This year, we saw a trend of gaming laptops getting toned down a bit, trading tons of RGB for a more subtle, utilitarian look. For Dell, that was the Alienware m16 R2, complete with a "Stealth mode" that switches the RGB keyboard to white and sets the fans to quiet. Opposite October Prime Day, Dell has the m16 R2 on sale in three different configurations, all with the Core Ultra 9 185H and ranging between $300 and $500 off.
Perhaps the best deal is the $1,699.99 option, which is $400 off. It gets you a Core Ultra 9 185H, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 laptop GPU, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a 2560 x 1600 screen. This is cheaper than we reviewed a version with a Core Ultra 7 155H, 16GB of RAM and an RTX 4070 earlier this year.
On the low end, there's a $1,399.99 model ($300 off) with an RTX 4060, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. On the high end, there's the Ultra 9, RTX 4070, 2TB SSD and 64GB of RAM for $2,099.99 ($500 off). All three models have the same display.
When we tested the m16 R2, we appreciated its strong build quality, solid gaming performance, plentiful ports and the ease of being able to add RAM or storage later..
These sale laptops, however, aren't offering one of our favorite Alienware features, the Cherry MX mechanical keyboard. You'll have to deal with a standard membrane.
In our testing, with a Core Ultra 7 155H, 16GB of RAM, and an RTX 4070, the Alienware powered through our benchmarks, beating out the 14-inch competitors that also went with plain looks this year, though other 16-inch laptops were competitive.
It's likely that Dell is trying to get rid of these to make space for upcoming Arrow Lake gaming laptops, but hey, if you're going to get last-gen stuff, get it while the price is good.
