Alienware’s New Area-51 Laptops Have Light-up Trackpads And Fans

Alienware is bringing backmost its Area-51 instrumentality line, and its caller flagship laptops are overmuch showier than nan secretive aerial guidelines they’re named after. The bombastic, UFO-like Area-51 laptops are paired pinch a scope of top-flight specs featuring Intel Arrow Lake CPUs and next-gen Nvidia GPUs — coming successful 2 sizes: ample (16-inch) and bigger (18-inch). They’ll commencement astatine a pricey $3,199 erstwhile premier configurations motorboat by nan extremity of Q1 2025, pinch an entry-level $1,999 exemplary and different configs coming later.

Unlike past year’s M16 R2, which trimmed down nan protruding butt recovered connected galore Alienware laptops, nan Area-51 has a full-on dump motortruck for a rear. And this protrusion, wherever each its ports are located, moreover lights up pinch a soft, supple glow of RGB illumination. The Area-51’s RGB ray show extends to per-key keyboard illumination, a light-up trackpad, and lit suit fans. The light-up fans are visible done nan intake holes connected nan apical level arsenic bully arsenic a seethrough Gorilla Glass expanse connected nan underside, too showing disconnected immoderate of nan laptop’s innards.

The Area-51 duo will spot connected their RGB lighting for their splashiest pops of color, arsenic immoderate sizes of Alienware laptops recreation successful conscionable 1 chassis color, called liquid teal. The anodized decorativeness is said to return inspiration from nan aurora borealis, looking astir charcoal achromatic successful a dimly lit room until its lid aliases underside shows a flimsy shimmer of iridescence erstwhile nan ray catches it.

Housed incorrect that aluminum chassis, nan Area-51 sports immoderate high-end specs. It tin beryllium outfitted pinch up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, Nvidia’s caller 50-series GPUs, up to 64GB of dual-channel DDR5 RAM, and up to 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen5 SSD. Powering each of that successful each nan 16-inch and 18-inch laptops is simply a sizable 96Wh battery. Alienware doesn’t database immoderate artillery life estimates successful nan Area-51’s tech specs. We’ve asked really galore hours of usage group should expect erstwhile unplugged and haven’t yet heard back.

The Area-51 duo usage a caller thermal architecture to support each this basking hardware cool, and Alienware claims it moves up to 37 percent overmuch airflow while moving 15 percent quieter than nan older Alienware X16 R2 from 2024. All those specs and improved thermals sound bully connected paper, but support successful mind, these caller Area-51 models are hefty laptops. Remember that older X16 R2 laptop that Alienware compares them to? The X16 R2 weighs six pounds. At 7.6 pounds, nan caller 16-inch Area-51 weighs astir arsenic overmuch arsenic nan mean American newborn baby, and nan 18-inch is moreover heavier astatine astir 10 pounds.

Tipping nan scales for illustration that, nan Area-51 laptops don’t consciousness for illustration conscionable a resurrection of Alienware’s flagship marque punishment but a throwback to older, fundamentally immobile desktop replacement laptops. That does recreation pinch immoderate benefits, for illustration a plethora of rear-mounted ports including HDMI 2.1, 2.5 gigabit ethernet (RJ-45), 3 USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 5Gbps ports, 2 Thunderbolt 5 / USB-C ports, and a headphone jack and full-size SD insubstantial slot connected nan side.

The ample drawback coming is that nan displays too consciousness a mini retro, since nan laptops usage older IPS show tech. Both machines personification 2560 x 1600 QHD panels pinch 3ms consequence clip and up to 300Hz refresh (240Hz connected nan 16-inch), but there’s nary fancy tandem OLED aliases point of nan benignant for illustration Alienware’s genitor institution Dell put successful its upcoming Pro Premium laptop. If you want OLED displays from Alienware, you’ll alternatively personification to cheque retired its gaming monitors — of which, it announced a caller 27-inch 4K QD-OLED astatine CES 2025 arsenic bully arsenic immoderate Area-51 and Aurora prebuilt desktops.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge