I Tested 2 Budget Alienware Gaming Laptops, and the 16X Aurora Is the One to Get

8.3/ 10 SCORE

Alienware 16X Aurora

Pros

Strong performance for the price

Big, bright and fast display

Free M.2 slot to add second SSD

User replaceable RAM

Crisp, 1080p Windows Hello webcam

Cons

Keyboard isn’t best for gaming

Audio output underwhelms

When sitting side by side, Dell’s two midrange gaming laptops, the Alienware 16 Aurora and 16X Aurora, are nearly indistinguishable. Each features a roomy, 16-inch, 2.5K IPS display wrapped in a buttoned-up navy enclosure. Aside from their ample size, they don’t scream “gaming laptop!” They look — and are priced — more like the spiritual successors to Dell’s shuttered G series than a step-down from Dell’s flagship Alienware 16 Area-51. But in the case of the Alienware 16X Aurora, you’ll find plenty of gaming-centric features hidden beneath its ordinary exterior.

The Alienware 16X Aurora offers a choice of a Core Ultra 7 or 9 processor from Intel’s Arrow Lake series and either an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 or 5070 GPU. Our test system featured the baseline version of each and delivers excellent 3D bang for your buck. It easily outpaced the 16 Aurora while also supplying the better display, keyboard backlighting and webcam. It’s also a little lighter.

The performance edge alone makes paying the extra $200 to upgrade from the Alienware 16 Aurora to the 16X Aurora a smart move. When you factor in the other advantages, the Alienware 16X Aurora is the clear pick of the two. But as much as I like the Alienware 16X Aurora, the Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 is still my go-to recommendation for gamers on a budget.

Alienware 16X Aurora

Price as reviewed $1,650 (on sale for $1,450)Display size/resolution 16-inch 2,560×1,600 240HzCPU Intel Core Ultra 7 255HXMemory 32GB LPDDR5-5600Graphics 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 @ 115WStorage 1TB SSDPorts Thunderbolt 4, USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, 2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, HDMI 2.1, Gigabit Ethernet, combo audioNetworking Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4Operating system Windows 11 HomeWeight 5.49 lbs (2.49 kg)

The Alienware 16X Aurora starts at $1,550 for a Core Ultra 7 255HX, 16GB of RAM, RTX 5060 graphics and a 1TB SSD. Our test system doubles the RAM to 32GB for $100, but it is one of the few configurations that were discounted at the time of this review. It’s $200 off, bringing its cost down below the baseline model to $1,450.

You can upgrade the CPU to a Core Ultra 9 255HX and bump the GPU up to an RTX 5070. You can also increase the RAM to 64GB and the storage to 4TB in a RAID 0 array. The one constant is the display, but it’s a good one: a 16-inch IPS panel with a 2,560×1,600-pixel resolution, 240Hz refresh rate and a 500-nit rating.

In comparison, the step-down Alienware 16 Aurora I tested costs $1,250 for an Intel Core 7 240H, 16GB of RAM, RTX 5050 graphics, a 1TB SSD and the same 16-inch, 2.5K display but with a lower 120Hz refresh rate and 300-nit rating.

The Alienware 16X Aurora starts at a discounted price of £1,454 in the UK and AU$3,350 in Australia.

Matt Elliott/CNET

Alienware 16X Aurora performance

The Alienware 16X Aurora and 16 Aurora bookend the performance results on most of our graphics and gaming benchmarks among a group of RTX 5050- and RTX 5060-based budget gaming laptops that includes the Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10, Acer Nitro V 16S AI and MSI Katana 15 HX. The Alienware 16X Aurora finished at the head of the pack, and the Alienware 16 Aurora brought up the rear, which isn’t surprising given the 16X Aurora has the better CPU and GPU and double the RAM of the 16 Aurora.

Like the Legion 5i Gen 10, the Alienware 16X Aurora features a RTX 5060 running at its full 115 watts. In comparison, the Alienware 16 Aurora uses a RTX 5050 throttled at 80 watts. As you can see in the charts below, the 16X Aurora and Legion 5i Gen 10 led the way on each of our 3D gaming tests. They also traded off landing in the top spot on our application benchmarks, but the real advantage for gamers is the increased frame rates you’ll get from using a 115-watt RTX 5060.

The flipside to this added power is a reduction in battery life. The Alienware 16X Aurora lasted a respectable 7.5 hours on our YouTube streaming battery drain test, but you’ll get 10 hours of battery life with the 16 Aurora. Still, for a large, 16-inch gaming laptop that you’re unlikely to use much away from a wall outlet, most gamers will happily trade some battery life for better frame rates.

A deep, blueish hue

Another similarity between the Alienware 16X Aurora and Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 is their understated looks. The 16X Aurora’s deep blue chassis — Dell labels it as Interstellar Indigo — makes the laptop look more like an oversized corporate machine than a gaming laptop. And the 16X Aurora doesn’t even have a thermal shelf on the back edge common to gaming laptops. Instead, it has what Dell calls a Cryo-Chamber, a vented bump-out on the back half of the bottom panel that aids airflow. This bump-out also helps keep the rest of the laptop’s venting to a minimum; there are just two modest vents on each side of the laptop.

Matt Elliott/CNET

The bottom panel and keyboard deck are made of plastic, but the lid is aluminum to add a dash of class and rigidity. On the whole, the Alienware 16X Aurora feels well put together. I felt hardly any flex in the keyboard deck and only a small amount in the thin aluminum lid. Perhaps the magnesium alloy inner frame is the reason for the laptop’s firm feel. The plastic bezels around the display are a little on the thick side but are unlikely to offend most tastes, and the display hinges offer the right mix of feeling smooth yet firm.

Matt Elliott/CNET

Even with a fairly compact design for a 16-inch laptop, the Alienware 16X Aurora is hefty. It weighs 5.49 pounds, which is slightly less than the 5.61-pound Alienware 16 Aurora but more than a pound heavier than the 4.3-pound Legion 5i Gen 10, which does have a smaller 15.1-inch display.

You can open the laptop by removing 10 screws and prying off the bottom panel. Inside, you’ll find a free M.2 slot to add a second SSD, which is especially useful in a gaming laptop that will likely come to house a large game library sooner or later. And unlike most laptops these days that have RAM soldered to the motherboard, the Alienware 16X Aurora has two DIMM slots so you can expand the memory yourself. You’ll need to replace the memory and not simply add to what’s already there because no matter the memory allotment you choose, from 16GB to 64GB, the 16X Aurora ships with two sticks of RAM. Still, it’s a great option to extend the useful life of the laptop.

Matt Elliott/CNET

Where the Alienware 16X Aurora and Legion 5i Gen 10 differ the most is with the display, and not just with the size. Both offer a crisp, 2.5K resolution, but the Legion 5i Gen 10’s is an OLED with more vibrant colors and deeper blacks. The Alienware 16X Aurora is a common IPS display, but it has the speed advantage, providing a 240Hz refresh rate to the Legion 5i’s 165Hz rate. The 16X Aurora’s panel is also brighter. It hit a peak brightness of 582 nits compared with the Legion 5i’s max of 518 nits. But that’s not an apples-to-apples comparison because the absolute black levels you get with an OLED mean it doesn’t need to get as bright as an IPS to produce a dynamic image with great contrast.

For color performance, the Alienware 16X Aurora offered much better color coverage of the sRGB, AdobeRGB and P3 gamuts than the 16 Aurora but couldn’t quite match that of the Legion 5i Gen 10.

Color accuracy display tests

Alienware 16X AuroraAlienware 16 AuroraLenovo Legion 5i Gen 10sRGB 100%100%100%AdobeRGB 87%76%99%P3 99%77%100%

That said, both the Alienware 16X Aurora and Legion 5i Gen 10 deliver a display above the level of most budget or even midrange gaming laptops. And as nice as the OLED is with the Legion 5i Gen 10, I can see an argument for opting instead for the 16X Aurora’s bigger, faster IPS display for gaming.

Matt Elliott/CNET

It’s harder to make the case for the Alienware 16X Aurora’s keyboard. I much preferred the snappy feedback of the Legion 5i Gen 10’s keys than the shallow travel and soft feel I got from this keyboard. And you get only four half-height keys instead of the full-size treatment from the Legion 5i Gen 10.

The Alienware 16X Aurora’s RGB keyboard backlighting is also mildly disappointing. Instead of the four zones with the Legion 5i Gen 10, you get only a single zone. But at least it’s better than the complete lack of RGB lighting on the Alienware 16 Aurora, which has only the standard and very boring white backlighting.

Matt Elliott/CNET

Given the laptop’s ample dimensions, the touchpad is undersized, and I felt its click response was a bit too firm. Similarly, the speakers are also underpowered. Dell outfitted the laptop with only a pair of 2-watt speakers, and the sound they produce is predictably underwhelming.

The laptop’s 1080p webcam isn’t quite as sharp as the Legion 5i Gen 10’s 1440p cam, but it has an IR sensor for using facial recognition with Windows Hello logins. This is a great convenience — and security feature — and doubly so when you consider that without a fingerprint reader, it’s the only secure biometric feature on the 16X Aurora. (The Legion 5i Gen 10 lacks biometrics altogether.)

One last advantage the Alienware 16X Aurora has over both the Legion 5i Gen 10 and Alienware 16 Aurora is fast USB connectivity. It’s the only one of the three to supply Thunderbolt 4 support.

Matt Elliott/CNET

Is the Alienware 16X Aurora a good gaming laptop?

The Alienware 16X Aurora might not be what you picture when you think of an Alienware gaming laptop, but what it lacks in aggressively styling it more than makes up for with its focus on the display and performance. And its price is certainly less than what you’ve come to expect from an Alienware machine. It’s simply hard to find this good a display and this level of performance for the price, although I do wish Dell outfitted it with a keyboard better suited for gaming.

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The review process for laptops, desktops, tablets and other computerlike devices consists of two parts: performance testing under controlled conditions in the CNET Labs and extensive hands-on use by our expert reviewers. This includes evaluating a device’s aesthetics, ergonomics and features. A final review verdict is a combination of both objective and subjective judgments.

The list of benchmarking software we use changes over time as the devices we test evolve. The most important core tests we’re currently running on every compatible computer include Primate Labs Geekbench 6, Cinebench R23, PCMark 10 and 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra.

A more detailed description of each benchmark and how we use it can be found on our How We Test Computers page.

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Geekbench 6 CPU (multi-core)

Alienware 16X Aurora 18587Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 17711MSI Katana 15 HX B14W 14587HP Victus Gaming Laptop 16 13501Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 PHN16-71 13312Alienware 16 Aurora 13294Acer Nitro V 16S AI 12787Acer Nitro 16 AN16-41-R3ZV 10642