Hello Gamers…, I have one question for you… Are you tired of having an old school gaming laptop, which you have to stuck with a same hardware specification for several years until you buy a new laptop…….
If you have that problem, I may have the solution for you…………
Behold the newest member of Alienware family,
Alienware Area-51m
Dell has designed this laptop to fulfill the need of portable gaming rig and they have accomplished that task well. If you take the latest gaming laptops in the market like Razer Blade or latest MSI laptops, simply you can’t compare this GODZILLA with those ones because this is not a thin, silent or a cute one, and if you are expecting those things from this beast I’m sorry this is not for you…
Specifications
| CPU | Intel Core i9-9900K |
| GPU | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 |
| STORAGE | 1TB SSD PCIe NVMe |
| RAM | 64GB DDR4, 2666 MHz |
| DISPLAY | 17.3”, Full HD (1920 x 1080), 144 Hz, IPS |
| WEIGHT | 4.40 kg (9.7 lbs) |
| BATTERY LIFE | 90Wh / 45 minutes actively gaming |
| MAIN ATTRACTION | Light up trim at the end of the Device and it has a really cool light system and for your first impression you will feel it’s like an engine of an alien space ship… |
Alienware Area-51m laptop comes with Intel’s 9th Gen i7-8700, i7-9700K, or i9-9900K — the fastest gaming CPUs you can buy — along with up to a GeForce RTX 2080, the beefiest GPU for laptops yet and has a 17.3-inch display with a full-size keyboard, with both number pad and macro keys. But it also has the ability to let you upgrade its primary components even better,when faster chips become available, and that’s something other gaming laptops can’t do… and it has a storage of 2TB SSHD with a DDR4 128GB memory….
The battery power is something I must talk about. It requires two large power adapters in order to fulfil the power hunger of this beast and once you fully charged.
For light use – 90 minutes to two hours
For gaming – 45-30 minutes
Pros
- Very powerful desktop grade CPU and GPU
- It’s like a portable desktop
- Upgradable CPU and GPU ( you will be able to play latest games on this beast at least for 7 years because of the CPU GPU upgradable option )
- Effective cooling system
Cons
- You have to carry two large adapters with this laptop
- Loud noise from the fans
- There is a bottleneck situation in this device because of the display resolution, the highest resolution in this device is 1080p but with the performance of this laptop, Dell should have put at least 1440p panel
- If you upgrade CPU or GPU warranty will void
- Low battery life
- No Micro SD card slot
Display
Alienware Area-51m equipped with a large 17.3″ Full HD (1920 x 1080) display. The most expensive variant (2TB SSHD and 128GB Ram) comes with 144Hz Anti-Glare IPS Display w/ NVIDIA G-SYNC + Tobii eyetracking technology. This new Tobii eyetracking technology means the display knows what you are looking at and you can control the device with your eyes.
the bezels of the screen is made out of glossy plastic material and this material can be starched very easily, if you don’t take care of it, after a some years it will look aged compare to the rest of the device.
if you want to Enhance the Display experience with this beast try this latest ALIENWARE 34 CURVED GAMING MONITOR | AW3418DW
GPU
Alienware Area-51m equipped with NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 2060 6GB/ RTX™ 2070 8GB /RTX™ 2080 8GB GDDR6
The GPU in Alienware Area-51m is a MXM Graphics Card (MXM Graphic cards use for laptops they are rather smaller than the desktop Graphic cards and actually you can’t just go and buy these graphics cards from a retail dealer because usually these graphic cards are sold in bulks to laptop manufactures but Alienware Area-51m has the GPU upgrading facility so may be in the future Dell will consider about releasing MXM graphic card series which is targeting to upgrade Alienware Area-51m)
But the GPU in Alienware Area-51m are specially designed for this device and scores of them are very close to desktop GPUs (it’s only 5% performance off than a desktop grade RTX 2080) and they are overclockable as well
If you are not satisfied with the performance of the GPU in Alienware Area-51m, there is Alienware Graphics Amplifier Port so you can you can Plug The The Alienware Graphics Amplifier (you have to buy this separately) to Alienware Area-51m and you can TAKE Alienware Area-51m’s GRAPHICS to a FURTHER level…
Power
If you check back of the Alienware Area-51m you will see two AC adapter sockets, so that means this beast needs two power connections to run this device at full power and they are comes from two different sizes, those are
330 watt and 180 watt
I think they did it because in some regions you can’t have AC adapters lager than the 330 watt so in order make this laptop an international device Dell had to equipped it with two power adapters…
But this device can run only from the 330-watt adapter but when it’s gaming you will have plug the 180 watt adapter too.
CPU
The CPU is a Desktop LGA 1151 socket and you can have the processer Up to 8th Generation Intel® Core™ i9-8950HK, and it’s also upgradable.
But this device has the LGA 1151 socket and if there is substantial upgrade appeared in CPU segment, and because of that if there is new CPU socket available it will be a problem to upgrade the CPU of this device….
Keyboard and Sound system
There are two speakers in the front, usually Dell’s flagship devices have great sound speakers and these are no exceptions. The both speakers has very rich sound and they are well positioned. If you like to use a headset, I can recommend Alienware Wireless Gaming Headset – AW988
The keyboard is a classic Alienware keyboard.It has the both full size numeric pad and macro keys with RGB lighting and trackpad lighting per key. And there are no default hot keys to control the brightness level of the keyboard backlight. If you like to use a mechanical keyboard with this beast, you can use ALIENWARE PRO GAMING KEYBOARD | AW768.
Ram and Hard drive
You can have memory up to 128gb and hard drive upto 2TB SSHD 256 SSD
Cooling system
Alienware Area-51m has an excellent cooling system. It is Consisting dual 60mm fans with seven heat pipes and it is bit loud specially when it’s gaming but the speakers of Alienware Area-51m can over power the noise of the fans but it’s better to use a headset while gaming to completely avoid the noise.
Ports
(1x) Power/DC-in Jack
(1x) RJ-45 Killer E3000 2.5Gbps Ethernet port
(2x) Type-A SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Port
(1x) Type-A SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Port with PowerShare technology
(1x) Thunderbolt™ 3 Port (USB Type-C™ with support for SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps, 40Gbps Thunderbolt, and DisplayPort)
(1x) Alienware Graphics Amplifier Port
(1x) HDMI 2.0 Output
(1x) Mini-Display Port 1.4 (certified) Output
(1x) Headphone / MIC (retaskable)
(1x) Global Headset Jack
(1x) Wedge-shaped lock slot (cable and lock sold separately)
FPS counter
| GAME | FPS (in ultra-graphics) |
| The Witcher 3 | 92 |
| Division 2 | 116 |
| Apex Legends | 144+ |
| Fortnite | 144+ |
| Metro Exodus | 76 |
Conclusion
Alienware Area-51m is a very powerful gaming laptop and it’s one of the best gaming laptop currently in the market It’s the first gaming laptop which has the CPU GPU upgrading facility. It’s awesome for video editing, it’s awesome for gaming and it will be iconic laptop in the market because it has the ability to upgrade.
But if you are buying this device you will have to carry two AC power adapters with you and may be you have to buy a new back pack too because most of regular laptop backpacks won’t match with this device and you will have to deal with the noise of fans if you are hoping to play games at a quiet place like a library you will get many dirty faces.
