TECH NEWS – Laptops are usually more expensive, but what Dell is doing with its gaming brand is excessive.

The Alienware 15 is now available for purchase on Dell’s website, but there are a few things you should know. It looks much more like a Dell Gaming laptop – a brand that appears to have been discontinued – than any traditional-style Alienware machine. While it does look more like a business laptop, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, in 2026, this could be a gaming laptop launched with an RTX 3050 configuration. This configuration isn’t available in every region. In the United States, the lowest tier is the RTX 4050, but only the RTX 5050 and RTX 5060 are currently available. In the United Kingdom, however, buyers will have access to all the latest generation options.

It also caps the GPUs’ total graphics power (TGP) at 85 W, which holds back the new Blackwell graphics chips – if you can afford it. Given the impressively slim chassis, this is perhaps acceptable and in line with the Alienware 16 Aurora models. Meanwhile, Dell has firmly opted for single-channel memory across all configurations of its new machine. However, this isn’t limited to the lower end of the configuration range. Despite having two SODIMM slots on the back, the Alienware 15’s 8 GB, 16 GB, and 32 GB configurations each contain only a single RAM module. According to Alienware, they are doing everything they can to maintain prices despite fluctuations in memory costs. This meant that single-channel memory was the best solution for them in the factory settings.

Opting for a single-channel configuration (using two separate modules) instead of the standard dual-channel setup effectively halves the memory bandwidth. According to Alienware’s estimates, this results in a 5% performance drop in games and affects the system’s capabilities during general use. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if the price weren’t so high. In the United States, the RTX 4050 model with an AMD CPU starts at $1,300, and the RTX 5050 system with 16 GB of single-channel memory and a 512 GB SSD currently costs $1,500. The Alienware 15 with an RTX 5060, 32 GB of single-channel memory, and a 1 TB SSD cannot be configured for less than $2,290.

While it is a high-quality machine, it’s not the inexpensive, entry-level Alienware we were expecting after the MacBook Neo.

Source: PCGamer