The Alienware 16X Aurora Laptop Boasts Premium Build Quality and Gaming Performance at a Great Price
2025 successor to the Alienware m16 laptop.
Alienware’s new mainstream gaming laptop for 2025 is dubbed the “Alienware Aurora” and it replaces the previous generation’s x16 and m16 series of laptops. It comes in two models: the 16 and 16X. Of the two, the 16X Aurora is the model I would unequivocally recommend. It features a fully aluminum body, a higher quality display, and more powerful CPU and GPU. It’s also more expensive, however right now there’s an excellent deal that actually drops the price to just $50 more than an equivalently configured 16 (non-X) Aurora.
Alienware 16X Aurora RTX 5070 Gaming Laptop for $1,599.99
Gamers should go with the Alienware 16X Aurora model
The Alienware 16X Aurora is the model that serious gamers should consider over the 16 Aurora and that’s pretty obvious when you compare the specs. Just look at the all of the upgrades:
Better display (2560×1600 240Hz G-Sync vs 2560×1600 120Hz)
More powerful CPU (Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX vs Intel Core 9 270H)
Higher RTX 5070 TGP rating and thus better performance (115W TGP vs 85W TGP)
More premium materials (metal alloy lid and chassis vs lid only)
RGB keyboard vs white-only backlighting
Thunderbolt 4.0 port
Compared to other Alienware laptops, the 16X Aurora is designed to look less like a gamer’s laptop. It boasts a sleek, understated design with the absence of extraneous visual-only embellishments or unnecessary RGB lighting outside of the keyboard illumination. This is a solidly built machine with a metal (magnesium alloy) chassis and anodized aluminum lid and bottom shell. Under the hood, the 16X Aurora packs a punch with powerful gaming components and a Cryo Chamber cooling system. It’s also over $1,000 less than an Alienware’s top-end 16 Area-51 laptop.
The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX is a top performing CPU
The Alienware 16X Aurora laptop is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, which boasts a max turbo frequency of 5.4GHz with 24 cores and 40MB total L2 cache. According to Passmark, this is the second most powerful Intel mobile CPU available right now and goes head to head with AMD’s Ryzen 9 7945HX3D.
The GeForce RTX 5070 is 5%-10% better than the RTX 4070
The mobile RTX 5070 GPU performs about 5%-10% better than the RTX 4070 that it replaces. That’s not a very big generational improvement, but the RTX 5070 has the newer DLSS 4 technology with multi-frame generation, which widens the performance gap in games that support it. DLSS 4.0. This GPU is a good match with the display’s enhanced 2560×1600 resolution and bumping up to the next GPU in the stack (RTX 5070 Ti mobile) will cost you hundreds more.
Check out our best Alienware deals.
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Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.