The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 (2025) is a high-end gaming laptop, replacing the Dell Alienware m18 R2 (2024). This newer AA18250 model is available with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX or Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, paired with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-Series Laptop GPU (Blackwell), up to an RTX 5090 running at a TGP (Total Graphics Power) of 175W. Memory and storage max out at 64GB and 8TB, respectively; both are user-replaceable. Like its predecessor, you can get this laptop with a scissor switch or CherryMX ultra low-profile (clicky) mechanical keyboard. Ports include three USB-As, two USB-Cs (Thunderbolt 4 or 5), an HDMI 2.1, a 5Gbps Ethernet, an SD card reader, and a headphone jack. Features such as Thunderbolt version, touchpad backlighting, and PCIe Gen 5 storage support vary depending on the configuration.
See our unit's specifications and the available configuration options in the Differences Between Variants section.
Our Verdict
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop is primarily a gaming laptop intended as a desktop replacement, so while it provides a great user experience and has the processing power to handle nearly anything you throw at it, its bulky and heavy design makes it extremely hard to carry around. Plus, it has a terrible battery life, which means you'll also need to carry its massive charger.
Large screen for multitasking.
Comfortable keyboard, responsive touchpad.
Wide port selection.
Bulky and heavy.
Short battery life.
Loud fans.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop is sub-par for media consumption. Its large 18-inch QHD+ screen looks decently sharp and gets bright enough to combat glare in most indoor settings. However, like most IPS panels, it isn't the best for dark room viewing, as its low contrast makes blacks look gray. As for the speakers, although they have a good amount of bass compared to most laptop speakers, they sound rather boxy and unnatural. The biggest downside of this laptop is its lack of portability. It's bulky and heavy, and with a battery life of around three hours, you'll likely need to carry its gigantic charger as well.
Bright, colorful display.
Quad-speaker system sounds clear and full, with a decent amount of bass.
Bulky and heavy.
Short battery life.
Blacks look gray in dim settings due to display's low contrast.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop is a great gaming laptop. It's available with Intel CPUs and NVIDIA RTX 50-series GPUs, which are powerful enough to deliver smooth gameplay in demanding AAA titles. Additionally, it features a 300Hz display with a fast response time, ensuring a clear image in fast-moving scenes. There are plenty of ports, including a 5Gbps Ethernet port, to ensure a reliable internet connection when gaming online. Most of the ports are located on the back of the device, so you won't have cables obstructing your mouse movements on the sides. In addition to its loud fans, another downside of this laptop is its bulky and heavy design, which makes it a poor option for portable use.
CPU and GPU deliver smooth gameplay in demanding games.
High refresh display with fast response time.
VRR support to minimize screen tearing.
Minimal thermal throttling.
User-replaceable RAM and storage.
Bulky and heavy.
Loud fans.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop is primarily a gaming laptop with NVIDIA 50-Series GeForce GPUs, which aren't as well optimized for some CAD workloads as NVIDIA's own RTX PRO 6000 line. However, it has ample processing power to handle most mainstream workstation workloads. It's also suitable for color-critical work like photo and video editing, as its QHD+ display has full coverage of the DCI P3 color space. You get a wide port selection for peripherals and displays, including two Thunderbolt (Thunderbolt 4 or 5, depending on the model) ports, an HDMI 2.1, and a 5Gbps Ethernet. The memory and storage drives are user-replaceable, with three storage slots available on all models. Keep in mind that this is a bulky and heavy 18-inch model, which likely won't fit most bags, making it less ideal for portable use.
CPU and GPU can handle highly demanding tasks.
100% DCI P3 display is suitable for color-critical work.
Minimal thermal throttling.
Wide port selection.
User-replaceable RAM and storage.
Bulky and heavy.
Loud fans.
Check Price
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We tested the Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 (model AA18250) with a 300Hz QHD+ display, an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. The CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage are configurable; see the available configurations below.
SCREEN
- 18" IPS 2560 x 1600 300Hz (matte, 500 cd/m², 100% DCI P3, G-SYNC)
CPU
- Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX (20 cores/20 threads, up to 5.2GHz, 30MB cache)
- Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (24 cores/24 threads, up to 5.4GHz, 36MB cache)
GPU
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop 8GB GDDR7 (discrete, unknown TGP)
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop 8GB GDDR7 (discrete, unknown TGP)
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Laptop 12GB GDDR7 (discrete, unknown TGP)
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop 16GB GDDR7 (discrete, 175W TGP)
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop 24GB GDDR7 (discrete, 175W TGP)
MEMORY
- 16GB DDR5 6400MHz (1x 16GB or 2x 8GB)
- 32GB DDR5 6400MHz (1x 32GB or 2x 16GB)
- 32GB DDR5 7200MHz (2x 16GB)
- 64GB DDR5 6400MHz (2x 32GB)
STORAGE
- 1TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD
- 2TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4 or 5 NVMe SSD
- 4TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD (RAID 0, 2x 2TB)
- 8TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD (RAID 0, 2x 4TB)
- 12TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD (RAID 0, 3x 4TB)
COLOR
- Liquid Teal
See our unit's label.
Popular Laptop Comparisons
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 is an excellent gaming laptop. However, given its sheer size and weight, it's only really comparable to other 18-inch models, which are primarily intended as desktop replacements rather than portable devices for on-the-go use, such as the Razer Blade 18 (2024). As an 18-inch model with a robust cooling system, it performs as expected, delivering smooth gameplay in even the most demanding titles. With that said, it's difficult to overstate just how large this device is, even compared to the aforementioned Blade 18, so consider it only if you don't plan on moving it from your desk.
For more options, check out our recommendations for the best gaming laptops, the best budget and cheap gaming laptops, and the best laptops for video editing.
Although the Razer Blade 18 (2024) and the Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 (2025) are both high-end 18-inch gaming laptops, they're of different generations. The former uses Intel 14th Gen CPUs and NVIDIA 40-Series GPUs, while the latter uses Intel Core Ultra Series 2 HX CPUs and NVIDIA 50-Series GPUs. Both perform as they should for their respective hardware, so the differences between them primarily reside in build quality and user experience. The Razer feels sturdier and more premium, sporting an Apple MacBook-like all-aluminum chassis and a simpler, cleaner design. It also provides a slightly better user experience overall, including a larger touchpad, better-sounding speakers, and a higher-quality webcam.
The HP OMEN MAX 16 (2025) and the Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 (2025) are both high-end gaming laptops with Intel Core Ultra Series 2 HX CPUs and NVIDIA 50-Series GPUs. While neither is particularly portable, the OMEN is the smaller of the two at 16 inches, making it a better option if you need to travel with the laptop. Both deliver a great gaming experience, though expect the Alienware to achieve better results on the top-end 5090 models, as it has more chassis space and a superior cooling system to keep the components cool.
Though both are high-end devices with lots of processing power under the hood, the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M4, 2024) and the Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 (2025) are very different laptops. The former is a premium workstation intended for productivity tasks, while the latter is primarily a gaming laptop. The MacBook Pro feels more premium in terms of build quality, and it offers a slightly better user experience, particularly in smaller details such as the touchpad, speakers, and webcam. Gaming is possible on the MacBook Pro, but if your primary intent is to play games, the Alienware is a much better choice since there are significantly more games on Windows than on Mac. The Alienware also has a better display for gaming.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 (2025) is a newer version of the Dell Alienware m18 R2 (2024). Aside from some cosmetic design changes, the Area-51 model is largely the same device as its predecessor, featuring newer Intel Core Ultra Series 2 and NVIDIA 50-Series GPUs. The performance difference between the NVIDIA 40- and 50-Series GPUs isn't huge, so it likely isn't worth upgrading if you already have a similar 40-Series laptop unless you must have Multi-Frame Generation, a 50-Series exclusive feature. The Area-51 model has a single display option, a 300Hz QHD+ panel, which is a reasonable compromise between the 480Hz FHD+ and the 165Hz QHD+ options available on the m18 R2.
Test Results
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop is only available in the Liquid Teal colorway. See the bottom of the laptop.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop's build quality is excellent. Its aluminum and plastic construction feels very sturdy, exhibiting very little flex on the lid and keyboard deck. The finish is relatively resistant to scratches; you can buff away minor scuffs with a simple wipe. It's a fingerprint magnet, though, especially on the Liquid Teal color surfaces. The feet feel solid and stick firmly to the bottom.
The hinge is outstanding. It feels smooth when opening and closing the lid, and it's very stable, exhibiting almost no wobble when typing heavily. The hinge has a lot of resistance, but you can still open the laptop with one hand because of how heavy the laptop is.
Accessing the Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop's internals is straightforward; you simply need to remove eight Philips screws to detach the bottom panel. A prying tool isn't necessary. The four screws at the bottom of the panel are captive, meaning they remain attached to the panel, but the others aren't. All models have three SSD slots; however, only the SSD-2 slot supports PCIe Gen 5 on models with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 or below. Models with an RTX 5070 Ti or above support PCIe Gen 5 on all three slots. The SSD-1 slot supports M.2 2230 or 2280 SSDs, while the SSD-2 and -3 slots support M.2 2280 drives only.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop's display looks reasonably sharp. The QHD+ resolution is well-suited for gaming, as it provides good visuals without overtaxing the GPU. However, people accustomed to pixel-dense displays, such as Apple MacBooks' Retina screens, may find it a little too low for text-heavy, productivity tasks.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop's display has a high refresh rate and a fast response time, resulting in a clear image with minimal ghosting in fast-moving scenes.
The display's contrast ratio is decent for an IPS panel, but low compared to other display technologies like OLED and Mini LED. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dim settings.
The display gets bright enough for use in most indoor settings. Outdoor use is possible, but you may have trouble seeing some content under direct sunlight.
The display's matte coating handles reflections reasonably well. Some reflections are visible even with the screen at full brightness, but they aren't overly distracting.
The display's accuracy is great out of the box. Its color dE is a tad high, mainly because the display uses a wider color space by default, resulting in some oversaturation. The gamma sticks to a near flat 2.2, making most scenes a little too bright and dark scenes too dark.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop's display has an outstanding color gamut. It has full coverage of the sRGB and DCI P3 color spaces, making it suitable for general media consumption and color-critical work like photo and video editing.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop has an outstanding keyboard. You can get this laptop with scissor switches or CherryMX ultra low-profile (clicky) switches (our unit has the former). Its layout feels spacious and is easy to get used to. The keys are very stable, providing a consistent typing experience throughout. The scissor switches have a good amount of travel, require little force to actuate, and provide satisfying tactile feedback. Its RGB backlighting shines well through the legends; you can customize the lighting in the Alienware Control Center app.
Assuming Dell hasn't changed anything from previous Alienware laptops, the CherryMX ultra low-profile mechanical switches should be similar if not identical to the ones we tested on the Dell Alienware m18 R2 (2024). They're clicky switches that provide even more tactile feedback but are also louder.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop has an excellent touchpad. It tracks all movements and gestures well, even near the edges. It could be larger, though, given the size of the laptop and the amount of space available on the deck. Palm rejection works as intended, and there are no issues with actions like dragging and dropping. This is a diving board touchpad that you can only click in the bottom half; the actuation feels satisfyingly tactile.
Only models with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti or above have an RGB-backlit touchpad.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop has a quad-speaker system, with two drivers flanking the keyboard and two more at the bottom of the laptop near the back. These speakers get decently loud with only a small amount of compression at high volume levels. They have a good amount of bass compared to most laptop speakers but sound a little boxy and unnatural.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop has a decent webcam. Though adequate for general use, the image looks a little soft and noisy, which is somewhat disappointing considering its 1440p resolution. The colors look true to life, albeit a little undersaturated. Voices come across loud and clear; however, note that we recorded the audio with the fan profile set to Quiet, as the microphone picked up the fan noise when using the Overdrive mode.
This laptop is available with a 1080p or 4k webcam. Our unit has the 4k camera; however, we can only set the resolution to 4k in the Camera app when taking a photo. The maximum video resolution is 1440p @ 30fps.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop has an outstanding port selection. All three USB-A ports support USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speeds of up to 5Gbps. The one closest to the USB-C supports PowerShare, allowing you to charge a USB device when running on battery power. You can set how much of the battery's charge a connected device can draw when charging; for example, if you set it to 25%, charging will stop when you've used 25% of the laptop's total battery charge. You can also turn off charging completely.
Both USB-Cs support video output, USB4, and Power Delivery. They're Thunderbolt ports; however, models with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 or below support Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gbps data transfer speed), while models with an RTX 5070 Ti or above support Thunderbolt 5 (up to 80Gbps data transfer speed). You can charge the laptop via USB-C, but these ports can only take up to 130W of power, which will impact performance and cause the battery to lose charge during intensive workloads.
The Ethernet port uses an Intel Killer E5000 Ethernet adapter with a maximum transfer speed of 5Gbps.
The wireless adapter is an Intel Killer Wi-Fi 7 BE1750.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop is available with the following CPUs:
- Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX (20 cores/20 threads, up to 5.2GHz, 30MB cache)
- Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (24 cores/24 threads, up to 5.4GHz, 36MB cache)
Both are high-performance mobile CPUs used in gaming and workstation laptops. They can handle nearly every type of workload, from general productivity tasks to intensive gaming, simulations, and 3D graphics. Regarding core composition, both have 8 performance cores; however, the Core Ultra 7 255HX has 12 efficiency cores, while the Core Ultra 9 275HX has 16. Both have an NPU with a rated performance of 13 TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second) to handle AI tasks like image generation in photo editing apps and background blurring during video calls.
See Intel's Quick Reference Guide for more information about these Arrow Lake CPUs.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop is available with the following discrete GPUs:
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop 8GB GDDR7 (unknown TGP)
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop 8GB GDDR7 (unknown TGP)
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Laptop 12GB GDDR7 (unknown TGP)
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop 16GB GDDR7 (175W TGP)
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop 24GB GDDR7 (175W TGP)
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series Laptop GPUs are largely an incremental upgrade to the 40-series GPUs, providing only a minor increase in raw performance, as well as improvements to existing features like Super Resolution (upscaling) and Ray Reconstruction. The only new feature exclusive to the 50-series is Multi-Frame Generation (MFG). MFG allows the GPU to generate up to three frames per rendered frame (up from one on the 40-series GPUs), resulting in higher frame rates and smoother gameplay in supported games.
All five GPUs can handle games at 1440p, but in the case of the 5060 and 5070, you'll have to lower a lot of graphical settings in demanding games to avoid stutters since they only have 8GB of VRAM. Ultimately, the choice of the GPU comes down to what kind of performance you expect and your budget.
Dell doesn't specify the GPUs' TGP (we can only confirm the 5080 and 5090), but based on the capability of the cooling system, they likely run at their respective maximum wattage, meaning the RTX 5060 and 5070 would run at 115W, while the RTX 5070 Ti would run at 140W.
See NVIDIA's specifications page for more information about the NVIDIA 50-series laptop GPUs.
You can configure this laptop with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of RAM. The 32GB option is available with 6400MHz or 7200MHz (XMP-enabled) modules. The memory is user-replaceable.
You can get this laptop with 1, 2, 4, 8, or 12TB of storage. Only the 2TB option is available with a PCIe Gen 4 or Gen 5 SSD; otherwise, all other options use PCIe Gen 4 SSDs. The 4TB, 8TB, and 12TB models use a RAID 0 configuration, which significantly boosts transfer speeds by splitting data evenly across multiple drives; however, the failure of one drive can cause data loss across all drives. The SSDs are user-replaceable; see the serviceability section for more info.
Despite running the test multiple times on different days, the Novabench 5 result is much lower than expected. We're investigating this issue and will update the review if anything changes.
We couldn't run the Cinebench 2024 GPU test, as there's currently no support for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 GPU.
The Black Myth: Wukong results are lower than expected, possibly due to poor optimization for the RTX 50-series GPUs. We'll continue investigating this issue and update the review if anything changes.
The Black Myth: Wukong results are lower than expected, possibly due to poor optimization for the RTX 50-series GPUs. We'll continue investigating this issue and update the review if anything changes.
The posted results show the battery life of our RTX 5080 (175W TGP) unit. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060, 5070, and 5070 Ti run at a lower wattage, so those models will likely have a longer battery life.
The keyboard gets warm under load but not enough to cause discomfort. The bottom of the laptop is even cooler, reaching only 40 °C (104 °F). Unfortunately, the fans are very loud when using the highest performance Overdrive mode. You can change the performance and fan settings in the Alienware Control Center app.
The Dell Alienware 18 Area-51 laptop has many pre-installed applications; see this video for the full list.
This laptop has multiple RGB lighting zones, including the keyboard, touchpad (models with RTX 5070 Ti or above), lid (logo), fans, and the back of the device. You can customize the RGB lighting using the Alienware Control Center app.