Dell unveiled its updated Alienware m16 R2 16" RTX 4060 gaming laptop during CES 2024 and now it's available for sale on their site for $1649.99. Dell has chosen move forward in a new direction with the Alienware m16 laptops. The m16 R1 focused solely on gaming performance, but it was heavy, bulky, and very ostentatious. Although the new m16 R2 is still very capable at gaming, greater emphasis has been placed on lighter weight, more compact size, and more subtle aesthetics.
New 2024 Alienware m16 R2 RTX 4060 Gaming Laptop for $1649.99
The Alienware m16 R2 is lighter and slimmer than the previous generation m16 R1. The hump behind the display is no longer there, resulting in a 14% reduction in both dimensions and weight. For those of you who didn't like the very noticable RGB bling of the original m16 R1, you can now switch to a more subtle white LED backlighting with a press of a button. Because some of the cooling has been removed, the m16 R2 is now limited to an RTX 4070 GPU or lower. If you want an RTX 4080 or 4090 GPU, you'll have to opt for the bigger Alienware x16 laptop. Additionally, the m16 R2 is now equipped with low voltage Intel Meteor Lake CPUs for less power draw and thus less heat and noise.
This particular Alienware m16 R2 laptop features a 16" 2560x1600 QHD+ display, the new 14th gen Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, 16GB of DDR5-5600MHz RAM, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H is a Meteor Lake CPU with a Turbo Boost Max clock speed of 4.8GHz with 16 cores, 22 threads, and a 24MB cache. The 155H is one of the higher end CPUs in the Meteor Lake lineup. It's a low voltage CPU with a TDP of 28W that's comparable in performance to other CPUs with the same power limitations like the i7-1360P or the 7840HS. It does have a very powerful iGPU in the guise of the Intel Arc (although for gaming the laptop will default to the RTX 4060 discrete graphics), and also performs better in AI apps. This is a very new processor and future optimizations should only make it faster. The RTX 4060 sits between the RTX 3070 and the RTX 3070 Ti so it's definitely no slouch in terms of gaming performance. You'll need a decent amount of GPU power to be able to run games smoothly on the display's bumped up QHD+ resolution, so you'll find that having the newest RTX 40 series GPU will come in handy.
