Alienware has finally made the move over to AMD’s Ryzen 5000 processors in the new m15 R5,
but this alone isn’t enough to make a good gaming
laptop. I’ve got a few issues with the R5 that you need to know about.
My configuration has an 8 core Ryzen 9 5900HX processor, Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics,
16 gigs of memory and a 1080p 165Hz screen,
but there are quite a few other options available at different price points. You
can find examples and check updated prices of the m15 R5 with those links down in the description.
I’ve got the dark side of the moon finish, so dark grey both on the lid and interior.
No sharp corners or edges anywhere with a smooth magnesium alloy build.
The laptop alone weighs about 2.5kg or 5.5lb,
then with the large 240 watt power brick and cables it’s 3.5kg or 7.8lb.
It’s not too thick and the width is similar to other 15 inch laptops,
however there’s a little more depth as it has the back section which sticks out.
The 15.6” 1080p 165Hz screen has decent color gamut and ok contrast. There’s no MUX switch in
my unit, but the 1440p 240Hz or 1080p 360Hz models have advanced optimus with G-Sync.
Mine does at least still have FreeSync though. The screen gets fairly bright, just
below 400 nits when at maximum, but again expect different results with those other panel options.
It’s got an average grey-to-grey response time of 4.8ms,
and there was some overshoot and undershoot detected so I’m guessing it’s using some
sort of panel overdrive by default. It’s looking decent when compared to others,
and it’s below the 6ms needed for transitions to occur within the refresh window.
I had some minor backlight bleed but it was never anything I actually noticed during normal use,
but this will vary between laptops and panels.
There’s a 720p camera above the screen in the middle,
I can’t set up Windows Hello face unlock on mine, however the Alienware website
notes that this is available with the 1440p 240Hz or 1080p 360Hz models.
This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like,
this is what it sounds like while I’m typing on the keyboard, and this is what it sounds
like if I set the fan to full speed, so you can still hear me ok over the fan noise.
I’ve got the mechanical keyboard option with CherryMX ultra low profile keys with per key
RGB backlighting, however there is also a regular 4 Zone RGB option too. Unfortunately
the backlighting does not illuminate the secondary functions, and it would appear that brightness can
either be turned on or off with the F7 shortcut, however sometimes it kind of bugs out and almost
appears as if there’s a second brightness level. Actually when I booted into Linux I could use
both brightness levels fine, but in Windows for some reason I only get one level or off.
Typing was… interesting. I kind of like the clicky feel of the keys, but there’s something about it
that’s not for me, I’m not sure how to explain it other than I feel like I have to give more force
than usual and then the key clicks and bottoms out straight away. Personally I prefer others like the
Aorus 15, but yeah this is personal preference, and as you’d expect typing is on the louder side.
There’s a kind of metal spring sound to the
presses which I didn’t really like but it can be hard to hear here.
The power button is separate to the keyboard, and it has RGB lighting because why not. You
can control it through the software along with the keyboard, and you can give it different
colors and effects based on if it's charged, charging or asleep. You can also customize the
logo on the lid, and of course the light ring at the very back, so plenty of customization.
The precision touchpad clicks down anywhere and works ok,
it was a little loose feeling but I didn’t really notice it. It felt a little small, perhaps due to
the air vents above the keyboard which result in the keyboard being closer to the front.
The left has an air exhaust vent, 2.5 gigabit ethernet port, and a 3.5mm audio combo jack.
The right has two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports and there’s an air exhaust on this side too.
The rest is on the back, between the two air exhaust vents on the corners from
left to right we’ve got a USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port with DisplayPort support,
a third USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A port, HDMI 2.1 output, and the power input on the right.
Unfortunately the Type-C port cannot be used to charge the laptop, but both it and the HDMI
ports connect directly to the Nvidia discrete graphics, meaning if we connect an external
screen it will boost performance in games, and I’ll show you this a bit later in the video.
There’s nothing on the front,
nothing to help you open it, but it wasn’t hard to open as it’s angled.
There’s some flex to the lid, but that’s the case with most laptops.
While doing this though I noticed that the laptop was moving on the desk a bit, it seems
like the rubber feet underneath aren’t quite as grippy compared to others. There’s a bit more
flex to the keyboard than usual, but regardless I can’t say I ever noticed this during normal use.
The bottom panel just has some air intake vents towards the back,
and we can see that there are quite a few holes for air flow.
Getting inside requires removing 8 Philips head screws of two different sizes,
and the 4 down the front don’t come out of the panel and instead lift it up to help you open,
which I found very easy to do using the pry tools linked in the description.
Inside we’ve got the battery down the front, the M.2 SSD just above on the left
but there’s also a 2nd slot towards the right for a future upgrade. The Wi-Fi
6 card is just above the SSD on the left, and there are two memory slots,
a welcome improvement over previous Alienware models with soldered memory.
The speakers are found on the left and right sides towards the front. I didn’t
think they sounded that great, there’s a little bass and they can get loud,
but I just didn’t think they were too clear, but the latencymon results were looking decent.
The m15 R5 has an 86Wh battery,
and it almost lasted for 9 hours in the YouTube playback test, a great result,
and in most cases only beaten by other Ryzen based laptops that have larger batteries, with a few
exceptions, though the battery life while running an actual game was one of the best I’ve recorded.
Let’s check out thermals next.
The Alienware Command center software lets us change between two different
default performance profiles, balanced and full speed. Full speed maxes out the fan,
and can also be enabled with the function plus F1 shortcut,
and when enabled the F1 key changes to white so you know it’s enabled.
The software has an overclock menu, but when I go into it it just seems to show some basic
information about the CPU, GPU and RAM, there’s nothing that can actually be changed in here.
The idle results down the bottom are on the warmer side, but not really an issue.
I’ve run stress tests with both the CPU and GPU loaded up to represent a worst case,
as well as playing an actual game.
The CPU, shown by the blue bars, is thermal throttling at 100 degrees Celsius, technically in
spec I suppose but most other laptops instead opt for 90 or 95 degree limits. No thermal throttling
for the GPU in these tests though. Full speed mode sets the fans to, well, full speed. This wasn’t
enough to change the temps in the stress test, but the CPU lowered a bit with this particular game,
then the cooling pad that I’m testing with which is linked down in the description was able to
further drop the temps by 10 degrees in the game, but no change to the CPU in the stress test.
These are the clock speeds for the same tests. Balanced mode seems to cap the GPU fairly hard
as it’s only around 500 to 600MHz or so, otherwise it’s much higher in full speed
mode. Whether gaming or under stress test, it looks like the CPU performance is better
in balanced mode compared to full speed mode, probably because there’s more power and thermal
headroom available to the processor with the GPU being limited. The CPU clock speed increases
with the cooling pad in use because this helps reduce thermal throttling, but we’re still not
seeing above 4GHz which most other laptops with this processor are capable of in these tests.
The RTX 3070 was able to run up to 120 watts, but it varies based on whatever dynamic boost
feels like doing. I thought it was a bit strange that the power level reported by hardware info
dropped in the stress test with the cooling pad, perhaps this was a requirement for the
processor to start boosting higher which becomes possible with the extra air from the cooling pad,
as this helps reduce the extent of the thermal throttle even if it didn’t remove it in this test.
In any case, 35 watts for the CPU at stock in full speed mode with the GPU going isn’t amazing.
Here’s how the different modes perform in Cinebench R23, a cpu only workload with
the gpu now idle. Full speed mode was a little better, but realistically no major differences.
It’s the lowest multicore result from a Ryzen 9 5900HX that I’ve recorded so far, with the
next lowest score 6% higher, so not really a big difference and 12.5k is still a relatively high
score for a laptop, but yeah alternative laptops are doing better there with the same processor.
The multicore score almost drops in half when on battery power,
and is only slightly ahead of the sub $700 Acer Nitro 5 with last gen 6 core processor,
though single core score is largely unchanged. So despite the R5 having good battery life,
this might be at the expense of performance when on battery.
The keyboard sits in the mid 30s when idle,
so barely warm feeling and pretty standard. With the stress tests running it increases a
little to the low 40s, again just a bit warm. With full speed mode it gets a little warmer,
even the back didn’t really feel hot, but the fans are louder now to compensate, let’s have a listen.
I couldn’t hear the fans at all when idling. It’s still relatively quite
worst case in balanced mode, then full speed is louder, but realistically not as loud compared
to others I’ve recently tested that offer user fan control, which the m15 R5 does not have.
Now let’s find out how well this configuration of Alienware m15 R5 compares against others in
games. When the laptop initially launched it was missing about 10% of its CUDA cores,
which I’ve covered in depth in this video over here. All testing in this
video has been done with the VBIOS update in place that brings back those CUDA cores.
Battlefield V was tested in campaign mode with ultra settings, and I’ve got
the m15 R5 highlighted in red. It’s one of the lower results for an RTX 3070 gaming laptop,
the cheaper TUF A15 from ASUS is just a few frames behind,
but it’s also cheaper too. The TUF Dash F15 has a 3070 too, but it’s being held back by
its quad core CPU. The HP Omen 15 is just above the Alienware laptop, though it has
a lower power limit GPU and lower tier Ryzen 7 processor, and again that’s cheaper too.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the games benchmark. The m15 R5 is just 1 FPS ahead
of the RTX 3060 in MSI’s GS76 just below it, though that laptop also lets you disable optimus
for a speed boost in games, which my R5 does not have. The Strix G15 Advantage edition is 1 FPS
ahead of the Alienware laptop, but that machine goes for around $1650 USD while a 3070 m15 R5
starts at $1900 at the moment, so the all AMD system is offering better value in this test.
Far Cry 5 was also tested with the games benchmark at max settings,
and again the m15 R5 is beating the two TUF laptops with RTX 3070 graphics,
but otherwise it’s still getting beaten by cheaper laptops like the HP Omen 15 with lower tier specs,
though at least it is able to beat the cheaper Strix G15 in this one despite
both having Ryzen 9 5900HX processors and this being a more CPU heavy test.
I would be expecting better performance in games with the m15 R5 that has advanced optimus, as that
should bypass the iGPU, but as both the HDMI and Type-C ports connect directly to the Nvidia RTX
3070 graphics, connecting an external screen will also bypass the iGPU and give us a speed boost.
I’ve got both the result with the laptop only and with an external screen connected highlighted
here. The external screen was almost able to give us an 11% boost to average FPS, a decent
improvement for such a simple change. This also shows that the advanced optimus model would put
the m15 R5 into a more competitive spot compared to my configuration which is stuck with optimus.
Here are the results from 3DMark for those that find them useful.
Now for some creator tests.
Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systems benchmark. It’s one of the lower results I’ve got
for a 5900HX laptop, though most of the others that are doing better have higher wattage GPUs,
and as we saw in the stress tests, the CPU wattage seems capped to 35 watts when the GPU is active.
Adobe Photoshop tends to depend more on processor performance, however while other 5900HX machines
are closer to the top, the m15 R5 is only a little ahead of a last gen Intel 6 core, though at the
same time it’s close to many other Ryzen models like the A15, but again that is a cheaper model.
DaVinci Resolve is more GPU heavy, and the m15 R5 is higher now when compared to this same selection
of laptops. It’s beating a few other 3070 options now, though the differences in scores isn’t major.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
The 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD was doing well for both reads and writes,
and there’s always the second spot if you want to install another drive.
The BIOS has your standard options, plus a few extras like keyboard color control
without using the software in Windows, and it has TPM 2.0.
I booted an Ubuntu 21 live CD to test Linux support. Out of the box the touchpad, keyboard,
speakers, ethernet, Wi-Fi and camera all worked. Even the function plus F1 shortcut
to boost performance worked, and the RGB effects I set in Windows persisted in Linux,
presumably as they can also be modified in BIOS.
Now let’s discuss pricing. This will change over time,
so refer to those links down in the description for updates.
At the time of recording the entry specs with Ryzen 7 5800H and RTX
3050 Ti starts at $1300. My configuration isn’t listed on the US site, but the 3070 model with
half the SSD storage and lower tier CPU to what I’ve tested with is $1900 USD.
At the end of the day I think the m15 R5 just has too many small issues that
when combined together just make it hard to recommend at its price point.
Yeah it’s got a flashy design with unique RGB lighting,
but there are better performing options for less money that run cooler.
Around $1900 also gets you a Lenovo Legion 5 Pro with RTX 3070 that performs better than this in
games, and I know that’s what I would personally pick given the choice after using both of them.
Full speed mode running the processor at 35 watts but 100 degrees Celsius under stress test
just objectively doesn’t look good compared to other machines I’ve tested, and as we saw in the
game benchmarks, it’s one of the lower results I’ve recorded for an RTX 3070 gaming laptop.
Usually Alienware laptops are known for running hotter at the expense of better performance,
but in the case of the m15 R5 it’s like they just forgot to add in that extra performance part.
The mechanical keyboard is certainly unique, but it’s not for me personally,
otherwise it’s good that RAM upgradeability has made its way back.
Part of me is kind of wondering if they didn’t make this model as good as it could have been
as they do have that higher end x15 model. Hopefully I can get that one in to review
as well and we’ll see - maybe that’s where Alienware’s hiding the good stuff!
The thing I liked most about the m15 R5 was probably the screen. It’s fairly bright, has good
color gamut, high refresh rate and good response time. If I was personally buying it though I’d
go for a faster screen option with G-Sync as those would offer a speed boost in games. Apart
from that, another bonus is that the battery life was definitely above average compared to others.
Let me know what you thought about Alienware’s m15 R5 down in the comments,
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and come and check out some of my other videos over here next, I’ll see you over in one of those.