Alienware M15 R5 - Review

The Alienware M15 R5 is a new competitor in the gaming laptop market coming from the stalwart giants of the industry themselves. I have been a long-term user of Alienware products, having used a laptop of theirs for nearly 5 years during my teenage life, and then using one of their mid-range desktops up until late 2020.

As such I am always excited to see what new innovations are coming out of Alienware, and how they intend to push the market. I got to play with the Ryzen R9 5900HX version, which also boasts a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070. How does this powerhouse of a laptop stand up?

The first thing that I noticed is how sleek the design of the R5 is, with a 15.6inch display, a full-size graphics card and 1TB SSD it’s amazing how sleek they’ve managed to keep the overall laptop. The screen hinge is incredibly smooth and opening and closing the screen is as easy as turning a page of paper. The screen itself is impressively vibrant, and the colour level really stood out to me. The default settings appeared to be pretty much bang on, so I didn’t need to play around with it much to get it looking how I personally like.

The backlighting of the keys is RGB, and for those that care for the pretty lights this would definitely be a nice selling point. As someone who doesn’t really care to have a rainbow effect flashing me in the face, I was happy to find that they backlight can easily be turned off with the press of a function key. I didn’t get into it much, but I would believe the Alienware control centre would allow you to change the RGB routines and set them to a preference level that is good for the individual user.

However, I ran into a mild irritation pretty quickly. That being the keys of the laptop. I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to my keyboards and tend to stick to one style and brand for as long as humanly possible. For a machine that boasts such specs and is marketed as a gaming laptop I was somewhat put off the fact that the keys felt kind of lacking. They’re somewhat stiff, they have good response but they feel like I’m pressing on cheap plastic. They key design was somewhat strange as well. The right-hand shift is half size, but the right-hand control key is double the size of a standard control key. As someone who typically uses my left hand for crouch control with the control key, I feel a better design would have had the left-hand control key be a larger key, and the right-hand side a standard size one. The spacebar is already noticeably smaller than I would’ve expected, so having the left control be the larger of the two, would’ve made more logical sense to me. Of course, if you’re really using the laptop for gaming, you’re likely using another keyboard anyway, so for the majority of people buying, this may be a moot point.

USB ports are the bane of my existence. As someone who streams, I have a need for a minimum of 5 USB slots. At least one USB-C, and 4 standard USB. Most gamers are going to be needing at least 3 USB and possible a USB-C. The R5 just manages to scrape by here, but there feels almost an oversight in regard to this. The laptop has 3 USB slots. Two side entry, and one rear entry, as well as one USB-C slot. Assuming that a user isn’t going to be plugging an external keyboard in, this would be just enough to have headphones, mouse, possibly a controller and an external webcam/recording device. Is every game going to be stacked to the gills with peripheral devices? No, but 3 and 1 slots is really limiting. A second rear entry USB slot would be ideal in this scenario, just having that extra slot for peace of mind would be a life saver.

A final gripe before I get into the stuff that everyone wants to know, is the heat. Having as powerful a GPU and CPU as is included; I was expecting some heat. I wasn’t expecting as much heat, as quickly as I did though, the laptop runs hot, very, very hot. The internal fans generally kick in pretty readily to cool the laptop down, but if you’re not careful when moving it, or if using it on your lap, you’re going to be in for a quick shock. Alienware seem to have taken this into account and have a function key linked to a fan acceleration option. With one quick press the fans explode into action, and you’ve no longer got a scalding hot iron, but a very cool, and very loud jet turbine instead. The fans when running at full speed are loud, very loud; unnecessarily loud I would go so far as to say. If you’re not bothered by a loud unit, as most gamers with fans blaring would not be, then it’s another moot point. However, if you’re more a casual person, or you can’t have super loud noises coming out of your room, the fan noise is something to take note of.

Let’s get into the nitty gritty, the bit we all want to know about. Is this Alienware R5 worth it, or is it a downfall in of itself? You’ll be happy to know, that just as exquisitely sleek as it looks on the outside, this monster of a laptop has the hardware inside to exceed your expectations. Looking to run Call of Duty: Warzone at max specs, meaning in perfect 1080P at 120FPS+; you’ll find it a breeze. Aiming to stream your game play at 1080p60? You might push those fans a little harder than you would like, but you’ll find this laptop can do it no problem. For a person looking to get maximum performance, in a unit that can be used for its versatility on the go, and at home, then look no further. The Alienware M15 Ryzen Edition R5 Gaming Laptop earns its stripes in its performance. These behemoth can go, and go, and go. It’s going to run hot, and the fans are going to be loud, but when you want to get that immersive experience for a price better than what you would building your own similarly specced computer, look no further.

The M15 R5 Alienware Laptop is an impressive new step into the market. Whilst I personally had a few gripes with it, and the overheating could be a problem long-term, I honestly couldn’t recommend the M15 R5 Alienware laptop more. For someone who does stream, and games pretty heavily, this is a laptop I personally would love to have.

The Score

7.5

Review unit provided by Alienware

The Pros

+Very sleek design

+Rear-entry charger port

+Runs like a dream

+Surprisingly Light

The Cons

-Runs very hot

-Keyboard feels a little underwhelming

-Loud fans