I have had my Area 51M since March 2019. My goal for this video is to talk pros and cons of the device after using the device and seeing how well it handles the wear and tear of daily use and I also ran similar benchmarks to see if performance has declined since I first purchased it. Here we go!

Check out the video version of this Area 51M review below:

PRO: Solid Performance and Reliability of Core Components

Now before I get into all of the issues I’ve had with the laptop. I want to say upfront that I’ve generally been very happy with the Area 51M this last year. My impressions are that it’s been reliable. It’s provided me buttery smooth gameplay in all of the games I’ve played, and my primary use for the machine has been gaming. I’ve had basically no issues with the hardware malfunctioning or underperforming.

PRO: Ergonomics of Keyboard/Mouse is Great

I have really enjoyed the keyboard and trackpad on the Area 51M. The keyboard is arguably my favorite keyboard out of all gaming laptops. It has deep travel with solid feedback that just feels… right… And the layout is ideal. The backlight is excellent. The trackpad could be larger, but the big buttons work well and the glass surface is smooth.

PRO: Display has been Great for Gaming

The 144hz display has legit been great for gaming with minimal response time, no ghosting, and decent colors and brightness, but I do really wish they would add a wide color gamut and brighter 144hz 1440P option to increase sharpness. I’ve recently fell in love with Razer Blade Pro 17’s 4K 120 hz display. Basically, I feel like high refresh gaming displays have a lot of potential improvement that could happen in the resolution, brightness, and color gamut departments. The latest trends have been to ramp up the refresh rate to 300 hz, but I’d much rather see higher nits, contrast, colors, and at least 1440P resolutions.

screen compared to razer blade pro 17.jpg

PRO: Minimal Wear and Tear

I have been using this laptop full time as my primary computer for almost everything these last 15 months. During that time, I haven’t noticed any cosmetic degradation except for a slight discoloration of the wrist rest. It’s very minor, I honestly didn’t even notice it until Carla pointed it out while filming B-Roll, but I think it’s likely that if I kept using this machine for another 2 years, the discoloration would progressively get worse over time.

PRO: GPU Performance is Nearly Identical Over a Year Later

Here’s a series of graphs comparing the performance from the benchmarks I did over a year ago vs. the performance I got this week. The good thing is that we are seeing identical or better GPU performance. The instances where it improves is likely because of a sligh 100+ mhz GPU OC that the Alienware Command Center does on the GPU and also because over the last 15 months I’m sure drivers have matured.

Cinebench R15 Multi 5 Runs Temperatures .jpg

Cinebench R20 Multi Best Throttled Score.jpg

Far Cry 5 Benckmark Ultra Gaming Performance 1080p.jpg

CON: CPU Thermals Have Degraded, Leading to Reduced Performance in Thermally Throttled Tasks

Taking a look at the Handbrake render time, you can see that the current notebook scores significantly worse despite being set to the same clock speed. I would attribute this to the 100C temperatures and thermal throttling that I am seeing. I did not record the temps when I originally ran this, but seeing the difference in performance, it’s quite clear that it wasn’t thermally throttling back then, but now it is running the same test.

I do want to make a note that I haven’t repasted the CPU since my initial repaste upon receiving the machine, but I did clean out the dust in the fans about a week before doing these tests. I believe if I repasted the CPU, we would see temps return to their original state and performance hit similar numbers once again. Perhaps it would be worth making a separate video about this.

CON: Generally Noisy at Full Speed Fans

I wanted to ensure that since this machine runs quite hot in the CPU department that it would have as much cooling as possible, so I’ve been running the machine at Full Speed fan setting the vast majority of the time I used the machine. The downside is the increased fan noise. Another reason I’ve been using the Full Speed setting is that I noticed occasionally stuttery gameplay when running on lower profiles, likely due to thermal throttling on the CPU with less airflow. But I’d have to investigate further to make sure that’s the case. In the end, I just let the computer run on Full Speed mode to ensure the best performance.

CON: Lighting Stopped Working

About six months into owning the device I noticed that the TRON light on the back and the touchpad lighting had stopped working. Now when I initially received the device, the light had also not been working due to the plug having wiggled out or HIDEvolution staff messing up on the connection, so I assumed that the light had wiggled free once again. I put off trying to fix it. Recently however, I did open up the laptop to clean the dust out of the fans, while I had the bottom open I verified that the touchpad and the TRON light on the back were still plugged in, and surprisingly, they were plugged in as best I could tell. That means there’s either a software or a hardware issue.

Touch pad light stopped working as well.

CON: Alienware Command Center Problems

The Alienware Command Center, or ACC for short, has a number of faults. First, the updating method disrupts ordinary daily use of the ACC for crucial tasks. One example of this is when I was in a library and booted the laptop up, and the fans were on full blast. I wanted to turn the fans down so that they didn’t both the people around me, but when I opened the ACC, it required two updates before I could change the fan settings. This meant letting the fans stay at max bothering people around me while I waited for the software to download. Putting crucial settings behind a update wall is shortsighted software design.

CON: ACC Interferes with Intel XTU/Throttlestop

As an advanced user, I wanted to undervolt and overclock my 9900K processor. But the ACC overlocking software kind of sucks for doing this since it doesn’t give complete control, limits total undervolt, and didn’t reliably apply my settings. ACC might be better now, but I haven’t tried since I was able to get Throttlestop to work quite well to maintain my -.080 undervolt. I have Throttlestop to start up upon bootup and apply my CPU undervolt.

CON: ACC Not Saving Lighting Profile

This is a relatively minor, but very annoying issue. I prefer to have my laptop running the Rainbow Wave mode for maximum coolness factor, but unfortunately, the ACC wouldn’t save and apply my color scheme. Anytime I boot up the device, it boots up with a blue backlighting. But if I open ACC and click the FX tab, it instantly loads my saved lighting theme with the Rainbow Wave setting. Incredibly frustrating. There probably is some workaround or fix for this, but I haven’t put the effort in to figuring it out.

CON: Area 51M Crashes if Underload and Power Plug is Pulled

If you have a game running and the power brick loses connection, the battery is not able to cover the power wattage disparity and that often results in system just instantly turning off. This has happened a few times now, but it isn’t a huge issue just something I came across with experience.

CON: Area 51M Underperforms with 1 AC Adapter

You really do need both adapters if you want a stutter free gaming experience. With only one adapter, the power limits on GPU/CPU significantly drop and you run into a lot of micro stutters, depending on the game. But I will say that one adapter works just fine for lighter tasks like officer work or Netflix, I just wouldn’t recommend gaming full time on a single adapter.

CON: Portability Suffers

There’s no way around it. The total carry weight of the Area 51M is a lot. Over the last year, I’ve really felt the hassle of needing two power adapters, plugging them both in, the weight of them in your bag, and the large volume that the machine takes up in a bag.

The other major area where portability suffers is the battery life. Not only can you not game very well while on battery, due to the desktop components, but even when watching Netflix it clocks in at a measly 1.5 hours because the components aren’t very well optimized for mobile use.

PRO: Very Usable in the Lap for Light Tasks

One pleasant surprise is that this machine is very usable in the lap when you set the fans to Full Speed. Yes, its noisy, but the bottom of the laptop becomes cool to the touch and maintains an excellent temperature when doing casual tasks. If try gaming in your lap, it’s possible, but it does get too warm in my opinion for extended sessions.

Would I Buy the Area 51M Again?

No, I would not. The simple fact is that while I do quite a bit of video editing, I don’t do enough CPU processing on this laptop to warrant having a bulkier laptop with a desktop processor. I could see the benefit of the higher end processor if I was trying to hit ultra high frame rates in CPU bound games as well, but I haven’t been playing any of those recently. Currently, a mobile CPU would suit me just fine. In this last year, I would have benefited greatly from a thinner and lighter machine that didn’t require two adapters and has a smaller overall form factor. But this will obviously vary a lot from person to person.

Can I Recommend the Area 51M to others?

Absolutely. Yes, the software is annoying. But it wasn’t a dealbreaker. The lights going out was annoying, but again, not a dealbreaker. This is certainly fixable if I put in the effort to troubleshoot or send back to HIDEvolution. It’s true. All laptops have minor cosmetic and software issues over time, so I would’t let them turn you off from buying this laptop. Yes, the temps do run HOT in CPU heavy loads, but that hasn’t affected me in my gaming experience since temps are much better in the games I play. The Area 51M has generally been a pleasure to use this last year—many people would be very happy with a machine like this as long as they get their money’s worth from the high end CPU and are okay with the reduced portability.