"The $1,200 Gaming Laptop That's Almost Great"

WIRED's Luke Larsen just put Dell's new Alienware 15 through its paces, and the verdict is a familiar kind of mixed: a 7 out of 10 for a laptop that gets the fundamentals right but can't quite stick the landing. The headline spec sheet looks solid — RTX 5050 graphics, 16GB of RAM, Intel Core Ultra 7 240H, and a 165Hz display — for $1,200. A year ago that price would have felt steep for an entry-level gaming machine, but in 2026's GPU-inflated market, it's actually competitive.

What the Alienware 15 nails is restraint. The design borrows from the pricier Aurora line without the RGB vomit or aggressive angles that defined Alienware's reputation a decade ago. There's something refreshing about a gaming laptop that doesn't look like it's cosplaying as a stealth fighter. The port selection is genuinely generous too: dual USB-A and USB-C, HDMI 2.1, and — in a move that still makes me unreasonably happy — an actual Ethernet jack. Wi-Fi 6 instead of 6E or 7 is the connectivity compromise, but let's be real: if you're serious enough about latency to care, you're plugging into Ethernet anyway.

Then there's the screen. At 63% sRGB coverage, the 15.3-inch panel is the laptop's one dealbreaking flaw — washed-out colors and a faint green tint on white backgrounds that Larsen describes, with the kind of understatement only a professional reviewer can manage, as "dismal." Performance-wise, the RTX 5050 configuration pushes Cyberpunk 2077 at 65 fps on Ultra at 1080p, which is perfectly respectable. But staring at those frames through a display this undersaturated feels like listening to a good album on blown-out speakers.

The real story here might be the competition. Lenovo's LOQ 15 packs an RTX 5060 at the same $1,200 price point with a better screen — a combination that makes it the obvious choice if you can still find one in stock before Lenovo's new LOQ Essential line replaces it at a higher price. The Alienware 15 wins on build quality and aesthetic restraint, but those are secondary virtues when the thing you'll spend hours staring at is the weakest link in the chain. Dell has the bones of a great budget gaming laptop here. They just need to give it eyes worth looking through.

Luke Larsen's full review is at WIRED. For the competing perspective, Online Tech Guru's LOQ 15 comparison puts the display gap in sharper relief.