Alienware Area-51m Laptop Review: Upgradeable Excellence

[AndrewFreedman]

The Alienware Area-51m features upgradeable parts and is one of the most powerful gaming laptops that we have ever tested.

Alienware Area-51m Laptop Review: Upgradeable Excellence : Read more

 

[Art_8_]

Actually it is 9.7 lbs with the 90 Whr battery. It is 8.5 lbs with the 60 watt battery which Alienware knows will never be ordered with this machine. so it is actually heavier than the 17 R4 and R5, and almost 3 inches deeper in size and when you consider it requires 2 power bricks for gaming this turd is much heavier than the old one and about .6 inches thicker to boot. Hard pass.

 

[loganwade]

You provided a graphic showing a battery test but didn't say whether it was while doing daily tasks, watching videos, or playing games. How did you get those results?

 

[Giroro]

I'm not sure what the point of an upgradable CPU is when you have basically the highest powered CPU that will ever be compatible with the socket.
Is it cheaper to buy the laptop with a weaker CPU and upgrade it yourself?

 

[AndrewFreedman]

I'm not sure what the point of an upgradable CPU is when you have basically the highest powered CPU that will ever be compatible with the socket.
Is it cheaper to buy the laptop with a weaker CPU and upgrade it yourself?

In our case, it doesn't make sense to upgrade (unless a new CPU comes out using the same socket). But you can upgrade from the base Core i7-8700 if you wanted.

 

[islandwalker]

@loganwade, there are relevant words right above that "graphic" that answer your question: "It ran for 2 hours and 36 minutes on our battery test, which continuously browses the web over Wi-Fi, streams video and runs OpenGL graphics benchmarks, all at 150 nits of brightness."

 

[mattkiss]

What laptop is pictured on the left in the third picture above (first set, from the left)? It's the thin one next to the model being reviewed in this article.

 

[svan71]

Wow now if Dell would release a simple bios update, I could update my 5k Area 51 Threadripper with a 2nd gen 2950x.

 

[bdrunner76]

You can get the I9 9900k and RTX 2080 for under 4K if you upgrade the ram and hard drive your self from the base model.

 

[g-unit1111]

That's actually not bad for Alienware, but then again it's still Alienware.