As part of its Early Black Friday Sale, Dell is offering some deep discounts on two Alienware m16 R2 laptop configurations: the RTX 4060 model is on sale for $1199.99 and the RTX 4070 model is on sale for $1499.99. The m16 R2 is Alienware's most popular gaming laptop, which isn't surprising considering its excellent build quality, top-of-the-line gaming prowess, and reasonable price point. The "R2" is a second generation model that was released earlier this year; it's 14% lighter and more compact than its predecessor without compromising on performance.
Alienware m16 R2 16" Gaming Laptop
These two Alienware m16 R2 laptops feature a 16" 2560x1600 QHD+ display, the new 14th gen Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, your choice of GeForce RTX 4060 or RTX 4070 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 clock speed of 4.8GHz with 16 cores, 22 threads, and a 24MB cache. The Core Ultra 7 is the successor to the Intel Core i7 CPU; it offers similar performance while consuming less power, and thus reducing heat and increasing battery life. If you intend to use this laptop as a gaming rig, there's very little reason to upgrade to the Core Ultra 9 because the additional cores have zero benefit in pretty much every game out there.
You absolutely will, however, need a decent amount of GPU power to be able to run games smoothly on the display's bumped-up 2560x1600 resolution. The RTX 4060 GPU with 115W TGP (140W with dynamic boost) would definitely be the bare minimum we'd recommend; its performance lies somewhere between the RTX 3070 and the RTX 3070 Ti, so it's no slouch in terms of gaming performance. The more powerful RTX 4070 with 115W TGP (140W with dynamic boost) is comparable to the RTX 3080 and would fare better. Both RTX 40 series GPUs also support DLSS 3.0.
Not all laptop GPUs are the same, even if they share the same name.
There are two important tidbits that deserve mention concerning graphics cards found in laptops. First, mobile GPU variants are not as powerful as their desktop counterparts. For example, a mobile RTX 4060 doesn't perform as well as a desktop RTX 4060. The mobile versions are generally about one to two tiers lower in performance. Using the same example, the mobile RTX 4060 performs more similarly to a desktop RTX 4050.
Second, not all laptops feature the same performance out of the same GPU. For example, the RTX 4060 found in the Alienware m16 will be more powerful than the RTX 4060 found in the Alienware x14. In order to roughly tell how good a GPU will be, you can look at the TGP rating, which is a measure of the amount of power supplied to the GPU. A higher TGP rating means more power will be delivered, equating to stronger performance, however as a tradeoff there will be more heat generation. Here are the maximum TGP rates for the RTX 40 series graphics cards:
- Mobile RTX 4050: 115W
- Mobile RTX 4060: 115W
- Mobile RTX 4070: 115W
- Mobile RTX 4080: 150W
- Mobile RTX 4090: 150W
Note that every Alienware m16 R2 laptop is equipped with GPUs that have the maximum power supplied to it. That means they have the maximum TGP rating allowed for their respective GPU.
Should You Wait for Black Friday?
In most cases, we would say that Black Friday has the best deals of the year. Dell, however, is quite the opposite. Although Black Friday is a great time to buy the best gaming laptops in general, the best times of year to score a Dell or Alienware specific laptop would actually be either (1) Memorial Day and (2) right before Black Friday from September to early November. Either way, the deals that are going on right now are quite good.
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Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
