In a class action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California, the owner of an Alienware Area 51M R1 gaming laptop alleges that Dell knowingly misled him with advertising about the laptop's "unprecedented upgradeability."

The 20-page complaint alleges that Alienware "falsely advertised the characteristics and qualities of the Area 51M that it knew did not exist," and alleges breach of contract and breach of warranty, false advertising, and illegal business practices under California civil law.

The crux of the complaint, filed by plaintiff Robert Felter, is that Alienware's advertisements alleged that owners of 2019 model year Area 51M R1 laptops would receive future Intel CPUs such as the then-scheduled Intel 10th generation and Nvidia RTX Super GPUs and Nvidia GPUs, which gave the impression that they could upgrade to future Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs such as the then planned Intel 10th generation and Nvidia RTX Super GPUs.

Neither was possible with Area 51M R1. The 10th generation Intel CPUs had moved to a new socket and were not compatible with the Alienware Area 51M R1's Z390 motherboard. Dell later sold a GPU upgrade kit for the R1, but the RTX 2080 was the maximum, not the faster "Super" model.

The next iteration of the laptop, the Area 51M R2, supported upgrade kits for Super GPUs, as did Intel's 10th generation CPUs.

Felter's lawsuit alleges that Dell knew at the time it promised "unprecedented upgradeability" that the 51M's upgradeability would be limited by factors such as the Z390 motherboard, and that marketing the 51M before newer hardware became available Dell claims that this was a ploy to sell the 51M before newer hardware became available. The complaint states that "Dell knew it had to address consumer hesitation to purchase the Area 51M R1 shortly before the core components of the Area 51M R1 became obsolete."

Plaintiffs' counsel told Tom's Hardware that "Dell's advertising to the public did not place any limits on the upgradeability of the laptop," and that Dell "did not make it clear to those with the highest spec CPU and/or GPU that their devices were . did not reveal that their devices could not be upgraded."

We contacted Dell, but the company said it would not comment on legal matters. A copy of the complaint is here.