Alienware Is Redefining the Gamer Aesthetic, Again

Every few years Alienware , Dell ’s gaming - focused brand , dramatically deepen its design words . In 2009it actuate from the alien - same aesthetic it had embraced for a decade to something more industrial and reminiscent of an 80s supercar . And jump in 2019 , Alienware design to revolve out a slew of ware make using a whole newfangled style , beginning with the gorgeous Alienware Area-51 m , which shares its name withthe background that put Alienware on the single-valued function back in 1998 .

For Alienware and Dell , this is a great thing . Alienware is known for its typical design , and it does n’t like to deepen it often . But like Apple , it ’s a trendsetter . When Alienware shifts to a newfangled pattern language , inevitably other gambling companies , and especially laptop makers , find themselves all of a sudden inspired . Alienware is one of the main part in what defines the gamer aesthetic , and when it budge its focus , it ’s significant to take banker’s bill .

What ’s exciting about this yr ’s redesign is it ’s moving Alienware , and hopefully gamer companies as a whole , towards something a little more friendly . While we all might have a heart for the gamer esthetic , or at least elements of it , it can sense pretty silly to use a large dark laptop festooned in a rainbow of light-emitting diode with splash of too shiny color as accents . Sure it hits all the fundamental gamer button , but the aesthetic also feel distinctly juvenile — like inflatable furniture or lava lamp . And it often feel aggressively masculine like it ’s gravel something to examine or is compensating .

Photo: Sam Rutherford (Gizmodo)

As the gamers who bought into this aesthetic when we were 15 offset sliding into our thirty and XL , it often seems less like we ’re limit ourselves by our gamer identity , and more like we ’re in arrest ontogenesis . The gamer esthetic needs to grow the fuck up .

And the fresh Alienware Area-51 m is a step in the right commission . The lines of the laptop are curvier , with soft sheik instead of rough angles . And it comes in two different colors , with a whitened version ( Lunar Light ) being the pavilion laptop , and a drear grey version ( Darker Side of the Moon ) useable for those who ca n’t let the past go .

The light-emitting diode are still there — because changes to a culture - delimitate aesthetic ejaculate in growth — but they ’re more tasteful . There ’s the keyboard , which is lit per key , and the foreign head teacher logo , but also a ring of light on the back of the laptop that gives off a gleam . It does n’t twinkle and rather feels almost elegant . Indeed , the livid rendering of the laptop computer is whole refined . It sense almost intellectual where the premature Alienware blueprint was more shouty .

Photo: Sam Rutherford

In the center is the motherboard with a Z390 chipset and a desktop CPU mounted right in.Photo: Sam Rutherford (Gizmodo)

Alienware is n’t the first to do an all - blank laptop for gamers . Razer drop a ashen Blade 15 in October . But that laptop is a lot tenuous and less powerful than the Area-51 m. This thing sport an Intel 9th - Gen 8 - Congress of Racial Equality background processor inside ( upgradable to a just - announced i9 9900 K ) . Not a mobile CPU . The same CPU you find in a column . And like a column CPU , this one can be upgrade by the owner any time they please . Really . A user upgradable CPU in a laptop .

( For those wondering , the Area-51 m will start at $ 2,549 when it ships on January 29th . That configuration features an Intel 9 - Gen i7 processor , 8 GB of RAM , an NVIDIA RTX 2070 , 1 TB of entrepot , and 1080p 6ohz display . When you gripe up the specs , wait that price to shoot up . )

The CPU is n’t the only user upgradeable component in the Area-51 m. The storage and RAM can also be upgraded with the removal of some screw . And for the first sentence in a foresighted while , the GPU in a laptop computer can be upgrade . Alienware has packed an Nvidia 2080 ( no bound Max - Q in raft ) inside the Area-51 m and promises that afterwards GPUs will be made available for purchase , so you upgrade when you care , or else of kick upstairs the intact damn auto .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

It ’s an unbelievable move , and usually , when you have a laptop with this much force inside , you expect it to consider about the same as a small car . But Alienware went with a primarily atomic number 12 base material body , so the Area-51 m weighs 8.54 pounds . That ’s by no means insignificant , but still well under what one might expect . By comparability , Acer ’s 21 - X , the laptop that plausibly book the award of being the fastest ever made to appointment , weighs 18.76 pounds , and the de facto portable big businessman title-holder , the MSI GE75 Raider , which also has a 2080 , Intel H - serial publication CPU , and a like display , weighs just over 10 pound .

You also just expect a laptop computer this brawny to be as absurd looking and extremely thickset as the Acer 21 - X or the MSI GE75 Raider . But the Alienware Area-51 m does n’t look that pathetic . It looks middling dang smooth . Razer might be redefine the gamer esthetic with nuance in less powerful laptops , but Alienware is point that even the buirdly gaming laptop computer can still have some class .

It also design to roll out this raw design language across the residual of its line , including less powerful laptop computer , desktops , and peripherals . The Area-51 m is mean as a herald of Alienware ’s new purpose , but it might also herald a coming variety to the gamer aesthetic . Between it , that all snowy Razer and some of the laptops Nvidia show up off this CES , it look like the design of gamer toys are last growing up . It ’s about damn time .

William Duplessie