Alienware is Dell's dedicated gaming brand, and it's been around for about as long as gaming laptops have been a thing. Over the years, the company has put out some wild portable gaming PCs, and the company is continuing to push out some impressive hardware today. If you're looking for an Alienware of your own, there's a multitude to choose from in different sizes and configurations.

Alienware doesn't make a huge number of different gaming laptops, but we've still listed the best across its x-series and m-series devices to help you find the best one for you. All-in-all, the "x" moniker means the laptop is ultra-premium, with a thin and flashy design paired with the best internals from NVIDIA and Intel. The "m" moniker means power is more important than style, with thicker and more mundane chassis giving you a lower starting price.

Whichever laptop you choose from this list, Alienware sits among the best gaming laptop manufacturers alongside other companies like Razer, Lenovo, and MSI. If you need a great pre-built gaming PC, Alienware has you covered there, too. Alienware is even a part of our list of the best gaming monitors, so you can rely on one company for a complete setup of premium, feature-packed gaming hardware.

Best Alienware gaming laptops: The quick list

Best overall Alienware laptop

My recommended Alienware x16 R1 configuration:

The Alienware x16 R1 is the beginning of Alienware's move away from the 15-inch and 17-inch size archetypes into the new, roomier 16-inch and 18-inch alternatives. This is Alienware's highest-end, most premium gaming laptop, and it shows no matter how you look at it. Packed with some of the most powerful gaming hardware you can squeeze into a laptop, it's one fine gaming machine.

It starts with a high price tag and ends exorbitantly expensive, but in exchange you're getting the best from Intel and NVIDIA packed into a surprisingly slim, luxurious chassis adorned in RGB lighting and premium materials. With up to a 13th-gen Intel Core i9 and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, you can crank every game up to the max settings and enjoy video games at their very best.

It's a seriously impressive laptop, and that's before you consider the optional, full-sized mechanical keyboard built on CherryMX switches. I've used this laptop and this keyboard, and it's genuinely among the very best laptop keyboards I have ever used. It's comfortable, responsive, and tactile, and it feels fantastic no matter what you're doing.

Battery life is as short as you'd expect for a gaming laptop this powerful, though, and it can get very hot when playing games. Thermal throttling is limited, but you still don't want to have this laptop anywhere near your lap when playing. And, as I mentioned earlier, this is a very expensive laptop. You can get similar performance for less elsewhere, but you'll be giving up the distinct and premium design and that stunning keyboard.

Best 14-inch Alienware laptop

My recommended Alienware x14 R2 configuration:

While there aren't necessarily any Alienware laptops that could be considered budget-friendly, the Alienware x14 is the least expensive of the lot — and it still offers great gaming performance. With its Intel 13th Gen Core i5 or i7 CPU and up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, this laptop will have no problem running modern games at decent settings (especially since up to 32GB of DDR5 memory is available, too). You can also opt for up to 4TB of SSD storage, which is fantastic for people who plan to install tons of games. Ultimately, it's not as performant as the other Alienware devices on this list, but it's still very capable considering its size.

The x14's specs are a great fit for its QHD display, which looks lovely and also boasts a 165Hz refresh rate. You may struggle to make full use of this display in every game you play with this laptop's hardware, but it also makes for an awesome media consumption or productivity experience when you're not jumping into your favorite PC game.

Like the other "x" laptops on this list, the Alienware x14 features Dell's latest laptop design that slims the chassis down without affecting performance. It's an aggressive, flashy design that won't be to everyone's liking, but it certainly stands out and screams "premium" at every turn. This, along with the fact that this is the smallest Alienware machine Dell offers in terms of screen size, makes the Alienware x14 the best laptop in the entire lineup if you need something as thin, light, and compact as possible.

Elsewhere, you're getting a thorough selection of rear-mounted ports that keeps your desk nice and tidy, as well as surprisingly solid battery life for a gaming laptop (let alone a 14-inch one). Because of this and its compact stature, the Alienware x14 R2 is probably the most suited out of this list to be a mobile productivity and gaming beast. It fits into basically any laptop bag and is easy to carry wherever you go. Higher-end models can get pretty pricey, but you're playing for the unique combination of performance, portability, and premium design.

Best 16-inch Alienware laptop

My recommended Alienware m16 R1 configuration:

The Alienware x-series of laptops may look more impressive on the surface, but Alienware's older m-series is still kicking and actually packs even more power. The Alienware m16 R1 is the latest in a long line of great gaming laptops, and it's still an incredible gaming machine. The design is getting outdated and boring, and the keyboard is a little cramped, but it's what's on the inside that counts, right?

And on the inside, the m16 R1 has all the best from Intel and NVIDIA, including the extremely powerful 13-gen HX-series CPUs, with more cores and more power than the HK-series CPUs inside the more compact and expensive x16 R1. With a significantly lower starting price and solid pricing all the way up until you get to the highest-end configurations, the Alienware m16 R1 offers a compelling price-to-performance ratio.

Up to a 480Hz display, a Core i9, NVIDIA's mighty impressive RTX 4090, a ridiculous 8TB of SSD storage, and 64GB of RAM... The m16 R1 is, for all intents and purposes, a desktop PC that just happens to be portable. It's not that portable, though, as this is a very chunky machine with a lot of heft and a lot of thickness. It's meant to mostly live on a desk, so I recommend the more svelte x-series of laptops if you need greater mobility.

That added thickness is what allows the m16 R1 to best its more premium sibling in power, though, especially with its fantastic thermals keeping everything running cool and stable. It's an impressively performance, all-around solid gaming laptop. If you want to max this machine out, though, you'll need a sizeable heap of cash to make it happen. If you do, your performance will be out of this world... But the m16 R1's average design and extra feature set may become more noticeable.

Best 18-inch Alienware laptop

My recommended Alienware m18 R1 configuration:

Did you think the Alienware m16 listed above was ridiculous? Well, say hello to its big sibling, the colossal monument to PC gaming that is the Alienware m18 R1. Alienware clearly said "yes" to every question of how much power it should squeeze into this laptop, as it's among the most powerful mobile PC gaming systems you can possibly buy.

With an 18-inch screen and an unapologetically thick chassis, the m18 R1 is one step away from actually just being a desktop PC. It's big and heavy enough that you won't want to move it around if you can avoid it, but you'll at least have all the power you can get with the Intel's most powerful mobile laptop CPU, the insane Core i9-13980HX, alongside the NVIDIA RTX 4090 and all the RAM and storage you could ask for. Of course, you can also get a 480Hz FHD display and a CherryMX mechanical keyboard.

It gets expensive, but, like the m16, does offer a decent price-to-performance ratio for what you're getting. It blows every other Alienware laptop out of the water when it comes to raw power, though, with the highest-end configuration equipped to handle all the most demanding PC games for years to come. All that power makes the laptop run hot, though, enough that its thermal management can struggle to keep up during extended, intense sessions of gaming.

If performance is all that matters and you don't care about portability or a premium design, the Alienware m18 R1 sits at the very top of Alienware's kingdom. An x18 may come that will challenge it for price thanks to a more compact, luxurious design, but it's doubtful that any Alienware laptop is going to dethrone the m18 in terms of power for a while yet.

Best AMD Alienware laptop

My recommended Alienware m17 R5 configuration:

If you want a beastly 17-inch laptop that doesn't rely on Intel hardware from Intel, you should opt for the Alienware m17 R5. This laptop offers the best of AMD's Ryzen 6000 H-Series CPUs, which are known powerhouses. It's not the latest and greatest anymore, but it's still plenty for any game you can throw at it. AMD GPUs are no longer available with this laptop, but you can pair it with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti or 3080 Ti, which is plenty of graphical oomph.

Other options include up to 32GB of speedy DDR5 RAM, up to 1TB of SSD storage, and a ludicrously fast 480Hz FHD display. Like the Alienware m15, the m17 uses an older Alienware design that's thicker than what you'd get if you were to opt for an x-series Alienware laptop. However, that doesn't mean that the m17 is too heavy or cumbersome to carry around easily. Also, one benefit of the large chassis is that there's a solid port selection, including three USB-A slots and a USB-C jack, Ethernet, HDMI, and 3.5mm audio. 

This laptop also enjoys the fantastic, CherryMX mechanical keyboard I gushed over above with the Alienware x16, and it's just as good here. If regular laptop keyboards just don't cut it in gaming laptops, Alienware has an awesome alternative. This laptop isn't as fancy or premium as the more compact x-series laptops that are replacing this, but it's still a powerful gaming laptop that can serve you well.

This is especially true because the m17 R5 is very regularly heavily discounted, taking huge chunks off the retail price tag to make it a surprisingly good value. Yes, the hardware isn't the latest and greatest anymore, and low stock means you don't have as many options for configurations anymore. For the savings you're enjoying, though, the trade-offs are well-worth it. Because of those discounts, this may be the best-value Alienware laptop on this list. If you want to save a lot of cash but want something more premium or powered by Intel, you can also checkout the Alienware x17 R2.

Choosing the Alienware laptop for you

Alienware has a long, storied history of crafting excellent gaming laptops, even before it joined Dell and began benefiting from that company's expertise making some of the best Windows laptops for years. Alienware is well-known for its distinctive, out-of-this-world design language and reputation for premium products, and that still holds true today.

Fortunately, Alienware doesn't make dozens of different laptops like some other companies do, so it's never too hard to pick the one for you. Mostly, it comes down to how much you're willing to pay, what kind of power you need, and how big you want your laptop to be. Overall, the best of the best Alienware makes is the flagship x16 R1, but Alienware offers smaller, bigger, and more affordable alternatives, and each is equipped to play all the best PC games.

The Alienware x14 R2, for example, is a genuinely fantastic compact, 14-inch gaming laptop that goes toe-to-toe with other great options from Razer and ASUS. It's not the most powerful gaming laptop on this list, but it's surprisingly viable as a general-use laptop thanks to its decent battery life and portability. If you need big savings, you can opt for older Alienware laptops that are heavily discounted as they're phased out. Whatever you choose, rest assured Alienware's laptops will provide you a great gaming experience for years to come.

Zachary Boddy (They / Them) is a Staff Writer for Windows Central, primarily focused on covering the latest news in tech and gaming, the best Xbox and PC games, and the most interesting Windows and Xbox hardware. They have been gaming and writing for most of their life starting with the original Xbox, and started out as a freelancer for Windows Central and its sister sites in 2019. Now a full-fledged Staff Writer, Zachary has expanded from only writing about all things Minecraft to covering practically everything on which Windows Central is an expert, especially when it comes to Microsoft. You can find Zachary on Twitter @BoddyZachary.