Since 16-inch laptops are still a relatively new trend, not every laptop line has been refreshed at this size yet. We saw 16-inch design reach Alienware’s newer “X” series first with the Alienware x16, and now the screen size arrives to the longer-running “M” series, which packs more power than its slimmer counterpart line. The Alienware m16 (starts at $1,349.99; $2,299.99 as tested) proved in testing that it is, indeed, a more potent but less portable version of the x16. Considering this size is better suited to being a desktop replacement than a travel companion in our view, the compromise is worthwhile, and this is one of the best-built and best-performing 16-inch gaming laptops available. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8 is still an unmatched value, but the m16 is a close second with a reasonable starting price and plenty of configuration options to match your budget.
Design: Dark Skies
The m16 features Alienware's updated design style first seen in the x16 and the Alienware m18, its other massive new kid on the block. The M series gaming laptops were previously best known for several iterations of the m15 and m17. The dark color and mostly unadorned style here give it a stark, minimalist look, but you'll find some aspects that provide flair. The lid features embossed “16” text and the signature backlit alien-head logo, while the keyboard deck is black with some honeycomb-shaped vents.
Alienware's customizable RGB chassis lighting brings verve to the design, particularly the rear's ringed LED loop that’s become emblematic of the modern Alienware laptops. You can make this lighting static or run through a range of effects and colors—the same goes for the Alienware lid logo, the logo power button forward of the keyboard, and the keys themselves. This is all done through included Command Center software. The somewhat sci-fi styling has been toned down over the years, and still may not be for everyone, but the m16 is pretty slick overall.
Speaking of the keyboard, you'll notice a treat once you start typing: mechanical keys. Available for an additional $100, these low-profile, Cherry MX-branded switches debuted on Alienware's laptops a few years back. While they are an optional add-on, it’s a joy when they appear on our review units. It’s undoubtedly a luxury—only your budget will decide if they’re worthwhile—but these keys absolutely provide a better and more satisfying typing experience than the base keyboard. The keyboard can be ordered in the form of non-mechanical keys with a single backlighting zone, non-mechanical keys with per-key backlighting, or the mechanical keys with per-key backlighting, which is what we have here.
Similar Products
Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8
Acer Nitro V 15 (ANV15-51-59MT)
MSI Cyborg 15 (2023)
Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 (14.5-Inch)
Alienware m16 R2
Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8
Alienware m18 R2
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024)
Razer Blade 14 (2023)
MSI Titan 18 HX
Gigabyte Aero 16 OLED (2023)
Acer Chromebook 516 GE
I mentioned the M series is the product line more focused on power compared with the slimmer X series, and you will notice some extra heft and thickness. The base m16 measures 1 by 14.5 by 11.4 inches (HWD) and 6.67 pounds—the weight goes up to a maximum of 7.17 pounds if outfitted with the most powerful options. At that point, it’s more than a full pound heavier than the 6-pound Alienware x16, but the starting weight isn’t exactly in a different tier. The x16 is much thinner, too, at only 0.73 inch thick. The m16 is heavier than alternatives, too: Our favorite midrange pick, the 16-inch Lenovo Legion Pro 5 Gen 8, weighs only 5.51 pounds, while the step-up Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8 comes in at 6.1 pounds.
Now, the benefits of that may vary depending on the user; plenty of gamers looking for a 16-inch laptop don’t plan to move it or take it out of the house all that often. If that’s you, the M series makes more sense as a desktop replacement, while the X series is more friendly to people taking the machine on the road as their main daily driver. The difference in size definitely comes with performance concessions, as you’ll see below, so a moderate slim-down isn’t necessarily worth it.
If you are considering this laptop as a desktop replacement, the 16-inch display will more than suffice. Our unit features a 2,560 by 1,600 (QHD+) resolution and a 240Hz refresh rate, which is a treat for gamers and a smart fit for the components included. This isn’t the only screen option for this laptop: You can also choose a QHD+ 165Hz display, or a 1,920 by 1,200 (FHD+) 480Hz screen. The panel is sharp and vibrant enough for a non-OLED, and it's rated for 300 nits brightness. All three options include support for AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync, and none supports touch control.
Rounding out the physical build is a sweet selection of ports with little left missing. The left side of the laptop holds a headphone jack, an Ethernet port, and a USB Type-A connector, while you'll find no connections on the right edge. Instead, the rest are located around back, where you’ll find another USB-A connection, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI-out, a mini DisplayPort connector, and an SD card slot. That’s an above-average suite, and you won’t stretch to connect all of your peripherals or external monitors to this system.
The laptop further features a 1080p webcam with a sharp picture, which is always a welcome inclusion in a sea of lower-res cameras. The camera includes IR support to enable Windows Hello logins.
Configurations: Ryzen and RTX Combine
As usual with Dell products, you can customize and order the m16 in a wide range of configurations on the official website, while you may find preset models elsewhere. The lowest-cost configuration is $1,349.99, which nets you either an Intel Core i7-13700HX or a Ryzen 7 7745HX CPU, 16GB of memory, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, 512GB of storage, the 165Hz QHD+ screen (it's 240Hz minimum on the AMD model), and the per-key-lit non-mechanical keyboard.
You'll find a tab for swapping between Intel and AMD options on the website, and you can configure either up from that point. Your options for doing so are many—the m16 can be equipped with several other RTX 40 series GPUs up to an RTX 4090 (and an AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT if you choose a Ryzen processor), as much as 64GB of RAM, and up to 8TB of storage in varying configurations.
Our review unit is an AMD-based version, but it lands between the base models and the top-end choices. It’s loaded with a Ryzen 9 7845HX, 16GB of memory, an RTX 4080 GPU, a 1TB SSD, the 240Hz QHD+ panel, and the Cherry MX keyboard for $2,299.99. Clearly, that leaves the entry and midrange pricing well behind, but it’s actually not overly expensive for these high-end parts and a well-rounded build.
Testing the Alienware m16: A Sky-High Competition
Let’s jump into the testing and see how this combination performs. The GPU is configured at a 150-watt TGP, which is high output (actually it's maximum rated limit) and makes a big difference in practical performance. To gauge the effectiveness of these components, we put the m16 through our usual suite of benchmark tests, described below alongside the results. We’ll compare the scores with the following laptops…
The two Alienware systems provide sensible contextual points of comparison: How much better is the thicker m16 than the x16, and how much more power do you get by jumping up to the 18-inch screen size? The HP Omen 16 is a pricier 16-inch machine, but the performance didn’t blow us away, so if the m16 can deliver similar results at a lower price, it’s a mark in its favor. Finally, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8 is our current favorite high-end 16-inch laptop.
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.
Our other three 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 Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs 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).
Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, 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.
It’s difficult for a modern Ryzen 9 processor to perform anything but well on these tests, and sure enough, we found not much room between it and Intel’s current top-end current chips. If you are looking for winners, the hulking m18 and, more impressively, the same-size Legion Pro 7i Gen 8, tended to edge out the m16 across these tests. In either case, the m16 is highly proficient in processing and media editing tasks, should you want to use your laptop for these workloads when not gaming.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
For gaming laptops and other mobile gaming hardware, we run both synthetic and real-world gaming benchmarks. The former includes two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark: Night Raid (more modest, suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Additionally, we use the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which gauges OpenGL performance. These GFXBench tests are rendered offscreen to accommodate different native display resolutions; more frames per second (fps) means higher performance.
Our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege. These three games—all benchmarked at 1080p resolution—represent simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive/esports shooter games, respectively. Valhalla and Siege are run twice (Valhalla at Medium and Ultra quality, Siege at Low and Ultra quality), while F1 2021 is run twice at Ultra quality settings with and without AMD and Nvidia's performance-boosting FSR and DLSS features turned on.
Much like the CPU-based tests, only the m18 and Legion claimed superiority over the m16 here. The m16 showed high-end power on the synthetic tests, and those carried over to the real games. If you’re into competitive multiplayer titles, the Siege results demonstrate how you can make use of the 240Hz display at any settings, and the F1 scores show that the smooth experience won’t diminish in more visually demanding simulations.
An average of 131fps on a demanding open-world title like Valhalla is exactly what you want from a powerful bigger-screened laptop. I ran the same test again at the native QHD+ resolution to see how the m16 fared, and it averaged 101fps—still maintaining a quick frame rate for this type of game at maximum settings. The most cutting-edge titles will likely drop further below 100fps, but staying above that 60fps mark is the goal, and this laptop has plenty of cushion. Even for the m18, in some additional side testing, maintaining 120fps in this game beyond 1080p was difficult: It averaged 121fps at its native 1600p. That’s just about where high-end, high-resolution mobile gaming is currently, even if you spend more than this already pricey laptop.
Battery and Display Tests
We test each laptop and tablet's 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%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
To gauge display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
Five hours and 20 minutes of battery life is only an okay result, but it was clearly in line with what the others in this tier can do, too. With high-end parts and fast, high-resolution screens, expecting more than 10 hours of battery life for these kinds of laptops is too optimistic. The m16, instead, will last you for a while off the charger as needed, not that it’s the most portable laptop to begin with. If you want to drag it out to your couch, or use it in an airport or at a friend’s place, it won’t die on you right away—just don’t expect all-day runtime—nor for it to last too long if you play games off the charger.
The m16 display posted high color coverage, a boon to creative users looking to benefit from the processing and graphics power for media work outside of gaming. Its maximum brightness also measured higher than the stated 300 nits rating, so while it didn’t break any records, the fact that the panel looks bright enough in normal use is backed up by these results.
Verdict: Otherworldly Power
The Alienware m16 delivered exactly what we expected of it. This is a more powerful, less portable version of the recent Alienware x16, trading some slimness and weight for superior performance. If you’re shopping at the 16-inch size, portability isn’t always the main priority anyway, and the weight difference isn’t a world apart. We think the m16 makes more sense at 16 inches, where the X series really excels at smaller sizes like the x14.
Our caveat is, of course, that the review unit we tested that posted such competitive performance is expensive. That doesn’t have to be the case—the starting price is just above entry-level, and you'll find configuration options for every budget in between—but to review it as a top-end system means shoppers have to pay top dollar to match the performance. Competition is fierce at this tier, but the m16 is still one of the best-made laptops in the bunch, with flexible loadouts and proven performance chops. You’ll be happy with this machine if you can afford it, even if the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8’s combination of cost and power still can’t be beat.
A top-end performer with a sleek build and fast display, the Alienware m16 is an excellent gaming laptop with a reasonable starting price and configuration options that further its appeal.
Like What You're Reading?
Sign up for Lab Report to get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Sign up for other newsletters
