This year saw the glorious return of big-ass laptops. While these enormous notebooks are hardly portable, they make great desktop replacements. Unfortunately, their price tags are often as big as the machines themselves. But with Black Friday deals now underway, I’ve found a sale that’s — pardon the pun — kind of a big deal.
Right now, you can get the gargantuan Alienware m18 gaming laptop for $2,199 on Dell's website. Considering how this kaiju-sized machine typically costs $2,499 at this configuration, you’re saving $300 — which is a sizeable amount of cash. But size isn’t all this machine has going for it, as its impressive specs complement its oversized chassis. This is a gaming laptop I’d snag myself, and one you should consider getting at this amazing price.
In our Alienware m18 review, we said it was one of the most powerful gaming laptops we've tested to date. It's too heavy, hot and loud to be of much use when you’re out and about, but when plugged in, it runs the best PC games as well as some of the best gaming PCs — truly earning the term desktop replacement.
Regarding specs, this configuration packs a 13th Intel Core i9-13900HX, RTX 4070, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. You can also configure this machine with an AMD CPU and GPU if you’re an AMD fan, though you’ll get excellent performance no matter what you choose. Almost every game you play on the Alienware m18 can run at frames in the low to mid 100s without breaking a sweat. Naturally, it can handle everyday computing just as well.
And everything will look great thanks to the gorgeous 18-inch (2,560 x 1,600) display. In our testing, we found that this laptop’s display has good color saturation and color accuracy. Brightness is under 300 nits, but it’s still plenty bright for you to see fine details in games. Performance-wise, everything runs smoothly thanks to the 165Hz refresh rate and a 3ms response time.
With a laptop this size, you’ll be pleased to know there’s a generous amount of ports. You’ll find three USB-A, three USB-C (two Thunderbolt 4), HDMI 2.1, a mini DisplayPort, an SD card reader, an Ethernet port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. With that many ports, it’s easy to connect a monitor and peripherals and use it like a desktop.
We’re still weeks away from Black Friday so it’s possible we’ll see the Alienware m18’s price drop further. Still, if you need to upgrade your gaming laptop or want to replace your existing PC tower with something smaller and (somewhat) portable, this Alienware m18 deal is worth taking advantage of right now.
