Alienware 16 Area-51 test: Dell’s laptop gaming is back with a fanfare

Whether we love or hate, it is clear that the design of the Alienware Area 51 fully assumes the “coming from elsewhere” management. The green shades of its chassis stand out from the rest of the competition, while the RGB accents brought to its rear protubence indeed give it a flying supecoup appearance.

It is also presque As heavy as a UFO: at 3.3 kg (!) On the scale, the Area 51 is one of the heaviest laptops in our comparison, tied with the Asus Rog Scar Strix … and its 18 -inch diagonal. The Dell machine is, thus, the heaviest 16 -inch laptop having been entitled to our test battery. Suffice to say that he will not be the best friend of the backpackers, especially since his generous proportions (29 x 36.5 x 2.1 cm), increased by his hindquarters, do not allow him to enter all the backpacks. Ah, and you also have to add an additional kilo with the 360 ​​W charger …

Note that the rear side of the Area 51 has a glass protuberance allowing to admire the ventilation system, lit in the RGB for the same occasion. Now, to find out who other than dust particles on your desk will have the right to admire the work, it remains a mystery.

The interior arrangement of AREA 51 nevertheless lends confusion. The large place granted to the cooling system, powered by two ventilators sucking air and placed in the side upper corners of the chassis, drastically reduces the available place for the keyboard/touchpad combo. Consequently, the latter sees its size greatly reduced, to the point of becoming barely larger than a credit card. Especially since its feeling of return is not the most attractive.

Quite the opposite of the keyboard: our test unit includes additional clicky mechanical switches, and the user experience is increased. Noise is certainly much more important than on a classic chiclet keyboard, but the return frank and marked in fact a tool much more suited to the game sessions – a plus, therefore, for a laptop gaming. The height of luxury, each touch benefits from its own backlight, for all lovers of the Lyon Light Festival, or the Jacky Tuning of our readership.

As for connectors, AREA 51 has nothing to envy to its other colleagues in the Gaming segment. Three USB-A 3.1 ports, two Thunderbolt 5 ports (on our RTX 5080 mobile version) and an HDMI port are all placed on the rear cylinder head, next to the charger port. As for the headphone output and the SD slot, they are placed on the left edge of the laptop. What easily do without a hub, therefore.

We find good, too, on connectivity. The Intel Be1750 card allows you to take advantage of Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, ensuring a lasting future for years to come.

The impressive ventilation system, with four units placed on both sides of the inner chassis, logically causes a significant noise when the Area 51 is pushed in its last entrenchments. In “Performance” mode, set from the Alienware Command Center software, the laptop pushes up to 50 dB (!). The “balance” mode is held at 47 dB, while the “silent” mode stabilizes at 40.6 dB.

Significant ventilation, of course, but which does not prevent Alienware 16 Area 51 from heating. As a heavy task, the keyboard keeps an average temperature of 43 degrees, which is not necessarily pleasant in the summer season.

The processor that feeds the Alienware Area 51 is well known to us: it is the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, the most efficient chip of the new generation Arrow Lake-HX. With its 24 hearts (8 performance, 16 efficiency), this CPU is particularly well suited for gaming bikes; And the machine will not be no exception to the rule.

Unsurprisingly, the Area 51 is very similar to the other 3 laptops of our comparison equipped with the same CPU, with a slight delay on our benchmark indices. No concern is however to be reported on our use of the application machine, with results, once again, almost identical to those of its competition, both in consultation as the content creation.

A positive point to note: the performance of the SSD storage module is particularly satisfactory, with an average of 7 GB/s in reading and 6.6 GB/s in sequential entries. Very good results that are among the best in our comparison.

At the heart of the GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile nestled in AREA 51 is the GB203 GPU of NVIDIA – the same chip which feeds the RTX 5090 Mobile. Logically truncated with many of its calculation and bandwidth units, this more economical iteration nevertheless displays 7680 Cuda Cores and 16 GB of VRAM, and should pass our gaming benchmarks without the slightest effort.

Coupled with the Intel Ultra 9 275HX Core, the 5080 Mobile has no problem paying for content creation tasks, with full performance in the margin of our expectations, but also competition.

As specified above, the RTX 5080 Mobile is equipped with the high density chip GB203; With 7680 Cuda Cores and 16 GB of VRAM, this GPU for Laptop has something to collect the latest AAA games without problem in 1080p, with the support of the DLSS4 if necessary to exceed 60 I/S. Our gaming benchmarks are made with the graphic options to the maximum – with path tracing and multi -frame generation activated when available.

The power of the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX offers all the necessary latitude for RTX 5080 Mobile to express its graphic power: excellent results at stake on our panel of titles, with the exception near the very demanding Black myth Wukong which continues to give a hard time once all the RT options activated.

The use of the DLSS4 becomes all the more important during the game in native resolution 2560 x 1600 px with activated Ray tracing. The image rendering technology logically pushes the GPU in its latest entrenchments, and the activation of the super resolution, in addition to the Frame Gen, allows you to easily exceed 60 I/S on all the games of our selection.

There is no doubt that the screen counts among the Alienware 16 Area 51 forces. This 16 -inch LCD IPS panel displays a QHD+ 2560 x 1600 px resolution at a maximum cooling rate of 240 Hz. Nothing new on the specs for a gaming PC on this price segment, but the calibration of the slab deserves to be greeted.

The color delta e, measured at 2.5, is just below the 3 threshold from which the colorimetric drifts are visible to the naked eye. The color temperature is maintained at an average of 6781 K, not far from the platonic ideal of 6,500 k, while its remanence of 4 ms makes a very good screen for gaming. Finally, we note a 19 %reflectance rate, which avoids return reflections thanks to a successful mat treatment. At all good, if not for contrasts: at a ratio of 1178: 1, the slab does not make the weight in the face of other OLED and mini-LED screens on the market. The good news is the generous pic of brightness at 534 cd/m².