The Alienware 18 Area-51, Alienware's new for 2025 flagship gaming laptop, is currently on sale. You can pick up a stacked configuration featuring an Intel Core Ultra 9 HX processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti mobile graphics for $2,999.99 with free shipping. This replaces the m18 as the most powerful and feature-rich laptop in Alienware's arsenal and brings to the table a host of upgrades including a sleeker redesign, current generation components, and better cooling potential.
Alienware 18 Area-51 Gaming Laptop Starting at $,2999.99
The Alienware 18 Area-51 is by no means a slim laptop, measuring nearly an inch thick and weighing in at a beefy 10 pounds. It's intended to be more of a mobile desktop replacement than a commuter's laptop for toting around to work or class on a daily basis. The larger form factor carries several major advantages for gamers, like an expansive 18" display, full-sized keyboard with a separate numpad, and a bigger, more robust cooling system.
All three Alienware 18 Area-51 models are equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor. This CPU boasts a max turbo frequency of 5.4GHz with a whopping 24 cores and 40MB total L2 cache. According to Passmark, this is one of the fastest mobile processors on the market, going head to head with the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D.
Go with the RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 5080 configs
As expensive as these laptops are, you don't want to spend even more on trivial upgrades. The RTX 5070 Ti mobile GPU boasts performance on par with the RTX 4080 but with the added benefit of faster GDDR7 RAM and DLSS 4.0. The RTX 5080 mobile GPU represents a healthy improvement over the RTX 5070 Ti for a nominal price bump; it's about 15%-20% more powerful than the RTX 5070 Ti and the RTX 4080 that it replaces. It also happens to be about 5% more powerful than the RTX 4090 and has the same amount of memory (16GB). Unfortunately, the RTX 5090 only appears to be just 5% more powerful than the RTX 5080, and its only real benefit is the 24GB of memory, which isn't that useful for gaming.
The Area-51: New Style, More Power, Better Cooling
New for 2025, the Alienware Area-51 gaming laptop features a magnesium alloy chassis with upgraded cooling to tackle the latest and greatest heat generating components. This includes more fans and bigger cutouts enabling greater airflow, more generous use of copper, and a new thermal interface material to better transfer heat away from the core components. Dell claims that the laptop can handle a higher power ceiling of up to 240W TDP without raising acoustics.
Design-wise, the Area 51 emphasizes smooth contours with rounded edges and soft corners. The hinges are also internally positioned so that they're nearly invisible. Like other Alienware laptops, there are ample RGB LED customization options so you know its meant for gaming. Connectivity-wise, you get three USB Type-A 3.2 15Gbps ports (one with PowerShare), two Thunderbolt / USB Type-C ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, card reader, and RJ45 ethernet port.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
