Alienware m18 R2 ZDNET's key takeaways The Alienware m18 R2 is a top-tier gaming laptop available on Amazon for $2,600.
It has a commanding presence, is highly customizable, and is powerful enough to handle just about any game you want to play.
This is a large, expensive laptop that requires plenty of juice, and it can get quite loud. View now at Amazon
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Weighing nearly nine pounds and measuring 18 inches, Dell's Alienware m18 R2 is a beast. It's big, it's thick, and it probably won't fit in your laptop bag. It just feels powerful, and when you open it up, it looks like a high-end machine. Given its nearly $3,000 price tag, it definitely should.
Today's Alienware laptops are a little more grown-up than back in the day. They've left the lime-green aesthetic from the 2010s where it belongs and instead give consumers the option for more subdued exteriors and typical laptop colors. This is a laptop you could definitely take into the office (though it might still attract some looks) and, with the press of one button, turn off all the RGB lighting -- like putting on a suit and tie.
Also: This Lenovo laptop has no business being this good for work - when it's made for gamers
That being said, this is absolutely a gaming laptop. As a refresh of last year's m18 r1 model, the R2 is a powerful, top-of-the-line gamer's paradise, stacked with a 14th-generation Intel HX 24-core 5.8 GHz max boost processor, high-end graphics capabilities, a sophisticated cooling system, and more ports than you'll know what to do with.
If you want to go crazy with the RGB lighting, the Alienware Command Center application lets you customize lighting however you like, key by key. There's also a host of settings and configurations that may or may not be useful to the average user, including operation profiles such as "Performance", "Battery", or "Quiet", as well as a clickable MUX switch. This is also where you can overclock your machine.
Despite its colossal size, the m18 R2 is very comfortable to use. The touchpad is minimalistic, responsive, and just large enough. The rest of the keyboard's texture is matte black, feeling very luxurious and almost soft to the touch.
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