Alienware Area-51m Review

9.2 Total Score
Alienware Area-51m Review

The Alienware Area-51 offers unrivaled power in a sleek, redesigned chassis with the option to upgrade both the CPU and the GPU.

PROS
  • Stunning design
  • Excellent graphics
  • Great performance
  • Lightning fast SSDs
  • All major components upgradable
CONS
  • Very Expensive
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With a new look and the very first design allowing scalable graphics, Alienware is ready to take its place as king of semi-mobile games. The Alienware Area-51m is unlike anything we’ve seen of the brand. It is less Independence Day and more the Flight of the Navigator. But this baby is not limited to a relatively new face. And in this article, we have thoroughly tested this laptop in our Alienware Area-51m Review.

Armed with an Intel Core i9 desktop processor and one of Nvidia’s super powerful RTU GPUs, it absolutely canceled all the tests we performed with smooth multiplication. This will also make a big dent in your wallet. But you believe that this is the first gaming laptop in the future, it seems to represent only a low price for a truly scalable system and what Alienware calls its first true desktop replacement.

Alienware Area-51m Review – Design

It’s something that’s been preparing for two years. Finally, we say goodbye to the familiar epic design language of Alienware and welcome Legend. It’s a bittersweet end of what has become a trusted friend, but when you take into account what Alienware has thought, I think you’ll find that beginning a lot more enjoyable. For starters, all sharp edges and sharp half-corners are gone in favor of rounded corners and silky, smooth finishes. And instead of anodized aluminum, the majority of the Area-51m chassis is magnesium-colored alloy called Dark Side of the Moon.

The soft finish invites you to touch while eliminating the greasiest fingerprints. All this is very V but without the subversive extraterrestrial occupation of lizards who have disguised human beings. And although this presentation is soft by Alienware standards, it is still Alienware, as evidenced by the bright turquoise extraterrestrial head located at the top of the lid. In the lower left corner, you will find a pretty big font with A51 embossed lettering. There is more customizable LED lighting that paints the ventilation openings at the back and shows a nice honeycomb pattern.

If you’ve ever seen an Alienware laptop, the interior will be familiar to you. The palm rest and the keyboard are covered with more of this soft-touch black and smoked. The touchpad and keyboard, with macro keys and a numeric keypad, shine with joy. Another alien head sits atop the bridge and pulls the double work as the power button. The 17-inch screen is surrounded by shiny edges, which is better to show the silver lettering of Alienware at the bottom and the Tobii Eye Tracker module just below. And as for the glasses, these are by far the finest I’ve seen on an Alienware. This really highlights the beautiful display.

Attach you gaming accessories, external displays, and hard drives! The Area-51m can handle all the devices you have and then process them. There are some USB 3.1 ports to the right of the system. Another is on the left with a Thunderbolt 3 port and connections for the headset and microphone. The two DC sockets are located between the rear vents with an HDMI 2.0 port, a mini DisplayPort and a Gigabit Ethernet connection. And in case the Area-51m is not powerful enough, connect the graphics amplifier of the company.

Despite its rather solid components, the Area-51m is in the clearest part of the desktop replacement spectrum: 8.5 pounds, 16.1 x 15.9 x 1.2 ~ 1.7 inches. It’s lighter than the Origin PC Eon 17-X (8.6-lb, 16.4 x 11.6 x 1.6-inch) and the gigantic MSI GT75 Titan (10 lb, 16.9 x 12.4 x 1, 2 ~ 2.3 inches). Still, the Aorus X9 is the thinnest and lightest model of 8.1 pounds, 16.9 x 12.4 x 1.2 inches.

Alienware Area-51m Review – Keyboard and TouchPad

Good news, Alienware has saved its traditional keyboard. In the field of gaming laptops, Alienware consistently ranks first in our list of keyboards, thanks to their strong return and absolute comfort via the TactX keyboard. The company even managed to integrate both a full numeric keypad and the macro key column without reducing the important keys. The Area-51m satisfies this pedigree with key travel of 2.2 millimeters, which is well above our minimum of 1.5 mm. The actuation force required was also above average at 71 grams (60 grams is our minimum). The 3.9 x 2.2-inch touchpad reacted almost as quickly as I typed my gestures, and navigation through documents and web pages went smoothly.

Alienware Area-51m Review – Display

As usual, Alienware sparkled the players with a nice 1920×1080 panel offering stunning colors and crisp detail. Little’s trailer on the 17.3-inch panel was a color font. My favorite piece of candy for the eyes (apart from Luke James’s chocolate himself tried exotic dances) was Regina Hall’s painting. The emeralds, magenta, and gold were beautiful, but the electric blue was the real star of the image. The details were so clear that I could see the folds and most patterns in Issa Rae’s shorts.

The war has never been so beautiful. From sunny tan deserts to immaculate white dunes illuminated by the emerald green ethereal glow of the northern lights, Battlefield V was devastatingly beautiful. I had an idea of the level of detail across the range of my sniper rifle. I saw an enemy soldier move forward when his head exploded under a bright red death-beam, the result of a precise headshot.

The Area-51m panel also incorporates Nvidia’s G-Sync technology with a refresh rate of 144 Hertz that produces spot-like images during games. In our tests, we learned that the Area-51m panel could reproduce 117.5% of the sRGB range. It is better than our threshold of 100% but below the average of 138%. X9 and Titan were much more colorful at 122 and 178%. The Eon 17-X had the worst result with 104%.

When measuring the luminosity, the area of the 51 m zone averaged 284 nits, which is above the average of 278 nits. It was also better than the Titan (271 nits), Eon 17-X (252 nits) and X9 (243 nits).

Alienware Area-51m Review – Audio

All speakers with a fierce forehead! Hidden behind a pair of bright black vents, the Area-51m hides a powerful pair of speakers. The almost acrimonious rendition of Kevin Ross’s “prototype” passed through my speakers with clear highs and dynamic midtones. The tenor of the singer was opulent with plenty of room for harmonies and bows to shine. When I went to J. Cole’s Middle Child, the trumpets sounded somewhat distorted at maximum volume. The rapper’s singing performance was clean while the top hats and traps attacked the track. The stockings growled a little, but I enjoyed hearing them all.

Some people tried to talk to me while I was playing at Battlefield V. It did not finish well. Our laboratory decorated with the sound of the cannon fire, with the staccato fixed shots. When I did not fight and rushed to the nearest cover, the voice of a narrator roughly told through the chaos carried by abandoned channels that have slowly translated into a group of flutes sounds optimistic.

Alienware has integrated its audio software into its Command Center software application, making it a one-stop shop for all your gaming and (now) audio needs. The app contains eight predefined settings (Com, Movie, Music, Strategy, Races, Shooting Games, Role Playing Games, and Alienware). Although you absolutely had to try all the presets, I noticed that I used Music and Alienware more often. The music produced the best complete audio performance.

However, if you want an immersive audio experience, use the Alienware setting. The preset created a surround sound effect that adds depth to what I was listening to. However, some of the more delicate track elements may be lost during random play. The company has also added a feature called Sound Reminder, which adds an overlay that gives you a visual cue when enemies enter the game. It’s especially useful for first-person shooters such as Battlefield V and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.

Alienware Area-51m Review – Graphics and Gaming

The numbers are in the RTX 2080 charts of the 51m zone and this platform is the head of the class. I slipped into a hostile base in Battlefield V (1920 x 1080, Ultra settings). But it did not take long before my sleeve was swollen and I threw a grenade into a group of explosive barrels, which melted into a cloud of red, yellow and orange flames at 122 frames per second.

The laptop continued to show impressive performance on our synthetic benchmarks and reached 92 fps on the Rider of Tomb Raider, exceeding the average of high-performance gaming notebooks at 63 fps. Even the MSI Titan with its own RTX 2080 was not a match at 76 fps. Equipped with GPU GTX 1080, the Aorus X9 and Origin PCEon 17-X recorded 73 and 69 respectively.

When we did the Hitman test, the Area-51m kept its 143 fps lead. It moved the Titan (140 fps) past the Eon 17-X and X9, which equaled the average of 96 fps. The Area-51m reached 105 fps at Grand Theft Auto V, exceeding the 75 fps average. The Titan stayed in second place with 91 fps, while the X9 (86 fps) and the Eon 17-X (55 fps) settled in the third and fourth positions.

In Middle-earth: Shadow of War test, the Area-51m produced 132 fps, the Titan (112 fps), X9 (99 fps) and the category average (86 fps).

As for virtual reality, do not hesitate to beat Oculus Rifts and HTC Vives. The Area-51m has passed the SteamVR performance test and has scored 11. I was surprised to learn that the Area-51m comes with an Intel UHD Graphics 630 integrated graphics processor. When you’re not playing or n ‘ Do not perform another GPU-intensive task, Nvidia’s Optimus technology is enabled and allows you to switch to this smaller graphics chip.

Alienware Area-51m Review – Performance

Heck, Alienware did not joke when they said they were going to make an actual desktop replacement. With an Intel Core i9-9900K desktop chip at 3.6 GHz and 64 GB of RAM, the Area-51m is ready to do anything. Reduce numbers, encode video and play some games – you name it, it’s possible. With the integration of the Intel Z390 chipset, Alienware is the first to support 8 cores. It may be the most powerful laptop I have ever seen and reviewed.

To test the system, I opened 40 tabs in Google Chrome – a number of running Twitch streams, YouTube videos, Tweetdeck while watching Fyre: the biggest festival ever on Netflix. There was no trace of latency before the launch of Battlefield V and even then it was relatively minimal. And if you need more power (but I do not see why), the processor is indeed overclockable.

The subcontractor continued to scrutinize our synthetic benchmarks and reached 29,989 units on Geekbench 4, which measures overall performance. The X9 with its i9-8950HK processor reaches 25,915. But the Area-51m left the Titan (i9-8950HK, 22,765) Eon 17-X (i7-8700K, 21,273) and the average of the high-end notebook category (21,118) in the dust.

In our file copy test, the 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD disk pair in the Area 0-Area 51m configuration in RAID 0 configuration took only 4 seconds to duplicate 4.97 GB of media files. This translates into an overwhelming transfer rate of 1,272.3 megabytes per second. This is more than double the category average of 590.6. The Titan 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD was far behind with 848.2 Mbps. The Eon 17-X (512 GB NVMe PCIe SSD) and X9 (1 TB m.2 PCIe SSD) SSDs are 566 and 424 Mbps, respectively.

Alienware Area-51m Review – Heat

For such a big laptop, the Area-51m stayed pretty cool. Indeed, the company’s Alienware Cryo-Tech v2.0 system uses a mix of fans, smart design, and components to prevent the notebook from overheating. At the bottom of the laptop is a large group of honeycombs concealing a variety of high voltage liquid crystal polymer fans. Fans deliver air through the floor and dissipate the resulting warm air along the sides and back of the notebook, away from where your hands usually stay. In addition to the fans, the Area-51m has no less than 8 heat pipes and several copper vents to facilitate the dissipation of heat.

So I was not too surprised by the relatively cool temperatures after 15 minutes after sucking the enemy line into Battlefield V. The touchpad measured 84 degrees Fahrenheit while the middle and chassis went up to 102 and 106 degrees, respectively. It is a few degrees above our comfort threshold of 95 degrees, but it’s cold compared to other laptops in this class. And despite playing a pretty trying game, I could barely hear the fans.

After a short cooling period, we do our thermal test again, but this time with a 15-minute HD video. This time we measured the touchpad, the average and lower temperatures of 84, 86 and 84 degrees.

Alienware Area-51m Review – Battery Life

Even with an integrated graphics chip to rely on, the Area-51m still has a powerful processor. Disconnect this laptop at your own risk. The system has only been running for 2 hours and 36 minutes on our battery test, which includes continuous web surfing via Wi-Fi at a brightness of 150 nits. It’s shorter than average gaming laptops at 3:15, but longer than the Eon 17-X (1:59) and the X9 and Titan, both of which ended after 2:20. We, therefore, recommend that you carry your charger if you are on a long trip.

Alienware Area-51m Review – Conclusion

With its high entry costs, the Alienware Area-51m is definitely an area for enthusiasts. It is the first laptop in the company to use an eight-core processor and one of the first to be equipped with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU – its power is undeniable. This is Alienware’s first true desktop replacement and the most powerful and scalable notebook I’ve talked about so far.

But $5,099 is a lot to ask. Hell, even the basic model of $2,549 is a bit expensive. If you can live without the latest and best specifications, I recommend you take a look at the Aorus X9. For $3899, you get a streamlined and lightweight system with good graphics and overall performance. But if you have withdrawn that money, consider the Alienware Area-51 as the ultimate gaming platform that will charm you for years to come.

That’s all for our Alienware Area-51m Review. Let us know what you think of this gaming laptop in the comments area below.

9.2 Total Score
Alienware Area-51m Review

The Alienware Area-51 offers unrivaled power in a sleek, redesigned chassis with the option to upgrade both the CPU and the GPU.

PROS
  • Stunning design
  • Excellent graphics
  • Great performance
  • Lightning fast SSDs
  • All major components upgradable
CONS
  • Very Expensive
Add your review  |  Read reviews and comments