Alienware laptops have never exactly been known for restraint. Or affordability. But the new cheap Alienware 15 aims to change that, offering a more sensible, lower-cost gaming machine with Nvidia RTX graphics and surprisingly few compromises.
To clarify, when we say cheap Alienware, we mean it relatively speaking, compared to the brand’s other offerings. In this instance, “budget” still means a starting price tag of $1299.
Still, compared to Alienware’s usual wallet-busting machines, the Alienware 15 lands in more approachable territory. The base model pairs an AMD Ryzen 5 220 processor with an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 512GB SSD.
Intel versions are available too, starting at $1349 with a Core 5 210H chip. Higher-end configurations step up to Nvidia RTX 5050 and RTX 5060 graphics, along with up to 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.
The big change isn’t just the pricing, though. Alienware has also toned down the design massively. Gone are the aggressively gamer-heavy aesthetics and glowing alien logos. Instead, the Alienware 15 looks far more understated, with a cleaner nova black finish and a simpler lid design that won’t scream “RGB enthusiast” every time you open it in a coffee shop.
Elsewhere, you still get a full-size numpad, Ethernet port, HDMI 2.1, two USB-A ports, and two USB-C connections – one of which supports 100W charging. There’s also a dedicated Stealth Mode button that instantly quietens the fans and disables the lighting when you need the laptop to behave itself in public.
The 15.3-inch display sticks to a sensible 1920 x 1200 resolution with a 165Hz refresh rate and 16:10 aspect ratio. Brightness tops out at 300 nits, which won’t blow anyone away, but early hands-ons suggest it’s perfectly usable indoors. Some higher-end configurations also get Alienware’s Cryo-Chamber cooling setup to improve airflow for RTX 5060 models.
There are some corners cut to hit the lower price. The webcam is only 720p, there’s no microSD card slot, and some cheaper configurations ship with single-channel RAM out of the box. But Alienware has at least kept memory upgradeable, with accessible slots for future upgrades.
If that sounds good to you, the Alienware 15 is available now through Dell, although some of the lower-priced launch configurations don’t appear to be listed just yet. At the time of writing, the cheapest on-sale model is $1499.99 / £1249 at Dell US and Dell UK, respectively.
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