Customer Ratings & Reviews

I wanted to throw a Halo Lan party but needed one more computer, so I decided I’d grab a gaming laptop that would be an upgrade to my aging Alienware m16 R1. I saw that Alienware had the 16X Aurora on sale, so I grabbed one to get ready for some FPS fun! Pros: - Good CPU, GPU, and RAM size for entry level gaming. - Bright LED Screen with high Refresh Rate! - Sleek & Modern Design. Cons: - Runs hot, hits thermal limits easily underload. Works best with cooling pad. Out-of-the-Box: Included in the box is the laptop, wrapped in a nice paper cloth, and 180-Watt laptop charger. One change I liked was the standard slim charger being included with the gaming laptop instead of the giant brick of prior models. It’s a lot easier to fit the laptop and charger in a bag with the smaller charger. Alienware doesn’t change much about the standard windows setup for the 16X Aurora, including only branded logo here and there. I had no issues during initial setup. Specs & Considerations: The Alienware 16X Aurora is build with a 16in LED display with a resolution of 2560x1600 and a high frame rate of 240Hz. The big plus with this screen is the brightness of 500 nits, whereas normally a laptop screen is between 350-400 for LED displays. This is perfect for playing a Shooter game like Halo or Fortnite. With the paired RTX 5060 8GB dedicated GPU, you should be able to take advantage of the screens full 240Hz refresh rate when running games at low to medium settings or adjusting the Resolution down. This is a good entry level configuration, though if you want to take full advantage and push the 16X Aurora to the limit, you might want to consider picking up the RTX 5070 model, but a much higher price tag. The 16X Aurora includes an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, a 24 core CPU with 8 Performance and 16 Efficiency cores. The big thing to look at here is the Processor Base Power of 55 W, with a Max Turbo Power of 160W!! That’s crazy amounts of power for a laptop CPU to have, which also means a ton of extra heat. Luckily, I’ve got a powerful laptop cooler I can use with it, but if you don’t have one you might want to consider it or at least prop up the back to provide a little more airflow. I’m happy to see the 16X Aurora come with 32GB of DDR5 RAM, though I would have liked to see RAM Speeds of 6000-6400 MT/s being used. At least the RAM can be upgraded post purchase to a larger size such as 64GB. Additionally, there are 2 M.2 drive slots, with only 1 being populated in this model. The owner’s manual state up to 2TB’s, but I’d suspect 4TB & 8TB drives should work just fine. The big benefit here is each slot is PCIe Gen 4, with up to 64 Gbps! Case: I like what Alienware has done with the case design of the Aurora laptops, the new Sleek and Modern simple brushed aluminum back of the display and hard plastic elsewhere look gives off a subtle gamer vibe but could pass for a professional laptop. Overall build is sturdy, the screen hinges are solid and only wabble a little. This is a gaming laptop, with a weight of 5.86lbs it is heavy buy on the lighter side compared to other 16in models. The case also measures in a little smaller at 0.92in in height, ~14in wide, and ~10.5in deep. Connectivity: The 16X Aurora has ports on the Left and Back side of the laptop. On the Left side there is Combo 3.5mm Jack, USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, and Compact Ethernet port. One the Back side are the Power, HDMI 2.1, USB-C Thunderbolt 4 with DisplayPort 2.1, USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 with Power Delivery, and another USB-A 3.2 Gen 1. Port wise, this is plenty but would have been nice to have a DisplayPort or another USB-A port. Wireless connectivity is support with the new WiFi 7 standard and Bluetooth 5.4 on a wireless card that is replaceable. Having a replaceable wireless card is a huge plus for future upgrades and potential repairs. Look & Feel: I mentioned it before, but the Sleek and Modern look of the 16X Aurora is an appreciated change in design that looks more polished and professional than older gaming models. I wish the brushed aluminum was used throughout the case, as it just gives a little more premium feel and works better for cooling the laptop, but I can understand that would increase the price as well. The plastic parts do feel good, and don’t retain fingerprints or smudges as much as the brushed aluminum. The additional screen brightness is a huge plus, making colors look more vibrant and helping see detail even in bright or direct sunlight. The only better panels I’ve seen are OLED or Mini-LED, which usually come with a steep increase in price. The 240Hz frame rate helped keep games and videos running smoothly, I was able to keep a 200+ framerate on Fortnite with low to med settings and Nvidia DLSS on, I didn’t notice any major negative impacts like latency or artificing. Again, depending on your preference, if you want to use Ray Tracing or other demanding features, I’d suggest getting the RTX 5070 model, but if you just need light gaming or coming from a console, the RTX 5060 is plenty for most games. The keyboard feels very solid and comfortable to type on, one of the little things I look forward to on gaming laptops. The keys are slightly tactile but quiet, perfect for gaming on the go. I was not a huge fan of the trackpad, but that is mostly due to preferring a mouse over the trackpad. If you’re going to be gaming, I’d assume you’d attach a mouse or gamepad instead of using the trackpad. Performance: Overall, I found the performance was good for entry level gaming, mainly 1080 with Medium to High or 2K with Low to Med settings without Ray Tracing on. If you enable Ray Tracing, you will have to drop down the other settings to achieve 60FPS or rely heavily on DLSS to stay above 60FPS. For most common titles, this shouldn’t be an issue, but for newer games or unoptimized ones, you might be better off disabling Ray Tracing. Having 32GB of RAM really helps make this configuration work, providing enough RAM to game while having the background tasks running like a web browser, music, or discord. For games that heavily rely on the CPU, you should have plenty of power with the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, but you might run into overheating issues quickly. I found I could easily hit the thermal limits playing games or running CPU intensive tasks. But this was easy to solve with an external cooling pad, even just adding a little more height to the back of the laptop to increase airflow under the laptop made a huge difference. If you’re planning to use this for long gaming sessions, I would highly recommend investing in a good cooling pad, even one specifically for gaming laptops to get the most out of the laptop. Conclusion: If you’re looking for a good entry level gaming or content creator laptop, the Alienware 16X Aurora is a solid consideration with the only downside being the overheating concern due to insanely powerful Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX within. But that can easily be solved with a laptop cooling pad or a little elevation off the surface. If you’re just coming over to PC Gaming or mostly play games that are 5 years or older, this is a perfectly capable gaming laptop with enough power and future upgrades to keep you gaming for years to come! I’ll be replacing my older Alienware m16 with this 16X Aurora!

The latest Alienware series is a nice setup, with response and gaming kept in mind from full system customization to personalization of color options to programming one-touch buttons. Out of the box, this looks great and boots quickly. The keyboard is easy to type with while having an old school mechanical feel to it. There is a noticeable difference when putting the Intel Ultra 9 series to the challenge from basic usage (everyday) to the full power with highly intensive processor, memory taxing, and GPU pushing games. The machine overall does heat-up but keeps up with the cooling through a nicely breathable chassis design. Sadly, with all of the changes in technology, there is still quite a bit of weight to the machine, as well as added additional weight from the power supply itself. This was a change expected to see in this day and age while other portables have found ways to go with a more travel friendly power supply and adapter setup…Alienware has yet to make a change. It does have the latest generation of Wi-Fi to offer and meets backwards to current compatibility testing using the latest generation of Wi-Fi available. Overall charge does last quite a while, but when gaming it should be accompanied by the charger to ensure you do not run out of battery while doing heavy and taxing gaming. For this, I do not foresee this machine being a daily traveler, but instead more friendly when tied to a desktop or temporarily going places to “network”. These machines as a standard would ship with WinOS Pro; instead we see WinOS Home out of the box tied to these machines with the option to pay-to-play (upgrade) should you need it. As a part of the customization there are gaming profiles that can be built as presets to the games you play. It is very responsive and can be utilized for programming, design, photography outside of the gaming only realm.

This Alienware Aurora 16" Gaming Laptop is a huge step-up from my son's previous gaming laptop. He needed a more powerful set up simply due to the games that he's been playing requiring more processing power. He now has that in his hands with this new laptop, and the constant complaints about 'lagging, dropping games, rubber-banging etc.', or 'do we still even have internet service?' have stopped being fired my way! Right out of the gate, the Alienware experience is nice as you unbox it. It's refreshing that it is also not just a simply black, grey or silver laptop, but has a nice blue finish to it. First thing we did was charge it up and then went through the set-up process. I have all of my accounts linked, so set-up was pretty uneventful. One it was updated, we were good to load up his Discord and Steam apps. That went smoothly, then we went through and updated the necessary drivers a well. Now with the power of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 graphics card, Call of Duty is running without any issues at all. Previously, it would lose connection, it would rubber band, it would freeze, the screen would go black etc, none of this is happening now, the computer far exceeds the minimum requirements for the game, and in fact exceeds the higher end 'optimum' specs for the game, so it's totally changed the gaming experience for my son. He's no longer frustrated, and thoroughly enjoying the games. With a 2560x1600 resolution 16" LED screen, the visuals are looking great as well. However, during a session of Warzone, he had to dial back the graphic card resolution to stop an issue he had with rubber banding, but since then, he's had no issues at all. The Intel Core 7 Series 2 processor is up for the task, but one thing we've noticed is that the fans run almost all the time when he is playing games. Almost constantly. There is a raised 'grill interface' on the bottom of the laptop that allows for a lot of airflow around the laptop, so it was surprising that the fans seem to run so much of the time. The laptop has a 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD which is a good amount of storage to have on board, but I am sure it will get eaten up pretty quickly as his game library expands. And while the graphics look good, this laptop is NOT a touchscreen. This laptop, while it's primary function is for gaming, and you probably won't want to lug it around with you everywhere - the 16" screen size and the processing power and fans means that this laptop is quite heavy, it does function as a regular laptop, and during set up you can sign up for a variety of Microsoft products, and it also has CoPilot built in as well. My son is using this only for gaming, and so far he's been incredibly happy with the performance, and power of this machine. We've never had an Alienware machine before, and so far we are incredibly impressed. The keyboard is backlit as well which is really handy when gaming in a dark room. Overall, completely satisfied with this laptop, it's totally changed my son's gaming experience, to be fair his last laptop wasn't 'bad' but this one really is a huge step up for him!

The Alienware Aurora 16X is a powerful laptop with enough power out of the box to run the most popular games on ultra resolutions. The screen is vibrant and responsive thanks to the 240hz. I downloaded and played Diablo IV and turned the visuals to ultra and the DLSS setting to 4x and when running thru the world the FPS was very high and stayed steady even in large mob battles. Cooling is sufficient to support the high quality settings and I have not experienced any thermal issues. The onboard speakers support Dolby Atmos and sound pretty good for a laptop. WIFI 7 performance is great and I was able to game online without any lag issues. Battery performance is what you would expect from a laptop and is decent but if you are gaming you definitely what to find a plug to keep the session going. The finish of the laptop case is very nice, but it is a finger print magnet. Thanks to Windows there was a slight issue upon initial setup but the Dell support was very quick at being able to resolve the issues during the chat session. If you are looking for a portable gaming laptop with current hardware, I would recommend this.

Here's what you need to know. Thing is fast, reliable, does any type of gaming, coding or video work you need, straight up. Battery could be better but it's a gaming PC, what are ya gonna do beast has power. Does it get hot? Of course, it's got power, put a book under it and you'll be fine. If you're on the fence, just get it, you'll be happy and it'll last you at least 5 years if you take care of it.

Runs all my games great with high FPS, really comfortable to play on considering the good size keyboard. Numberpad doesn't take up half the keyboard like some other laptops. Only minus is the fans are quite loud which gets annoying for other people who may be in the room due to how fast the GPU and CPU heat up with certain graphic heavy games. Other than the sound the fans work great and cool the laptop off really quickly. Would recommend on sale!

Amazing laptop and huge proformance for the price! The ultra 9, super fast, good ram and video card i found great! Just make sure out of the box to update all drivers and such and a great gaming beast! My only issue is no displayport but thats my fault

I’m very happy with this laptop. The performance is excellent for both everyday tasks and heavy workloads. Programs load quickly, multitasking is smooth, and the display quality is outstanding. The build feels sturdy and premium. Battery life is decent for a high-performance system, and the cooling works well even under load. Overall, it’s a great purchase and worth the investment.

Love that it has all the ports I need and I can add an adapter if needed i have multiple ports now, speed is fast how I like, good storage and clean look, easy to set up and use, good battery life while unplugged and on a plane

A very powerful and value for money laptop... It is just a bit on the heavier side

We are really enjoying this laptop! It is everything we were looking for, i.e. fast processing, great graphics.

This Alienware laptop is the bomb. durable, fast with lots of memory. holds a charge for hours. the blue colored backlight on the keyboard makes it easy to use in low light. The graphics are brilliant, would recommend this gaming laptop

Gaming power is amazing, fully equipped for gaming and school. Long lasting battery, no lag. The only negative thing is that it's not a touch screen.

Honest review. I bought this laptop and in a week it just flat out died. I took it to the store and the told me unfortunately this is just a bad one of the batch. The store said we will refund me and they did. I really did like this laptop to I asked if I could another l, so I did. Since then, this laptop has been great! Looks sometimes we just get a bad one of the batch. That doesn’t mean this whole line of laptops is bad. I really do enjoy my laptop and I’m glad I stuck with this. Highly recommend this laptop to any. Games do run very well and look really good.

Excellent laptop. It's been able to handle everything I throw at it including Fl Studio, Dj Serato, and Ai tools. The fans are a little loud but I'm sure that is necessary to avoid overheating.

Battery life is not what i bought this for and the 5 stars is for being as advertised and as i expected it to me. If you want battery life it is probably not the laptop for you...or that is what theg make power coverters for. I wanted something sturdy and a workhorse a big screen and backlit keyboard that had the components that would not be outdated anytime soon. It has a lot going on inside so it also runs warm but again...i am very impressed. Definitely got what i paid for.

The Alienware 16X Aurora is an absolute triumph of performance, design, and innovation. From the moment you lift the lid, it’s clear this machine was built to impress both visually and technically. Its sleek, premium chassis combines futuristic aesthetics with the kind of build quality that’s come to define Alienware—solid, sharp, and unmistakably high-end.

The Alienware 16X Aurora is a powerful choice for scRNA-seq analysis. The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX delivers excellent performance for computational biology tools like Seurat, Scanpy, and Cell Ranger, handling multi-threaded operations smoothly. The 32GB RAM adequately supports most standard single-cell datasets up to 30k cells, while the 1TB SSD provides fast data access and ample storage for multiple projects. I added the RAM up to 128GB so I can run the most LLM training for 7b. The RTX 5060 GPU is a bonus for deep learning applications like scVI and celltyping models. Superior build quality, efficient cooling, and portability make it ideal for researchers needing mobility between lab, office, and conferences. The stunning 2.5K display enhances data visualization. While premium-priced, I have achieved getting multi tasks versatile machine that handles both intensive computational work and presentations beautifully—plus gaming for downtime!

Love this laptop. I’m not a gamer but needed something with storage and computing power. So far this machine is a beast.one drawback is low battery life.

Great quality gaming laptop. Heavy, large screen, runs excellent