Alienware 16 Area-51

Strong performer with a unique colour and a ton of ports, but its heavy design binds it to the desk

- ANDREW E FREEDMAN

The return of Alienware's Area-51 brand brings a futuristic look and what it calls "liquid teal", a dark blue/ green that shifts colour depending on the angle at which you look at it. Even the RGB lighting is used to artistic effect, with a blue ring shining through the shelf that juts out the back of the system.

This is where you'll find most of the ports, including three USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, two Thunderbolt 5, HDMI 2.1 and the connector for the 360W power supply. The left side houses only an SD card slot and a 3.5mm jack. Having the ports at the back is good for a clean desk setup but trickier to plug in accessories: the sides are instead dedicated to exhausts for its four-fan system.

That’s required to cool the potent pairing of Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080, and the effort works. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider at its toughest settings, the Area-51 ran at 183fps at 1080p and 128fps at the panel’s native 2,560 x 1,600, a shade faster even than the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (see issue 370, p70) with the same CPU and GPU.

The Area-51 again edged out its 5080-based peer in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with 63fps, and proved playable at 2,560 x 1,600 with 37fps.

I used the Area-51 to continue my journey in