--- title: 'Alienware 16 Area-51 OLED Disappoints' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=ErUGNqeKyIs' video_id: 'ErUGNqeKyIs' date: 2026-08-03 duration_sec: 563 --- # Alienware 16 Area-51 OLED Disappoints > Source: [Alienware 16 Area-51 OLED Disappoints](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ErUGNqeKyIs) ## Summary The video reviews the Alienware 16 Area-51 OLED gaming laptop, concluding that despite its premium features like an OLED display and mechanical keyboard, it underperforms and is overpriced compared to competitors like the Legion Pro 7i. ### Key Points - **Initial Verdict** [00:02] — The Alienware 16 Area-51 OLED is not recommended due to its size, weight, performance, and high price. The Legion Pro 7i is suggested as a better alternative. - **Exclusive Features and Price** [00:31] — The OLED screen and mechanical keyboard are exclusive to the new version, but it costs at least $600 more without significant performance gains. - **Fan Noise Issue** [00:43] — The laptop gets loud, with high-pitched fan noise. Overdrive mode performs best but is noisy; Performance mode offers up to 95% of performance with 30W less power and 12% less fan noise. - **CPU Performance** [01:38] — The Intel Ultra 9 290HX Plus is solid but underperforms the Legion Pro with the same chip. It draws 17% more power than AMD's Ryzen 9 for only 7% more performance. - **Cinebench Results** [02:17] — In Cinebench, the Mac M5 Max leads in single-core, but the Legion Pro 7i and Alienware are close in multi-core. The Alienware in performance mode drops only 5%. - **Graphics Performance** [03:11] — The new Alienware has the same RTX 5080 as the Legion, but performs slightly better in ray tracing. In Time Spy, the difference between performance and overdrive modes is less than 3%. - **Gaming Benchmarks** [03:50] — In Cyberpunk, the new Alienware performs similarly to last year's model. With frame gen, 1% lows suffer but are better in performance mode. In Forza Horizon 5, it ties with the Legion in average FPS but has worse 1% lows. - **Heat and Fan Noise** [05:05] — Heat and fan noise remain the Achilles heel. The laptop heats up around the WASD keys. The Legion Pro 7i has better cooling, especially with a more powerful GPU. - **Creator Workloads** [05:33] — In Premiere Pro, the new Alienware ties with last year's model; in Photoshop, it is 12% faster. Real-world rendering is 13% faster in Premiere Pro, but Blender results are similar. - **Battery Life** [06:13] — Battery life is horrendous, less than half of the Legion Pro 7i with the same processor. The Alienware lacks a GPU disable setting when unplugged. - **Display Quality** [06:56] — The OLED screen has better colors but only reaches 400 nits, lower than the previous IPS panel's 600 nits. The anti-glare coating reduces reflections but makes the screen look washed out. - **Build and Features** [07:51] — The laptop is well-built with soft RGB lighting, full-size SD card readers, Thunderbolt 5, Wi-Fi 7, and upgradeable storage. The mechanical keyboard is now exclusive to the OLED version. - **Final Recommendation** [08:30] — The new Alienware is slightly better but not worth the price increase. The Legion Pro 7i or ASUS Strix SCAR 16 are better choices. If you prefer Alienware, the 18-inch model is cooler and better. ### Conclusion The Alienware 16 Area-51 OLED disappoints due to poor battery life, excessive heat and noise, and a high price for marginal improvements. Most buyers should opt for the Legion Pro 7i or consider the Alienware 18-inch model. ## Transcript better OLED screen, but we still don't recommend it. It's huge and heavy. Even be desired. It doesn't perform the best in its class, and it costs an arm and a leg. Most people should just buy the Legion Pro 7i. Video done. Now, in all seriousness, we were excited to get in this updated Alienware. It is gaming laptop. It has the OLED display that everyone's been asking for, and Intel's new Arrow Lake HX refresh CPU, which no one has been asking for. all the good features, like the mechanical keyboard and OLED screen, and put them in this new version exclusively. It doesn't perform that much better, and you have to pay at least $600 more for it. I was the first person to test this laptop, and boy does it get loud. Not only that, but its fan noise is a little high-pitched and annoying. Normally, we run all of our that the manufacturer offers. In the case of Alienware, that would be Overdrive. But, in this case, there is a conundrum. Overdrive performs the best, completely, even when you're doing nothing. that mode unless you use headphones or something. Performance mode does a much light use, and then ramping up the fans when needed. You'll notice here in our Forza gaming breakdown that performance mode can give you up to 95% of the performance of Overdrive for over 30 W less power draw and a 12% reduction in fan noise. But, unfortunately, the laptop gets very warm in that mode, particularly around the WASD keys where your hands are. laptop. So, in all the graphs we'll be showing you today, we are going to show you the highest mode labeled O for Overdrive, and Performance marked as P. modes, let's talk about this refresh CPU from Intel, the Ultra 9 290HX Plus, which is a solid CPU, to be fair. But, as we said earlier, the new Area 51 underperforms the Legion Pro with the same chip. It also doesn't do much better than last year's. You might be wondering why a MacBook is on our graphs at all, but that's because a lot of creators, like video editors, can use either a Mac or a PC. So, it's good to see what you can get in this price range on the Apple side of things. The M5 Max 18-core chip rises above all of its competitors in single and multi-core. Moving over to Cinebench, things even out a bit more. The Mac still wins out, especially in single-core, but in multi-core, the new Legion Pro 7i gets very close with the new Alienware right behind in its highest mode. In its performance mode, we only see about a 5% drop. In both modes, it stays ahead of drop. In both modes, it stays ahead of AMD's competing chip, the Ryzen 9 chip from their recent Zen 5 lineup. But, Intel seems to be overtaking them in the laptop space right now. These new Intel HX chips do draw more power than AMD's, though, by about 17% for only a 7% gain in performance. Now, where things get a bit muddy is when we look at heat and fan noise again for CPU tasks only. You can already start to see that the Alienware either gets quite warm in its performance mode or ridiculously loud in its overdrive mode. Mac's tend to struggle, too, but there is more wiggle room there to manually adjust the fans to run faster since Apple keeps them pretty quiet by default. For graphics performance, this new Alienware has the same 5080 as the same max wattage, so we were surprised to see the new one do a little better in a pure GPU test like ray tracing. In Time Spy, you can see a decent breakdown of how the CPU and GPU are performing separately. You'll notice the difference between performance and overdrive mode in this new one is extremely small, less than 3%. In overdrive mode, there isn't much of a performance jump from the older model to this new one, either. Now, let's take a look at actual gaming interesting. Starting with Cyberpunk, upscaling set to balance and frame gen off. The new Alienware performs around the same as last year's. As I mentioned earlier, if you run it on performance mode, it's worse, but not by a huge gap. The 1% lows are very solid here, and they don't change across generations or modes. When we turn frame gen on, all laptops get a big boost in average FPS, but 1% lows suffer. Oddly enough, they are a bit better in performance mode than overdrive on the new one. You'll also see a bit of a gap here between generations of the Area 51s, which means there could be some optimizations on Intel's new chip that help with frame gen. Moving over to Forza Horizon 5, where we don't use any upscaling or frame gen, the new Alienware ties with the Legion Pro 7i for average FPS, but not in terms of 1% lows, which are By the way, in our next review, we will be showing you results from the new Forza Horizon 6. Lastly, we'll look at Marvel Rivals, which is our most modern benchmark. In this game, the results are about the same as the rest. The Legion with the same GPU is ahead, and the Alienwares perform about the same in average FPS, whether you get this year's or last year's, and regardless of the Alienware and the Legion with the new improvements to thermals, which may come down to the new CPU, but we aren't entirely sure. Heat and fan noise, as I said, is still the Achilles heel of these Alienware 16s. When it gets warm, it does heat up be, such as the WASD keys. When comparing their highest modes, the Legion Pro 7i might look similarly warm in our graphs, but its heat isn't as poorly placed. It's mostly centered near the top. In fact, when you factor in that our 2026 Legion Pro 7i has a more powerful 5090 in it, that amplifies how much better its cooling is. Let's now talk about how well the new Alienware does in creator workloads, which is somewhat mixed. When you're looking at which tests common tasks in Premiere Pro, last year's model basically ties in DaVinci Resolve, which is another video editing benchmark. In Photoshop, however, the better CPU clearly helps the new Alienware pull ahead by about 12%. When we look at our real-world tests, it depends on the task. First, we to render one of our videos in Premiere Pro. The new CPU seems to be helping a little bit here because this new Alienware was about 13% faster than the old one, even in performance mode. When we check out 3D rendering in Blender, the Alienwares are back to mostly tying. Battery life has gone from awful to horrendous on the new Area 51. Gaming laptops almost always fall behind much more efficient processor, but this Alienware is horrible here even compared to other gaming laptops. It gets less than half as much battery life as the Legion Pro 7i with the same processor and the Strix G16 with AMD. whether or not the laptop allows you to disable the GPU when you unplug it to conserve battery. The Alienwares do not have such a setting while both ASUS and Unfortunately, between this abysmal battery life and its hefty size and weight, the Area 51 is not very good at being a laptop. Now that we've gone over generations, we'll go over the new screen, which does look good and has visibly better colors. It's still a 2560 by 1600 and refreshes at up to 240 Hz, It has an anti-glare coating which prevents reflections more than a regular glossy OLED like the Legion Pro 7i's, but there are still some reflections in brighter environments. On the other hand, there is a sacrifice. The coating makes the screen look a little less vibrant than other OLEDs we've seen. There is a bit of a washed-out quality you don't normally get on an OLED. Overall, the screen is somewhere in between the vibrant Legion Pro 7i's OLED display and the older Alienware's matte IPS panel. Another thing to note is that this new OLED panel only reaches around 400 nits of brightness rather than 600 of the prior IPS panel. Overall, both look good. I just don't want people paying way more for a screen that is only slightly better. Rounding out the rest of the Alienware Area 51's, in case you haven't seen our prior video of them, they are extremely well-built and look unique. They have soft RGB lighting at the back of the chassis, which is less overbearing than other LED setups. They have full-size SD card readers, Thunderbolt 5 on some configurations, Wi-Fi 7, and upgradeable storage with an extra slot. For comfort, they have a soft edge at the front of comfortable than similarly thick laptops. Those can bite into your wrists. These also have a fantastic mechanical keyboard option, but unfortunately, it's now only available with the OLED version and the new CPU. Overall, this new Alienware with OLED and the updated Intel chip is slightly don't think it's worth its massive increase in price. And we feel the Legion Pro 7i is a better laptop to get, or ASUS's Strix SCAR 16. If you love the Alienware brand, though, we think the Alienware Area 51 18-in is cooler to the touch in real-world use, and since they're both so big and heavy, often anyway. So, you may as well get the better Alienware. Tony uses it every day to edit our videos. You may have noticed it mentioned in the end screens. If you do want either of them, or any gaming check out our website bestlaptop.deals. Over there, we list all the gaming and cons of each. We also track prices right across retailers, so you can catch wonderful rest of your day, and I will catch you later.