when you've reviewed as many laptops as i have getting excited about a new
machine can be difficult to say the least like take the latest ASUS zephyrus
the engineering that went into making something that powerful that slim is
seriously impressive and yet the zephyrus just doesn't turn me on
but looking at the new alienware area 51m
i have an 85 percenter
at eight and a half pounds the area 51m
doesn't care about you your back your ears or even your dog all
it cares about is insane gaming performance but can a laptop
no matter how big really tangled with the desktop
let's find out after you find about glass
instantly see your current and past network activity detect malware and
block badly behaving apps on your pc or Android device use offer code Linus to
get 25 off glasswire 2.0 at the link below
with our model coming in at 4 500
the alienware area 51m is one serious piece of kit and it feels like a two the
magnesium chassis has to be one of the most rigid i've ever felt like there's
absolutely no flex and opening the screen just it just
feels so good it also has a strong assortment of i o
with the highlights being Thunderbolt 3 multiple display outs and my personal
favorite a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet port maybe the most interesting hole though
is the power connector or should i say connectors this power brick alone
this this one right here weighs a quarter pound more than the
surface laptop itself and it's not even the only one there's two power bricks
and together they pump out over 500 watts
now why do we need all that power well dell hasn't just put laptop parts in
here that's that's just garbage they put in a full fat desktop grade Intel core
i9 9900k that's paired pleasantly with an NVIDIA
rtx 2080 32 gigabytes of RAM and two
terabytes of storage now all of this computing power is
delivered to your eyeballs through 144 hertz 1080p ips display with HDR and
g-sync there is a 60hz version but just
don't buy that one because this one right here is awesome to game on i do
kind of wish they had a 1440p version but
they couldn't do it with a smaller bezel so oh well and it's not like the 1080p
panel here is hard to look at we also have damn near desktop level
upgradability removing the bottom gives you access to four sodium slots for the
RAM the m.2 slots and a 2.5 inch drive bay
delving deeper ups difficulty a bit but thankfully alienware has created videos
showing how to properly take this machine apart along with convenient
guidelines here on the ribcage showing just how many screws need to come out
and hopefully go back in after removing the battery the back
shroud thing and a couple of ribbon cables we can see the real meat of the
beast like look at this cooling they've got six massive heat pipes spreading the
load around four heat sinks all with these two chunky fans what does chunky
mean james put that in there apparently it's cool beneath all of that dell
wasn't lying when they said this is a desktop processor so if you didn't get
the 9900k from the factory you'll have no problem just plopping one in and
assuming the standards don't change too much the GPU should be upgradable too
like to be clear this isn't a standard desktop GPU it's kind of like a
spiritual successor to mxm developed in-house by dell but with any luck this
will be upgradable to an rtx 21 series
or whatever NVIDIA decides to call it next but with all this desktop-grade
hardware in such a small package like relatively speaking compared to just a
desktop was alienware able to bend the laws of thermodynamics and really
deliver that full desktop performance well
not quite but they did get damn close although the area 51m does lose in
basically every test that we threw at it compared to the MSI trident x it didn't
fall very far behind like it's pretty much within the margin of error and it
absolutely destroys every laptop we've ever tested in CPU tests the i9 9900k
absolutely shreds the ASUS gx701 and
like even with that having a blowing micron strap to it and also it
comfortably outpaces the AMD 2700 in the acer helios 500. as for GPU performance
well we just published a video titled the fastest gaming laptop we've ever
tested about the zephyrus and the area 51m is just whooping it like this thing
is a solid 15 faster in 3d mark and even better in games like the processor holy
crap this thing is fast okay it's just like alex keep it in your pants so many
frames yeah i know it's really great okay we know it's powerful but have you
been telling the viewers the whole story yep
yes so when you got those test results
how hot exactly was the processor a
100 degrees uh-huh and uh how fast were
the fans spinning at max all right all right get out of here
listen i got something to say all right i'm gonna tell you what the area 51m is
actually like to live with so first of all going anywhere with it
is basically a fool's errand like it's got not one but two power bricks and
like alex said this one here alone weighs a quarter pound more than the
surface laptop and you need these bricks it does have a 90 watt hour battery
close to the maximum allowed on a plane so they can't exactly make it bigger but
with power hungry components like we have here you'll be lucky to stay away
from the wall for more than two and a half hours then there's the performance
mode which just literally pins the fans all the time which is great for
performance but it's really loud meaning you'll be regularly going to the control
center between tasks to pick your poison lower performance or super noisiness
and speaking of noise that's pretty much the only thing these speakers make like
they get loud but above about 50 volume the whole thing just becomes a muddled
mess which is particularly annoying since alienware has traditionally had
awesome speakers another thing the area 51m boasts is toby eye tracking a
technology that tracks where your eyes are looking on the screen to occasionally do cool things but mostly
to do literally nothing due to poor support in games and to be clear i don't
want to put down having this as a feature but it's just unfortunate that
despite this laptop having ir and eye tracking that it also doesn't support
Windows hello facial recognition for faster unlocking or even just a simple
fingerprint scanner this is the kind of thing that should
just be here on a laptop that's this expensive and will make everyday use
just that much more smooth although at least they did manage to fit it with a
half decent webcam unlike the trackpad which is just a big load of suck
not using Windows precision drivers gives it that synaptics drunken driver
feel and even despite its small size i've
still had some palm rejection issues i do appreciate the two dedicated buttons
and the glass top feels nice but bad scrolling mediocre gesture support and
subpar tracking all mean a real mouse will definitely be your friend while
using the area 51m and the keyboard don't get me started the lighting on
these secondary keys would not pass razer's qa but i do have to give
alienware some real credit for this keyboard in general the strokes are
surprisingly long and although tactile also very smooth
of all the gaming laptops on the market alienware might have the best keyboards
easily beating razer MSI and even ASUS
exactly it is awesome not as a laptop maybe but as a desktop
replacement and that's what this actually is
so the real question is should you buy one
well honestly if it was my forty five hundred dollars as much as i think the
area 51m is really cool i just get a desktop and a surface
laptop but i say that having the luxury of a good place to put a desktop and
lots of people just don't maybe you're a co-op student who get whisked off way to
any city with little notice or someone who travels a lot for business or just
generally don't have the space or stability for a full desktop setup so if
that's you and you have loads of cash to throw down then the area 51m is going to
make you feel like a badass every time you open it up
and speaking of a badass when you open it up i fix it the new line of marlin
screwdrivers is fixed blade and features an ergonomic knurled rubberized handle
with a swivel top plus a black oxide coated tip so it hangs onto those tiny
screws with a steel grip the lid of the set is held in place
magnetically and can be also used as a sorting tray and it's all manufactured
in germany and backed by ifixit's lifetime warranty we've been using
ifixit for years and it just makes building pcs repairing electronics
taking apart this laptop just a breeze so get the marlin screwdriver set for
24.99 at ifixit.com forward slash Linus
today so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to
where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also linked in the
description is our merch store which has cool shirts not like this one but riley
also didn't have one on whatever and join our community forum which you
should join
cool which is a joy