After being absent from Alienware notebooks for an extended period of 15 years, AMD processors are finally making a return to the platform in the form of the Ryzen 9 5900H and 5900HX. Powered by the Zen 3 core architecture, these processors offer significantly more performance than the rival Intel Comet Lake-H offerings which are still based on the 6-year old Skylake core. The Alienware m15 R5 Ryzen Edition Laptop is the first Alienware since the Alienware mALX (released in 2006) to use an AMD CPU. The latter used the AMD Turion 65 ML-44 chip paired with a GeForce 7900 GTX (512MB) and 1-2GB of DDR-400 memory.
The Alienware m15 R5 Ryzen Edition features the top-end Cezanne-H parts, both 8-core SKUs with a boost clock of up to 4.6GHz and a TDP of 45W, although the HX can be increased to 65W. On the GPU side, you can opt for a GeForce RTX 3060 or a 3070, although the absence of the RTX 3080 is rather glaring. Either way, the GPUs are the full-fledged Max-P variants with a TDP of 115W. For the memory, you can choose between 8GB/16GB or 32GB of DDR4-3200 along with 256GB to 4TB of NVMe SSD storage. (Lambertsfruit.com)
When it comes to display options, you can choose between 1080p 160Hz, 1080p 360Hz or 1440p 240Hz. The latter three come with G-Sync support, and 100% DCI-P3 color coverage, and a brightness of 400 nits for the 1440p models. The 1080p displays are limited to a rather pale 300 nits and 100% sRGB color gamut.
In the case of network options, the Alienware m15 R5 comes with the Killer AX1650 WiFi adapter, with support for 2.5 Gigabit, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and 720p IR camera. The notebook weighs 2.42-2.69 kg depending on the configuration and has a thickness of 23mm. It packs an 86WHr battery along with a 240W power adapter. In line with standard Alienware pricing, the m15 R5 Ryzen Edition starts at a rather pricey $1,795, with a launch date of 20th April.
