Alienware Area-51 16" - Review

I have been fairly lucky to review a number of laptops over the years and for a lot of them, they fall into the gaming space. The strangest thing is that while I enjoy those laptops, I would never own one for myself, because the idea of a portable device that is not truly portable is just silly. So when the Alienware Area 51 laptop turned up and I saw just how large it was, I figured it would be another one that failed to make me change my mind, but I might have been wrong.

Right, there is no denying it, this laptop is a beast. It clocks in at 3.4kg on its own, you can round that up to 4kg once include the power brick. The weight is not packed into a tiny space, as it is 36.5cm wide, 29cm deep and when opened a nice 28cm tall. When you have it closed, it is still a good 5cm thick, which all combined makes it a chunky boy. The first time I tried to take it out of the box, I was seriously not prepared for just how crazy large it was, I figured as with some laptops, one hand would be enough, but I was wrong. Once I had the laptop set up on my desk, it looked even bigger and that is saying something. My desk is a Secret Lab Magnus Pro XL, which means it is 1.77m wide and still looked big. All of that weight and space is not just for show though, as the laptop includes a really large amount of tech, which is quite impressive.

Now, as we don’t tend to focus on clock speeds and such, I will just give the highlight specs. The CPU is an Intel Core Ultra 9, which maxes out at 5.4GHz, it has 64GB of DDR5 ram, a 2TB SSD for storage and as this is a gaming laptop, it has a Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 for all your graphical needs. Now for the tech heads, that is great news, but for the average gamer, all they really want to know is ‘how well do my games run’ and I can tell you that; incredibly. I have a few go to games that I test on all devices though I finally dropped DOOM 2016 from that list and instead replaced it with DOOM: The Dark Ages. That was the first game I wanted to test, mostly because it was not insanely large, so it gave me a chance to see how quickly it would download via the devices Wi-Fi 7 connection. The speed of that was really good, in fact the almost 60gb download took maybe 50 minutes to complete, which I consider a win on Australian internet.

Downloading the game is fine, but you don’t buy a gaming laptop to download games, you buy one to play them, so how did it play? Again, it was incredible, I loaded the game and it detected the hardware and moved everything to the best settings and I was off. As I had a save file from my review last year, I was able to jump into that and test out some later levels, but I also tested out some of the opening ones. The game had no issues at all in any stage, I tried the game with a controller and with the included keyboard and a mouse I supplied and both were as responsive as I needed them to be. One of the other games I was keen to test was Battlefield 6, because no matter what DOOM does, it is very linear by nature, with a lot of scripted encounters, Battlefield is the exact opposite.

Now I was tempted to download the game again, but as I was reviewing the new Kingston Dual Portable SSD stick, I used that to copy the files from my main PC over. That speed was great and with the USB ports behind the machine, I did not see the stick once I plugged it in. Playing the game, which again is the important part, was great both in the single player campaign and the games multiplayer offerings. I also tested out Spider-Man and some BALLxPIT for variety and no game had any issues in running. Now while not a main reason to pick up a gaming laptop, I did also test out some graphic design work and watched some videos and both encountered no issues, which I was happy with, though not really surprised.

That though leads to the unhappy part of the review, the battery life and cooling. Starting with the latter, in general use the machine stayed fairly cool and quiet, even playing a video in 4K did not get it too worked up. Sadly, no matter the game, after a few minutes of playing, the fans would kick in and unless I cranked the volume on the laptop, they were easily heard of any action on screen. Now the fans did do a decent job, they kept the laptop cool, not to a level I would be happy with sitting it on my actual lap, but considering how crazy some Battlefield 6 rounds can go, it did fairly decent. I tested after a 30-minute session of DOOM The Dark Ages and the fans stayed running, even when I was just back to Windows and nothing else was open, for a good 20 minutes.

The battery life is the other sink, because after that 30 minutes of play, the battery dropped from full to just over 15%, which is not great. Now I did do another test with the settings dropped down and the battery, after 30 minutes, only dropped to 40%, but that is still not great. Now, if your intention was to leave this on your desk, plugged into the power brick, then it might not be an issue, but travelling is not recommended for this if you game.

Something that I had not mentioned until now was the visual look of the machine itself, which normally does not factor into a review, but Alienware are still rocking their Legend design aesthetic. While the earlier design was more about hexagons and such, the current version is more about rounded corners and smooth surfaces, which I really like. When you have the screen up, you will notice the keyboard is surrounded by tiny holes on each side, some are ventilation and others are speakers. The space where you wrists rest and the track pad lives is this nice gun metal looking grey, which does look nice. In fact the whole unit has that look, which I really like, even the rear of the machine. Speaking of the rear, this is where you will find all your ports, there is not a single port elsewhere, the power, HDMI, USB-C and USB-A ports are all located on the back. This if fine if you dock your laptop to a desk and never plan to move it, but for constant travel, one USB port elsewhere would not have hurt. The final thing I have to say about the look is that you may not notice at first, just how many vents there are, but when you consider how much air it needs to pump to stay somewhat cool, it makes sense.

Gaming laptops often come with a question of price versus power and while this one has the power, it also has a price tag to make anyone think twice. The catch is of course that the power demands cooling and battery and both fall short of making this a device you can use on the go. If you were using it as a home machine, then you really won’t have any issues. If you pick this up, you will enjoy what it delivers, you just need to be aware of its restraints.

The Score

8.5

Review unit provided by Alienware

The Pros

This machine ran everything I through at it, without any issues

The visual style is still great and I am surprisngly ok with the lack of hexagons

The Cons

The laptop is beefy, which sort of betrays the idea of portability

Battery life takes a hit when you game, more so if you do it at full spec