Alienware unveils new 17-inch laptops with 480Hz refresh rate

PC display speed is about to increase. The updated Alienware m17 R5 and x17 R2 models, a pair of 17.3-inch gaming laptops, will feature 480Hz displays, about 33% faster than the previous top speed of 360Hz.

As of press time, 480Hz laptop options are not available for purchase, but an Alienware spokesperson told Ars they should be available online soon.

The 480Hz displays have a resolution of 1920×1080 and a gray-to-gray response time of 3ms. In its announcement, Alienware promised “smooth animation for easier target tracking, ghosting reduction that minimizes distractions, and lower system latency, allowing you to spot other players faster.”

The target audience for laptops is hardcore gamers who want to keep up with professional esports players. Alienware hasn’t said which company makes its 480Hz panels, but we’ve known that speed has been coming from companies like AU Optronics for months. We’re still waiting for a 500Hz desktop monitor from Asus, but in the meantime, Alienware laptops boast some of the fastest speeds in consumer display technology.

Of course, the boost will be less obvious if you’re used to 360Hz, for example, while your experience should be noticeably better if you’re moving from 60Hz. We haven’t tried 480Hz Alienware laptops in person, but we can confirm that the 360Hz screens showed noticeable visual improvements, especially when it comes to fast actions like quickly scrolling through text.

To take full advantage of 480Hz, you’ll also need to be running content that can play at 480fps on system hardware.

Alienware m17 R5 ships with AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (12GB GDDR6, up to 175W) or Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti (16GB GDDR6, up to 155W and 1410MHz), AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX (octa-core), 16 streams, up to 4.9 GHz), 64 GB of DDR5-4800 memory and 4 TB of SSD.

The x17 R2, meanwhile, aims to be the thinnest Alienware laptop in the 17-inch class. It has up to an Intel Core i9-12900HK (14 cores, 20 threads, up to 5GHz), an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti GPU (16GB), 64GB of DDR5-4800 memory, and 4TB of storage.

The displays are rated for up to 300 nits of brightness and 100 percent sRGB coverage.

They also support adaptive sync via AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync, as well as Nvidia Advanced Optimus, which allows the system to switch between integrated and discrete graphics as needed, and uses a “Hardware Dynamic Display Switcher that allows GeForce GPUs to directly control the display”, not just integrated graphics, according to Nvidia.

480Hz screens will cost $300 more than standard laptop configurations with 165Hz displays.

Both laptops will also feature displays up to 4K resolution, but they will have a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz and a 3ms response time.