Alienware M15 R5

Close encounters of the Ryzen kind

- CHRISTIAN GUYTON

ONE THING’S FOR SURE: Alienware laptops remain beautiful pieces of hardware, even if there has been the odd bum note in Dell’s handiwork over the years. The M15 R5 (specifically the Ryzen Edition we’re reviewing) is no exception, with a stylish exterior and bright RGB lighting. The new R5 only comes in “Dark Side of the Moon” black, which looks great despite its pretentious titling.

It’s a little thicker than its predecessor, bucking the trend in gaming laptops getting thinner and thinner, but the M15 R5 is still on the slender side when it comes to portable powerhouses. Inside, we’ve got a Ryzen 7 5800H processor and an RTX 3060, for about double what you could expect to pay for that GPU right now. This is Dell’s first Alienware laptop with a Ryzen processor and an RTX GPU, so it’s exciting to see how it could measure up against Intel-powered laptops.