I Tested Two Alienware Aurora Gaming Laptops, and This Is Not the One to Get

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Matt Elliott Senior Editor

Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.

Expertise Laptops | Desktops | All-in-one PCs | Streaming devices | Streaming platforms

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Pros

• 16-inch, 2.5K display looks sharp
• Free M.2 slot to add second SSD
• User replaceable RAM

Cons

• Throttled RTX 5050 limits frame rates
• No RGB keyboard backlighting
• Fuzzy 720p webcam
• No biometrics for easy, secure logins
• No Thunderbolt 4

• I Tested Two Alienware Aurora Gaming Laptops, and This Is Not the One to Get
• Alienware 16 Aurora
• Color accuracy display tests
• Is the Alienware 16 Aurora worth buying?
• Geekbench 6 CPU (multi-core)
• Geekbench 6 CPU (single-core)
• Cinebench 2024 CPU (multi-core)
• Cinebench 2024 CPU (single-core)
• PCMark 10 Pro Edition
• 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Highest @ 1920 x 1080)
• Guardians of the Galaxy (High @ 1920 x 1080)
• The Riftbreaker GPU (1920 x 1080)
• Assasin's Creed Shadows (High @ 1920x1080)
• F1 24 (Ultra High @ 1920x1080)
• Online streaming battery drain test
• System configurations

Is the Alienware 16 Aurora worth buying? The short answer is no, no it is not.

I understand that its low starting price of $1,100 is tempting and the refined design in a pleasing deep blue hue makes it look better than most gaming laptops at this price, but there's a similar model in Dell's budget-to-midrange Alienware Aurora line that costs only a little more and is a much better value. And that's the Alienware 16X Aurora that I also just reviewed. I would point budget gaming laptop shoppers toward the 16X Aurora if you can stretch your budget closer to $1,500. For an alternative closer in price to the $1,250 Alienware 16 Aurora laptop that I tested, you should check out the Acer Nitro V 16S AI.

The Alienware 16 Aurora starts at $1,100 (discounted to $900 at the time of this review) for a system with previous-gen RTX 4050 graphics. The config Dell sent me costs $1,250 for an Intel Core 7 240H, 16GB of RAM, RTX 5050 GPU and a 1TB SSD. There's a Core 9 270H option and RTX 5060 and 5070 options, but it doesn't make sense to pay for these upgrades when you can also get them with the 16X Aurora for only the slightest of premiums. 

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The Alienware 16 Aurora and 16X Aurora are nearly indistinguishable at first glance, but I discovered a surprising number of differences that put the 16 Aurora at a severe disadvantage. Of the two configurations that I tested, the 16 Aurora is only $200 cheaper than the 16X Aurora and forces you to live with:

• Slower performance
• A slower, dimmer display
• A heavier chassis
• No RGB backlighting
• A grainy 720p webcam
• No Thunderbolt 4

Matt Elliott/CNET

It should come as no great shock that the 16 Aurora with a Core 7 240H, 16GB of RAM and an RTX 5050 running at only 80 watts was slower on each our benchmarks than the 16X Aurora with a Core Ultra 7 255HX, 32GB of RAM and an RTX 5060 running at its full 115 watts. The only benchmark that went in the 16 Aurora's favor was our YouTube streaming battery drain test where the 16 Aurora ran for 2.5 hours longer. Scroll down to the end of this page to see the battery life results and the rest of CNET's application and gaming benchmarks.

Both the Alienware 16 Aurora and 16X Aurora feature a 16-inch IPS display with a 2,560x1,600-pixel resolution, but that's where the similarities end. The 16 Aurora's display is slower with a 120Hz refresh rate and lower brightness rating of 300 nits. On my tests with a Spyder X Elite colorimeter, the display actually proved to be brighter than its rating, hitting a peak brightness of 347 nits. That figure would be more impressive if the 16X Aurora didn't reach a max of 582 nits. Its color accuracy was inferior to that of the 16X Aurora, and in general colors on the 16 Aurora in games, movies and images didn't look as bright and inviting as I experienced with the 16X Aurora.

As I do with every laptop I test and review, I placed both laptops on a scale to get a weight and was surprised to see that they weren't the same. The 16 Aurora weighed 5.61 pounds, and the 16X Aurora weighed a bit less at 5.49 pounds. That's not a great difference but is yet another advantage in the 16X Aurora's favor.

I'm not a fan of either keyboard -- you can read more details about the overall Aurora design in my 16X Aurora review -- but I like the 16 Aurora's even less than the 16X Aurora's for the simple fact that it lacks RGB backlighting. That should come standard on any gaming laptop, even if it's only single-zone RGB lighting. With the 16 Aurora, you get only the most basic and boring backlighting: white.

Matt Elliott/CNET

Many budget gaming laptops still feature grainy, poorly balanced 720p webcam, and the 16 Aurora sadly falls into this category while its 16X Aurora sibling comes equipped with a 1080p cam that not only produces a much cleaner image, but also includes an IR sensor for Windows Hello facial recognition logins. And with no fingerprint reader, the 16 Aurora offers no biometrics.

Lastly, the 16 Aurora lacks Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, which you get with the 16X Aurora. Instead of speedy 40Gbps data transfers, the 16 Aurora's two USB-C ports top out at 10Gbps.

Matt Elliott/CNET

Let's end on a positive note: when I opened both Aurora laptops, I found that they each offer the same interior expansion. There's a free M.2 slot to add a second SSD, and the RAM is not soldered to the motherboard but user replaceable, a rarity with today's laptops.

Matt Elliott/CNET

Is the Alienware 16 Aurora worth buying?

If you missed the answer above to this question, I'll repeat it here: No, no it is not.

My advice is to spend the extra $200 or so for the Alienware 16X Aurora. And if your budget doesn't stretch that far, then the Acer Nitro V 16S AI is a better choice for $1,300. The biggest disadvantage with the Nitro V 16S AI is its 1,920x1,200-pixel display, which is a step down from the 16 Aurora's 2.5K display. But with a throttled RTX 5050 in the case of the 16 Aurora or a throttled RTX 5060 in the case of the Nitro V 16S AI, you are likely gaming at 1080p/1200p, so you don't necessarily need the 16 Aurora's higher-res display.