Dell Alienware 16 and 18 Area 51 (2025) – Core Ultra 9 275HX, RTX 5000 graphics

Dell are updating their lineups of Alienware 16-inch and 18-inch laptops for 2025, with Intel Arrow Lake-HX hardware and Nvidia Blackwell RTX 5000 graphics, as well as a slightly revised chassis design.

These new devices are called the Alienware 16 Area 51 and Alienware 18 Area 51, bringing back an iconic brand name for Alienware laptops, starting back in 2008 with the Alienware M9750 Area 51 and than later brought back to life by the unique Alienware Area-51m around 2019.

However, from the looks of it, these laptops are actually successors of the standard Alienware m16 and m18 lineups of the last few years, and not special designs as that Area-51m, which at that time offered a desktop grade Core i9 K processor and promised upgradeable dGPUs on a proprietary DGFF connector, but was eventually axed down only a few years later.

These 2025 Area 51 Alienware laptops promise no such thing, they’re just standard 16-inch and 18-inch full-size high-performance Alienware laptops, with a familiar design language and standard features offered by Dell’s gaming lineups, including a wide range of available configurations.

Here’re the specs sheets for these models. Take them with a grain of salt, as we’re developing and updating the article based on this early sources from Videocardz and Gamestar.

These laptops are standard Alienware designs, with a large and heavy chassis, among the biggest and heaviest in their segment. Not only there are pretty hefty bezels around the 16:10 displays on these laptops, but there’s also an extra hump behind the display, housing cooling and ports.

At the same time, Dell makes no compromise in build quality with these notebooks, with metal being used all over, and the overall functionality is pretty good, with only some minor quirks such as the fact that the screen doesn’t open flat.

From these few available pictures, though, you will notice a more rounded design language on this generation, with all the edges being slightly curved, and even the back part around the exhausts having a specific curvature. Previous m16/m18 designs were a little boxier towards the back.

You’ll also notice the specific Alienware branding elements, such as the RGB Alien head on the lid and the subtle RGB lightbar around the back edge. Other specific features for Alienware laptops are the RGB lit glass touchpad and the optional mechanical keyboard with low-profile CherryMX switches, arguably the best mechanical option available on laptops today.

These aside, Dell keep implementing a chassis that sends most ports on the rear-edge, behind the display, unlike many other OEMs that have steered towards reserving that entire back for cooling on their recent performance laptops. I prefer having the ports on the back on this sort of desktop-replacement computer.

As far as the displays go, looks like there are still only IPS panel options for these lineups, with the best features offered by the technology: matte finishing, QHD+ resolution, 240Hz 3ms, 500-nits brightness, 100% DCI-P3 colors. I would have expected a mini LED panel option as well, but there’s none mentioned at this point (to be updated). Most rivals in this space offer mini LED options on their top-tier notebooks.

The hardware specs, on the other hand, are standard for this class at this point, starting at an Intel Arrow Lake-HX Core Ultra 7 255HX (20 Core) with RTX 5070 graphics and going up to an Intel Arrow Lake-HX Core Ultra 9 275HX (24 Core) and an RTX 5090. The source mentions up to 280W of sustained crossload power, probably for the Alienware 18 model, which suggests a full-power RTX 5080/5090 175W alongside 100+W allocated to the CPU. These settings are higher than on the average performance laptop, and even higher than on the MSI Titan 18 that goes up to 270W.

They also mention 8-phase CPU voltage modulation and 11-phase GPU voltage modulation implementations, which make possible the high crossload power settings.

No word on any AMD configurations for now, but other OEMs are preparing options built on AMD’s latest Fire Range enthusiasts platform, going up to the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor with X3D V-Cache memory. Dell implemented AMD hardware on their past Alienware m16/m18 models, so perhaps there’s a chance for Fire Range on their 2025 models as well.

Such power levels must be backed up by an impressive cooling module, which we’ll need to detail once we get more info about it. The design suggests side and rear heatsinks on each side, with at least 2 high-capacity vents and open intakes on the bottom. The overall size and weight of these laptops suggest a hefty cooling module as well.

Update: The marketing materials mention a “Cryo-Tech Cooling technology” with either an array of heatpipes or a vapor chamber on the 5080/5090 configurations. They also mention that both variants are constructed with more copper and are overall larger than on previous designs.   

As far as pricing and availability goes, the Alienware Area 51 laptops are expected in stores toward the end of Q1 2025, with a starting price of $1999 for what’s most likely the Core Ultra 7 + RTX 5070 configurations of the 16-inch model. Higher-specced variants with RTX 5090 graphics should push north of 3K USD.

For what is worth, Alienware notebooks tend to be among the most competitively priced options on the North American market, but at the same time among the most expensive here in Europe.