Alienware relaunches Area-51 brand with new laptop and gaming tower

We won't blame you if, in the half-decade (and a pandemic) that separates us from its release, you have already forgotten the existence of the Area-51 range among the vast portfolio of the Alienware brand. Dell's gaming counterpart used the famous North American state secret for a line of desktop solutions with progressively more convoluted designs – up to the famous full hexagon of the R4 model, released in 2017. This is ultimately the line of computers laptops which took up the torch; and its latest invention to date, the Alienware Area-51 R2 and its modular (but uni-generational) CPU/GPU configuration, had left its mark on people's minds for a few weeks, failing to have been able to fit into the history.

Its descendants, decidedly less ambitious, play the safety card, while ensuring a total power (TTP) of 280 W – claimed to be “unparalleled” in the small, unforgiving world of gaming laptops. More precisely, its thermal envelope is divided between 175 W dedicated to the GPU (TGP) and 105 W to the CPU (TDP). Quite a barnum that requires exceptional cooling management – this is where Dell presents Cryo-tech, the new thermal architecture which promises to circulate “37% more air while being 15% quieter” compared to the Alienware x16 R2; figures which will, it is certain, come to the attention of our benchmarks.

Concretely, this is presented by an air chamber in a marked cylinder head and dimensions that are impressive to say the least for its 16-inch version: 365 mm wide by 290 mm deep – and a weight of 3.45 kg (!) to become one of the most impressive gaming laptops on the market. Like its (dis)illustrious predecessors, the new Alienware 16 Area-51 is more of a nomadic “gaming station” than a classic laptop. Still on this same 16-inch version, the onboard panel has a QHD+ resolution of 2560 x 1600, a refresh rate of 240 Hz and a retention of 3 ms.

The visual elements of the range also come back to adorn the machine. Its aluminum chassis takes on iridescent shades depending on the surrounding lights, its two fans are equipped with RGB lighting visible from the Gorilla glass window on its rear side, and its touchpad is covered in the same light blue that makes up the Alienware logo on its front hull.

What about configurations? While waiting to learn more about its 18-inch version, the Alienware 16 Area-51 will be accompanied by a choice of an Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX processor (20 cores clocked up to 5.2 GHz) or Ultra 9 275HX ( 24 cores, up to 5.4 GHz), two DDR5 RAM slots up to 64 GB and three (!) NVMe SSD slots M.2. On the connectivity side, the machine benefits (fortunately) from the wifi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 duo, guaranteeing futureproofing far from being a luxury in 2025. Finally, 3 USB-A 3.1 ports, 1 HDMI 2.1 port, 1 full SD port, a headphone output and up to 2 Thunderbolt 5 ports are announced.

And an exit horizon in all this? Not yet – the “standard” configuration of the Alienware 16 Area-51 is planned for the first quarter, with future entry-level configurations to follow throughout the year.

I want to believe

Obviously, this return to favor of the Area-51 brand could not be achieved without a new entry into the desktop market. Here is the very soberly named Alienware Area-51 tower, which swaps the convoluted designs from the past for a big, much more classic rectangle.

The firm is adding a layer to its cooling system using both fans and watercooling to draw 600 W of graphics power (TGP) via the new RTX 50 GPUs from Nvidia and 250 W of processor calculation (TDP) from the latest Intel's Core Ultra Series 2 generation. Release planned for the first quarter of 2025, without further information on the launch price. A more modest version will also be offered. Called Alienware Aurora, its release is also planned for the beginning of the year.

Search for portable console, missing

Finally, when we take stock of Alienware's gaming lineup in 2025, the big absentee is AI – at least, all the media hype around what we roughly call “artificial intelligence”, although it is present during the Dell consumer show. A lesser evil. And if the brand confirms to us that it is still “all-in” in everything related to AI, even at Alienware, no wobbly functionality has been presented for the moment. To see if Dell prefers to keep this kind of overlay on the side of the Nvidia application or Microsoft Copilot; but for now, we might as well take advantage of one of the last segments of the industry not to be unreasonably ensconced in LLMs.

The other big absence is theAlienware UFO – the console/portable PC hybrid presented during CES 2020 and has since completely disappeared from the radar. Its concept of detachable Nintendo Switch-style controllers has since been taken up by Lenovo's Legion GO, and Dell does not seem to have decided to bring it out of the closet, even though the manufacturer assures that it is keeping a careful watch on this small, ever more crowded market.