Gaming Laptop Analysis

Is the Dell Alienware M15 R4 (2021) i7-10870H RTX 3070 Max-Q 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K 60Hz good as a gaming laptop? Excellent

Processor - This processor, the Core i7-10870H 8-Core 2.20GHz, is excellent and can meet 2021 AAA title requirements with relative ease. Games are beginning to lean on more CPU cores for extra processing. Fortunately this CPU has 8 cores, making it an excellent gamers processor choice.

Graphics Card - With the GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q graphics card this is an excellent gaming GPU for 2021 AAA gaming With 8GB of VRAM available to the GPU, this graphics solution doesn’t have to worry about a shortage, when it comes to modern AAA gaming, making it an excellent choice..

System Memory - The system memory (32GB) we find in this gaming laptop can meet modern AAA game requirements. This amount of RAM is an excellent 2021 gaming laptop choice, that will help meet game requirements now and into the future.

Screen Size - The screen on this laptop is certainly a good option for game releases in 2021, but there is room for better, should your budget allow. But sometimes larger than this 15.6" is too big and this is definitely a good, portable option for some gamers. In our minds, if you have a smaller 1.5Kg or larger 3.5Kg laptop with you, it's always going to be a lump to transport. And so for a gaming laptop we would rather see the games more clearly on a larger 17inch screen, upon arriving at a destination, rather than compromise a game’s experience. But for some it will be the other way around. Fortunately there will be something for everyone in the laptop marketplace.

Refresh Rate - Look for higher refresh rate hertz for a gaming laptop. Ideally around 120Hz or more refresh rate on a gaming laptop screen. The laptop can only deliver FPS(frames per second) up to the listed refresh rate. So if you have hardware in your laptop that can turn out awesome frame rates on all the latest AAA titles, but a 60hz refresh rate, your laptop will be stuck at a maximum of 60FPS in all games. The top panel refresh rate for this laptop is 60Hz which is ok but not really your first choice, if you want a good gaming laptop. Look for panels that we mark as good or excellent if you think this laptop hardware can get higher than 60FPS on most modern games.

GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q graphics card gaming performance in the Dell Alienware M15 R4 (2021) i7-10870H RTX 3070 Max-Q 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K 60Hz laptop

With this gaming laptop we will be exploring how well it can run modern, demanding and popular games that are out now or will be coming out over the coming months. Currently we will want to understand its gaming performance compared to its overall laptop cost and we can do this by looking at how it could run popular games like, Far Cry 6 or Battlefield 2042. We will be seeing how it deals with these games in ultra graphics settings on its laptop screen resolution of 4K. With the GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q inside this laptop, this graphics card solution will be capable of meeting 499 games at their minimum system requirements and 476 games at their recommended system requirements of the top 500 most demanding games around today.

Comparing Dell Alienware M15 R4 (2021) i7-10870H RTX 3070 Max-Q 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K 60Hz to today’s best price to performance laptop ranges

A key focus of this laptop review is to compare the Dell Alienware M15 R4 (2021) i7-10870H RTX 3070 Max-Q 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K 60Hz to all other laptops in terms of how much its $2549.99 reflects the value of the gaming performance delivered by the this laptop’s hardware.

We currently give the Dell Alienware M15 R4 (2021) i7-10870H RTX 3070 Max-Q 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K 60Hz laptop a 7.2 out of 10 for its P2P score. Where the higher the better rating. As mentioned the figure will adjust as new hardware is released and performance expectations shift over time. This laptop’s configuration, when compared to its own Alienware M15 R4 (2021) lineup, is currently placed at 6th once we order it by the price to performance figure. Obviously scoring towards the 1st position is preferable.

Now let's look at where this laptop sits compared to all other laptops, including those outside of the Alienware M15 R4 (2021) range. It currently offers 136% worse rating when comparing its price to performance rating against the best laptop available today for price to performance, which is the ASUS TUF A15 R7 4800H GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 512GB M.2, which currently costs $999. Again only comparing against Price to Performance we can see that the second best model in today’s P2P ranking list is the MSI Bravo 15 R7 4800H RX 5500M 16GB RAM 512GB M.2 laptop, and our laptop is 106% worse when compared against this price to performance rating. The price of the 2nd best laptop is listed as $1049.

How does the Dell Alienware M15 R4 (2021) i7-10870H RTX 3070 Max-Q 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K 60Hz laptop compare to the best CPU performance focused laptops and today’s most popular games?

Now the processing power is one of the primary areas that we will pay for in any PC and so let's see how our Alienware M15 R4 (2021) laptop is when compared against CPU performance with a top CPU focused laptop thats available today. This top tier processor focused laptop is currently the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 R9 4900HS RTX 2060 Mobile 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2. With a Ryzen 9 4900HS 8-Core 3.0GHz CPU in it that performs 24% better compared to our laptop’s Core i7-10870H 8-Core 2.20GHz.

Today’s performance comparison for all games shows our laptop CPU can currently meet or beat 472 game’s recommended system requirements when we put the 500 most demanding games into a list. With a list of 500 Minimum system specs put in a similar most demanding order this changes to it being able to run 500 games.

Let's take a look and see how well our Core i7-10870H 8-Core 2.20GHz compares against today’s most popular games. Against the recommended CPU specs for Far Cry 6 our laptop is 16% better, and compared to New World it is 46% better , where as against Battlefield 2042 it delivers 35% better performance.

How does the Dell Alienware M15 R4 (2021) i7-10870H RTX 3070 Max-Q 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K 60Hz laptop compare to the best graphics card performance focused laptops and today’s most popular games?

Graphics power is a primary laptop hardware area for consideration and so let's check our Alienware M15 R4 (2021) by comparing it against a top GPU focused laptop thats available today. Today’s MSI GT76 Titan i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super 64GB RAM 2.0TB M.2 4K comes with one of the more powerful laptop graphics solutions available for game crunching at the moment, making it a good one to compare against our review laptops GPU. We will use its GeForce RTX 2080 Super 8GB to compare against our GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q card. The top end laptop’s GPU currently delivers 23% better performance when benched against our own review laptop’s GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q.

Our laptop’s GPU can currently run 476 of today’s top 500 demanding games meeting their recommended Graphics Card requirements. This figure is 499 for the top 500 minimum requirement games that can be run by the GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q.

How about we compare our laptop graphics performance against Battlefield 2042 recommended graphics requirement? Our laptop gets 8% worse performance. Next let's check the top game of the moment, Far Cry 6, which shows the review laptop’s gpu against that game’s system specs gets 5% better performance. We also see the 70% better performance from our laptop gpu when looking at the game New World for it’s graphics requirements.

Today's Best Priced Mouse and Headset for Dell Alienware M15 R4 (2021) i7-10870H RTX 3070 Max-Q 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K 60Hz laptop

Incidentally our price track research shows us that a good gaming mouse is the Kayinuo M738 Gaming Mouse 3200DPI wired 6 Buttons. Its price tag today is $12.99 and is topping our price tracking charts as a best value mouse. Price watching this mouse shows that it has had a price drop by $32.26 during the past couple of weeks, which gives us more reason to select it to go with today’s laptop. Another point of interest was that we saw this mouse priced at $11.99, which we tracked on 15th Aug 2020.

You could pick up a headset to go with the Dell Alienware M15 R4 (2021) i7-10870H RTX 3070 Max-Q 32GB RAM 512GB M.2 4K 60Hz. In our spotlight at the moment is the Corsair HS45-7.1 Surround, which today is $36.99. For reference, our lowest tracked price for this headset was on 28th Nov 2019 and it was priced at $34.99.