Summary: Alienware has announced the launch of its new Area-51 gaming laptops, coming in 16-inch and 18-inch sizes, powered by Intel’s latest Core Ultra 9 CPU and the RTX 5080 GPU. The laptops boast a bold new design with a fresh color scheme that’s unmistakably Alienware.
Earlier this year, Alienware announced its new Area 51 gaming laptops, and today the company is finally ready for launch. The Alienware 16 Area-51 and Alienware 18 Area-51 are now both available for purchase from Dell. Each laptop comes in two configurations, and both configurations for each model are pretty beefy and should be able to handle today’s top games with ease.
The main detail of these two laptops is that they both come with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 GPU. These are some of the first gaming laptops to hit the market with the RTX 50-series GPUs inside. That means they’ll be able to take advantage of NVIDIA’s multi-frame generation to boost frame rates beyond what was possible with DLSS 3 found in the RTX 40-series.
Additionally, you can get either laptop with two different RAM and storage options. Regardless of the RAM and storage option you pick, either laptop is going to come with a QHD+ display. That isn’t always the case with gaming laptops, as some of Razer’s offerings sometimes limit certain display resolutions to a specific configuration. For the new Alienware Area-51 models, you can pick either 32GB of RAM with a 1TB SSD or 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD.
Of course, the elephant in the room is the price. For starters, these are Alienware laptops. Alienware has typically been a higher-priced brand for gaming PCs. Then you also have to factor in that these feature the RTX 50-series GPUs at a time when GPUs are becoming prohibitively expensive. So yeah, these aren’t cheap.
The new Alienware Area-51 laptops launch at a starting price of $3,199.99
It never gets easier looking at the most powerful gaming laptops around and seeing an eye-watering price tag. Then again, top-performing gaming laptops usually aren’t an inexpensive purchase. That being said, Alienware is setting the bar high for the cost, with prices starting at $3199.99. That’s for the Alienware 16 model with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. If you want to bump the RAM and storage up, the price bumps up to $3,599.99
As for the Alienware 18 model, there’s a $200 premium on both configurations over the 16-inch model. So you’re looking at $3,399.99 and $3,799.99, respectively. If you can swing either of those prices (not to mention justify them), then you should be in for a real treat in terms of gaming performance.
Both laptops also come powered by Intel’s latest version of the Core Ultra 9 processors – the Core Ultra 9 275HX. So you not only get plenty of processing power for normal computing tasks, but AI-related tasks as well since there’s an NPU in those chips. Alienware has RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5090 models coming, too, but those won’t launch till a little later this year.
A bold new design
Beyond the specs, Alienware’s new Area-51 laptops feature a bold new design that’s unmistakably Alienware. While there’s a clean new look, the design also features a few elements that harken back to the days of Alienware’s flashier offerings. This is heightened by the sleek new color choice, which is a large step in the opposite direction from the Lunar Light and Dark Side of the Moon it’s been pushing for the past few years.
The laptops offer 280W of performance power to drive the GPU inside. So you should have no trouble cranking up those graphics. Though we’ve not personally tested these so we can’t say for certain how well they actually perform in this regard. It’s a safe bet that it’s not too shabby. The design also features this really cool, slightly more see-through vent for the fans on the bottom. Through which you can see the RGB-lit fans. Plus, the light-up trackpad makes a return.
In short, Alienware’s latest gaming laptops are certainly attention-grabbing.
