Alienware was one of the first brands to define the gaming laptop category and today it continues to be a cut above the rest. Over the years we’ve seen their products evolve and adapt the latest tech to deliver excellent performance. At the same time, the manufacturer (now owned by Dell) has managed to maintain a unique identity with its space-age-inspired aesthetics.
Apart from the second-gen Alienware X17, X15 and the all-new X14, the 2022 gaming laptop lineup also includes the new Alienware m15 R7. It features the same chassis as last year, but the internals have been refreshed with the latest Intel 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs and the option of either an Nvidia RTX 3060, 3070 Ti or the 3080 Ti. I had a chance to test one out of the three configurations of the m15 R7 offered in India, and here’s what I think about it.
Design
If you are familiar with last year’s Alienware m15 R6, you are not going to see any differences here. In fact, the new 2022 model uses the same chassis from last year which is made from a combination of aluminium, magnesium alloy and plastic. It does feel premium though, with nicely rounded corners and a nice matte texture all around. The dark grey colour scheme or as it’s called the ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ is also very appealing, although I really wish we could get this in white. I also loved the honeycomb design scheme on all the air vents, which gives the laptop its distinct look.
The build is sturdy and you might notice minor flexing on the lid and keyboard deck, but I didn’t feel any quality issues while using the laptop. Like the last year’s model, there is RGB lighting for the keyboard, the Alienware logo on the lid, the power button, and the wrap-around light bar on the rear. All of the lighting can be controlled using Alienware’s Command Center app. Now the laptop is on the heavier side weighing about 2.6kgs, and you can definitely feel the bulk at the back due to the beefy cooling solution. Plus if you add the weight of the charger you are looking at 3.2kgs which is not particularly good for portability.
The I/O is the same as last year so you get two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports (one with PowerShare) on the right side while the left has a 2.5G ethernet port with a 3.5mm headphone and mic combo jack. Moving to the back, there’s a USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4, another USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, DisplayPort 1.4, an HDMI 2.1 port and a barrel port for charging. The laptop also comes with Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6 AX1650.
The laptop is easily serviceable and you can get to the internal by removing a few screws that come with standard Phillips screws. The memory, M.2 SSD and Wi-Fi module are user upgradable and there is a secondary M.2 slot to further expand storage.
Performance
The Alienware m15 R7 is powered by the 12th-gen Intel Core i7-12700H mobile processor. It features 14 cores out of which six are performance or P-cores and eight efficient or E-cores, with 20 threads and a maximum clock speed of 4.7GHz. The review unit I was sent included 16GB of DDR5 dual channel memory running at 4800MHz and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU. The base TDP of the 12700H is rated at 45W which can go up to 115W. As per my testing, the CPU peaked at 146W, which is quite impressive and shows that Alienware means business. As for the GPU, the RTX 3070 Ti on the laptop has a maximum TDP of 75W.
Performance is top notch and the laptop delivered excellent results in almost every single task. Now primarily this laptop is meant for gaming, and it definitely lives up to its name. Fast-paced FPS games like Apex Legends at 1440p resolution should run around the 100fps mark and can go over 200fps if you pull down the resolution to 1080p with medium settings. I also loved how well Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered rendered on this laptop. Even at the highest graphics settings, it managed to deliver over 60fps at 1440p resolution. Enabling ray tracing does hit the performance but with DLSS you can maintain a good balance between frame rates and render quality.
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