spades and even adds impressive battery life.

Some top-dollar competitors may be faster in certain areas, but the R5 succeeds as a gaming-first machine with sky-high frame rates and plenty of configuration options. Our unit's 175-watt GPU proves its worth if you're a frame-rate-first shopper. It's undeniably pricey, but not more so than its rivals, and the starting price is closer to the midrange. While the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 and Origin EVO17-S are more-than-worthy competitors, the configuration options, style, and raw power of the Alienware m17 R5 earn it an Editors' Choice award for a big high-end gaming laptop that enthusiasts may actually buy, while the MSI GT77 retains its Editors' Choice, too, earned a few days ago, for the ultimate price-regardless dream machine.