Alienware Area-51m Vs Area-51m R2: Should You Upgrade?

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BUY NOW	BUY NOW
Dell Alienware Area 51M R2	Dell Alienware Area 51M R1
PROS	PROS
Tobii eye-tracking display. Immensely powerful CPUs.	Perfect keyboard. Desktop-class performance. All are user upgradable.
CONS	CONS
Expensive. Two power units.	Relatively very expensive than other gaming laptops.

SPECIFICATIONS

DESIGN

Dell Alienware Area 51M R2

We still have the lunar light and dark side of the moon colors but just like the M15 and M17. It was possible to get stained yellow palm rests with the lunar light eventually, that should go away not be a problem. The keyboard has also changed on this, the old one had the bevel side keys which really felt good.

It looks like such an old-style keyboard but really was very pleasant to type on. Now, they’ve gone to the chiclet or island-style keyboard which feels very good, it’s got a nice crisp feel, good key return, all that sort of thing a lot like what you would see on the M17 R3.

The keyboard is per-key RGB backlit with the usual Alienware fx effects to light it up. The Alienware logo on the lid lights up unless you don’t want it then you can turn it off as well as a Tron light on the back which is the light ring on the back. Also, the trackpad still lights up that’s something that I miss on the M series of Alienware gaming laptops.

This is a Synaptics trackpad with two dedicated soft-touch clickers on it. It works just fine, it looks slightly smaller relative to the big chassis. It’s a pretty durable keyboard and it’s comfortable, it’s got good key travel, it’s even suitable for gaming.

Dell Alienware Area 51M R1

This isn’t like a super portable device but, it’s smaller than I thought it would be. I personally really like this design, they’ve clearly spent time in making their product look and feel very unique. The unit I have is in this lunar white color which is kind of light grey color, almost white, but not like stark white. It’s also a soft-touch finish, which is nice to hold. The build quality feels very good.

This is a device that just feels very tanky, with no flex on the chassis, this is what Alienware does. This is probably their specialty, they have heavier devices, but their stuff is built very well. The logo up at the front lights up, it’s their alien head, but aesthetically, the attraction to this device is definitely the light-up trim on the tail end of the device.

There is glossy plastic on the front of the device and also on the trim like just around the bezels of the screen, and I really don’t like that they use this material. This is just material that can get scratched very easily, so it’s unfortunate that they use it. I feel like over time if you don’t take care of it, this will look aged quite quickly compared to the rest of the device.

The keyboard is a classic Alienware keyboard. It’s got plush travel, good keyboard for gaming. I don’t like the positioning of the Page Up and Page Down keys, this is something that’s bothered me on a lot of Alienware keyboards, but I think most people will enjoy this keyboard for gaming.

Same with the touchpad, it’s kind of a standard Alienware touchpad with dedicated hardware buttons, Windows Precision drivers. The inputs are good on this device, and you have full control of the lighting in the software.

DISPLAY

Dell Alienware Area 51M R2

In terms of the displays, we got a whole new set of options from the Area 51M original edition which I thought was a little lacking, for example, there was no 4K option. For people who are content creators that are buying this to do rendering or video editing, so we do have a 4K 60hz wide gamut display option and that one is matte.

We also have the base which is 144 hertz full HD IPS and the one that we have which is a 300 hertz IPS display. These are the same display options that are available on the Alienware M17 R3. They’re using the same panels on both and because Nvidia just announced their RTX 3000 series cards and faster G-sync, there’s going to be a 360-hertz option.

I do like the 300-hertz display just because everything seems so buttery smooth and there’s no ghosting, it’s fast response times and the color gamut’s a little better than that 144-hertz base model. Dell does have options with and without g-sync. I really wouldn’t worry about G-sync if you’re getting something like the 300-hertz display though because the display is going to be faster most likely than any frame rate you’re going to be getting out of most games.

Dell Alienware Area 51M R1

The screen is 17-inch, 1080p. There are supposedly some higher-res options that may come out later. For most gamers out there, 1080p is where it’s at, like if you look at many of the popular streamers or pro gamers, they’re often running 1080p panels and this particular panel is pretty bright and color accurate and it supports G-Sync.

BATTERY

Dell Alienware Area 51M R2

This laptop is so powerful that it requires two power supplies. One is a 330-watt power supply and another one is 180 watt. If you go with the Core i9 overclockable and the RTX 2080 super, this might actually be a 240 watt so slightly bigger. You can use it with just one charger if you’re doing light work or streaming video.

It has a 90 watt-hour battery. So, given the performance requirements of this machine, you can actually run it for about two hours if you’re doing something like streaming video or surfing the web. So, it has independent from the outlet functionality.

Dell Alienware Area 51M R1

The battery life is short. I’m getting an hour and a half of battery life with the screen at 250 nits. These are desktop components being run off a battery that’s never gonna give you long battery life.

If you notice on the back, there are two AC adapter sockets, and we’ve seen devices like this before which require two power connections. But this time, there are two different sizes, there’s a 330 watt and a 180 watt, and this is just for this particular configuration, but the fact remains, you do need two AC adapters to run this thing at full power.

It just makes this device so much less portable despite its size, now you have to carry two large AC adapters. It can run off with just one adapter like the 330 watts will power this, but it won’t be full performance.

WHICH TO BUY?

The Alienware Area 51M R2 is for those who move it from room to room, take it to your friends. They use more watts but the amount of horsepower here in terms of computing and still in terms of graphics is enough to drive any game at ultra settings from 120 frames all the way up to 250 frames.

The Area 51M is a very powerful gaming laptop. It’s the most powerful gaming laptop that I’ve used. It’s awesome for video editing, it’s awesome for gaming, but I don’t know if the extra performance that you get from this device really warrants the extra cost, the extra weight, the extra fan noise like there’s a lot of stuff you have to deal with if you’re gonna use this system.`

In my opinion, both the old and new version of Area 51M is very expensive. So, if you have that much money to afford this, then you should buy the latest Area 51M R2 rather than buying an old version of it.  But, Area 51M R1 is relatively less priced and it is also a well-performing one. 

Jaskaran Singh

Jaskaran, a tech enthusiast from childhood, inspired by his father, began his tech journey by rooting Android phones. He now writes on various tech topics, aiming to simplify complex ideas for a broad audience. His writing is direct, concise, and flows effortlessly, making tech topics accessible and engaging.