Dell slashes $800 off this beastly RTX 4090-powered Alienware gaming laptop

Looking to get yourself a new gaming laptop? Devices from Dell’s Alienware series are some of the top picks you’ll find on the market, as they pack uncompromised high-end performance into sleek and stylish designs. One of the newest clamshells in this lineup is the Alienware x16 R1, and right now, you can get one that’s equipped with some of the best specs money can buy for a whopping $800 off. That brings the sky-high $3,799.99 price down to $2,999.99. That’s still expensive, of course, but a 21% discount is nothing to scoff at for an elite laptop that first released a few months ago.

By far, the thing that stands out the most about this particular SKU of the Alienware x16 R1 is its specs. Under the hood, it’s equipped with Intel’s premium Core i9-13900HK CPU and NVIDIA’s flagship RTX 4090 GPU — both of which are amongst the finest pieces of laptop hardware you can get from Team Blue and Team Green, respectively. You can also look forward to 32GB of high-performance DDR5 6000Mhz  RAM and a large 2TB NVMe SSD for speedy and reliable storage, which will give you all the memory and space you’ll need for the latest and greatest games. Make no mistake; whether you’re soaring through the cosmos in Starfield, embarking on quests in Baldur’s Gate 3, or blasting your way across Rubicon in Armored Core 6, this laptop has all the horsepower you could ever want for playing at maxed settings with a high framerate.

These elite components are paired with the device’s 16-inch QHD+ 2560×1600 display that features a high 240Hz refresh rate, a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, a 3ms response time, and NVIDIA G-SYNC for eliminating screen tearing. This panel is gorgeous, though in our Alienware x16 R1 review, we found the measured 350 nits of max brightness to be a bit disappointing. Even so, it still looks fantastic, and offers an excellent balance of visual quality and refresh rate.

Design-wise, the laptop sports the sleek style and impressive build quality that gamers have come to expect from the Alienware line, complete with highly customizable RGB on its keyboard, trackpad, and rear. Like others in the X series, the x16 R1 is also much slimmer and lighter than traditional M series clamshells. This makes it easier to take with you on the go, which you’ll no doubt find valuable if you travel often. It’s not lightweight by any means, though, and is actually rather hefty at six pounds.

For ports, you get one Thunderbolt 4, one USB-C, dual USB-A, an HDM1 2.1, a Mini DisplayPort 1.4, a microSD card reader, and a slot for 3.5mm audio. All of these are located on the laptop’s rear; we would’ve liked to see at least a few of them on the sides, but it’s not a huge problem.

One rather frustrating issue we did have with the Alienware x16 R1 while reviewing it is that its software was quite buggy, with apps like the included Alienware Command Center either opening unusually slowly or refusing to open at all. The RGB lighting flickered or became unresponsive occasionally, too, and we even had a blue screen while using the device’s front-facing camera due to a video encoding error. Of course, these issues can (and very likely will) improve with firmware updates from Dell, but you should be aware of them before you decide whether or not you want to pull the trigger.

Ultimately, $800 off a device this powerful is an excellent deal, even with its issues taken into account. It’s one of the best gaming laptops in terms of raw horsepower, and if you’re willing to put up with some rough edges, this is a fantastic way to get your hands on one.