The Alienware 15 is a fine gaming laptop priced into irrelevance

How much should a gaming laptop cost? The answer is—depressing and unhelpful as always—”it depends.” If you insist on an Alienware logo on the top and you’re looking at the Dell shop today, then the answer starts at a hefty $1,299. That gets you a relatively recent CPU… and an RTX 4050 graphics card from 2023.

The Alienware 15 is ostensibly what’s replacing the Dell G series of affordable gaming laptops. It’s a step down from the next-priciest model in the current lineup—the Aurora 16—which has a starting list price of $1,690. The Alienware 15 dispenses with the LED logo lights in favor of a trading card-style chromatic finish. It makes do without other bombastic touches, opting for a black polycarbonate (that’s “plastic” for those outside the marketing department) body and white-only backlighting on the keyboard. It’s 0.9 inches thick and 4.96 pounds, neither of which is particularly notable for a 15-inch gaming laptop.

Dell

Surprisingly, you get options for both Intel (Core 5 210H or Core 7 240H) and AMD processors (Ryzen 5 220 or Ryzen 7 260), but Nvidia is the only graphics card in town. In the US and some other territories, the base model will come with a GeForce RTX 4050; a few locations will start at the practically ancient RTX 3050 from way back in 2021. Upgrade options to the RTX 5050 and 5060 are available, but anything more powerful will require a bump up to a different Alienware laptop.

Memory and storage are, presumably, the biggest things pushing up the price in These Uncertain Times. We’re told the US model will start at 16GB of DDR5, and like most gaming laptops in this weight category, it’s user-replaceable for both SO-DIMMs. (Some territories get another downgrade to 8GB.) It’s also coming on a single 16GB stick, so if you can find a second 16GB stick, you can upgrade it yourself. The laptop starts at 512GB of user-accessible Gen 4 storage—which will run out quick if your Steam library looks anything like mine—and top out at 1TB.

Dell

How will things look on that hardware? Pretty good, at least in the context of an entry-level gaming machine. The 15.3-inch display won’t blow anyone away with a conventional LCD panel at 1920×1200, but with 165Hz of refresh and AMD FreeSync to keep screen tearing to a minimum, it’s decent. The port selection is also pretty good, with two USB-C, two USB-A, HDMI, Ethernet, and a proprietary barrel charger.

You can charge via USB at up to 100 watts, though it’s only one on side—the USB-C port on the right of the laptop is not certified for power delivery. I’d have liked to see that port on the other side just to give you more flexible options, but I appreciate that Dell was pretty constrained in the design for this thing. Batteries come in 54 watt-hour and 70 watt-hour varieties, both with ExpressCharge.

Dell

I’d like to say more about the laptop, but I’ve only had a few minutes to paw at a very early pre-production model. It’s a budget gaming laptop, but the definition of “budget” is obviously a moving target right now. When I saw this laptop back in March, the Dell representatives seemed positively terrified to even talk about prices.

The “Cryo-Tech” cooling setup, which integrates a semi-sealed area around the laptop’s feet for more efficient air intake, seems nice. (Though those are only on the 5050 model and up, according to the press materials. Base model gets a semi-standard intake on the laptop’s bottom.) The 180-degree hinge for the screen is… fine, I guess? I’m sure some college student who likes to play games while they’re folded into a pretzel on a dorm bed will appreciate it. The “Stealth Mode” button on the keyboard, signified with a little B2 bomber logo, is a nice touch. I imagine those same students will appreciate it for class time.

Dell

But the price is a non-starter. If you have $1,300 to spend on a gaming laptop, you probably have $1,500 or so to get a considerably more powerful one. And if you don’t, you’ll probably be fine with the same RTX 4050 graphics card and an older CPU, which can be had for around $800 from other manufacturers. Alienware was never a cheap brand, but the RAM crisis is making its attempt at an entry-level laptop feel superfluous at best, instantly irrelevant at worst.

Hell, with $1,300 to spend, one of those cheaper RTX 4050 options plus a $350 Alienware OLED monitor is a more appealing proposition.

The Alienware 15 is available to order from Dell’s website today, with the AMD base model starting at $1,299 and the Intel version at $1,349. The top-end configuration—with an Intel Core 7, 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and RTX 5060—costs a whopping $2,299.