Dell faces lawsuit over alleged false claims about Alienware Area 51M R1 upgradeability

Dell is facing a class-action lawsuit over in the US over alleged false advertising. The plaintiff claims that Dell falsely advertised the Alienware Area 51M R1 laptop, after claiming it had “unprecedented upgradeability”. 

Filed in the US district court of Northern California, the 20-page long lawsuit claims that “Dell intentionally misled and deceived the public in order to create a competitive advantage based on false representation to boost sales of its flagship gaming laptop,” and “falsely advertised to consumers that the Area 51M R1's core hardware components were fully upgradeable to future Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs”.

The Alienware Area 51M R1 is equipped with Intel 9th Gen Core processors, so upgrading to a 10th Gen Core processor would never be possible because each of these generations has its own socket.

Upgrade kits for the GPU were later sold by Dell, but the Alienware Area 51M R1 owners were only allowed to upgrade up to an RTX 2080. On the other hand, the R2 laptop model offered more upgrades for GPUs, including the RTX 20 Super variants, and CPUs, up to Intel's 10th generation.

The lawsuit further states that plaintiffs seek restitution from Dell for violating the False Advertising Law and Unfair Competition Law, damages due to fraudulent misrepresentation and injunctive relief under the Consumers Legal Remedies Act.

In an email to Tom's Hardware, the plaintiff's lawyer David W. Kani stated “Dell’s advertisement to the public didn’t place any restrictions on the upgradeability of the laptop… [nor] never disclosed that those with the highest spec CPU and/or GPU that their device would not be upgradeable.”

Dell has not publicly commented on the lawsuit filing at the time of publishing.

KitGuru says: Did any of you buy an Alienware Area 51M R1? Was the “unprecedented upgradeability” one of the key features that made you buy it?

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