Alienware 16 Aurora review: Budget specs at a mid-tier price

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The Alienware 16 Aurora is a budget-focused 16-inch gaming laptop. At $1,499, however, the price is just too high: This machine makes many compromises, from the CPU to the display and the surprising lack of any NPU at all. This price is creeping towards the mid-range mark, and you can spend less to get better hardware from a competitor.

It’s unfortunate: I reviewed this machine alongside the Alienware 16X Aurora, and that particular mid-range laptop is a great value for the hardware. If you’re looking at this Alienware laptop, I recommend looking at the 16X Aurora instead.

Alienware 16 Aurora: Specs

The Alienware 16 Aurora is a 16-inch laptop with an Intel Core 7 240H CPU — or an Intel Core 9 270H chip if you spring for the top-end model. However, our review unit had the Core 7 chip. Somewhat confusingly, while these are Intel Core (Series 2) processors, they’re based on the older Raptor Lake architecture. It doesn’t have an NPU, so you won’t get Copilot+ PC features on this machine.

Our review unit was a $1,499 model that came with an Nvidia RTX 5060 GPU, but this machine is also available with RTX 3050, 4050, and 5070 graphics. The RTX 5070 option in particular doesn’t make much sense, as it makes the machine nearly as expensive as Dell’s higher-end Alienware 16X Aurora, which offers an all-around better experience.

Our review unit also had 32GB of DDR5 RAM, which is the most RAM this machine is available with — Alienware also offers variants with less RAM.

The base model starts at $1,149 on Dell’s website at the time of the review, but it includes an older RTX 4050 GPU and only 16 GB of RAM.

• Model number: AC16250
• CPU: Intel Core 7 240H
• Memory: 32 GB DDR5 RAM
• Graphics/GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060
• NPU: None
• Display: 2560×1600 IPS display with 120Hz refresh rate
• Storage: 1 TB PCIe Gen4 SSD
• Webcam: 720p camera
• Connectivity: 2x USB Type-C (USB 3.2 Gen 2), 2x USB Type-A (USB 3.1 Gen 2), 1x HDMI 2.1 out, 1x Ethernet (RJ-45), 1x combo audio jack, 1x power in
• Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
• Biometrics: None
• Battery capacity: 94 Watt-hours
• Dimensions: 14.05 x 10.45 x 0.89 inches
• Weight: 5.49 pounds
• MSRP: $1,499 as tested

Alienware 16 Aurora: Design and build quality

IDG / Chris Hoffman

The Alienware 16 Aurora looks like a black laptop from some angles, but the dark blue of its “Interstellar Indigo” color is visible from certain angles. This laptop has a reflective Alienware logo on its lid, but aside from that it could just be a professional workstation laptop. Alienware hasn’t emphasized the traditional gamer aesthetic in this design.

This machine has an anodized aluminum lid, but the rest of the body is plastic — for more metal, you’ll have to spend extra on a higher-end gaming laptop. But plastic is fine, and the laptop looks good and feels solid, although it is a little prone to picking up fingerprints. The hinge is easy to open with a single hand and feels solid, and it doesn’t move around as you type or game on the laptop. It’s a well-put-together machine.

Alienware 16 Aurora: Keyboard and trackpad

IDG / Chris Hoffman

The Alienware 16 Aurora has a full-size chiclet-style keyboard complete with a number pad at the right. The 1.4mm of key travel results in a nice typing experience. It’s reasonably snappy and not mushy as it is on many lower-end laptops. This is a solid keyboard.

Dell included a backlight on the keyboard, but it doesn’t have customizable colors — you can use white light, but that’s it.

The trackpad here works fine. It’s a reasonably sized trackpad — many laptops have much larger ones, but the size is fine with me. The click-down action feels fine. A nice glass trackpad feels smoother — this is clearly a plastic surface — but it’s still smooth and responsive.

Alienware 16 Aurora: Display and speakers

IDG / Chris Hoffman

The Alienware 16 Aurora has a 16-inch 2560×1600 resolution IPS display with a 120Hz refresh rate and up to 300 nits of brightness. It’s a fine display with a solid resolution and a decent refresh rate, but I wish it was brighter. Whenever I use a gaming laptop with a display that caps out at 300 nits, I always want more brightness. It doesn’t wow, though — the colors aren’t nearly as impressive they can be on a higher-end display in more expensive gaming laptops. It’s reasonable for a budget laptop, but it feels low-end for a $1,499 laptop.

This isn’t a touch screen, and it’s not an OLED display either — it has an anti-glare coating that works well, so it’s not a glossy, reflective display. Higher brightness settings are often necessary to overpower glare on glossy displays, but that isn’t the case here.

I test every laptop’s speakers by playing Steely Dan’s Aja and Daft Punk’s Get Lucky. The sound quality during Aja was decent, although a little flat — there wasn’t the kind of crisp instrument separation you hear on high-end speakers. Daft Punk’s Get Lucky had a fun sound, even though there wasn’t a ton of underlying bass.

Alienware 16 Aurora: Webcam, microphone, biometrics

The Alienware 16 Aurora has a 720p webcam. The image is pretty grainy and washed out, and that’s no surprise — 720p webcams are low end, and Dell is cutting a corner here to keep the laptop’s price down. It will work if you need to have a video meeting and don’t need a high-resolution image, but that’s about it. And, because there’s no NPU in this machine, you don’t have access to Windows Studio Effects webcam effects on this machine.

The dual-array microphone in this machine produces rather muffled audio — this machine wasn’t built with video conferencing in mind, although it offers the basics if you need them.

The Alienware 16 Aurora doesn’t have any biometric hardware, so you can’t sign into Windows with your face or a fingerprint. A $1,499 laptop should have biometric support, whether that’s a fingerprint reader or facial recognition. That’s too big a corner to cut at this price point.

Alienware 16 Aurora: Connectivity

IDG / Chris Hoffman

The Alienware 16 Aurora has a great selection of connectivity — it even has an Ethernet port!

On the left, you’ll find a USB Type-A port, a combo audio jack, and an Ethernet (RJ-45) jack. On the back, this machine has a second USB Type-A port, two USB Type-C ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a power-in port.

It’s a great selection of ports, and the only thing missing might be an SD card reader, if you’re looking for that. Aside from that, it’s well laid out — especially with most of the ports being in the back, where it’s easy to plug the power cable and other accessories in so they stay out of your way.

This machine has Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 hardware, so it’s as future proof as can be with the latest standards.

Alienware 16 Aurora: Performance

The Alienware 16 Aurora’s cooling system works well. Playing the latest big games like Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 and Doom: The Dark Ages, the fans stayed on the quiet side for a 16-inch gaming laptop — especially a more budget-focused laptop, as quieter fans tend to be reserved for higher-end gaming laptops and less-expensive laptops often go for the “jet engine” sound profile. This laptop blows most of the hot air out of the back, and the keyboard only gets mildly warm. Some hot air comes out of the sides — in a perfect build, it would all go out of the back and away from your mouse hand — but it’s not too bad.

Naturally, the Alienware 16 Aurora delivered reasonable performance at moderate settings in these games. As always, though we ran this machine through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs in more detail.

IDG / Chris Hoffman

First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. With a PCMark 10 overall score of 7,068, this machine comes in noticeably behind the pricier Alienware 16X Aurora. The Intel Core 7 Meteor Lake CPU here can’t keep pace with the higher-end Intel Core Ultra 9 and AMD Ryzen AI 9 chips in the higher-end laptops we’re comparing it to. It’s a lower-end gaming CPU.

IDG / Chris Hoffman

Next, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. It’s a quick benchmark, so cooling under extended workloads isn’t a factor. But, since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage.

With a Cinebench R20 multi-threaded score of 6,284, this machine once again comes in behind other laptops. That’s in large part because the Intel Core 7 240H CPU here has 10 cores, while the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX has 24 cores. Most applications don’t benefit from multithreading this much, however, so this isn’t representative of the difference in real-world gaming performance.

IDG / Chris Hoffman

We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark, but it runs over an extended period. This demands the laptop’s cooling kick in, and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load.

The Alienware 16 Aurora took 900 seconds on average to complete the encode. That’s 15 minutes, and it’s significantly slower than other laptops — again, this CPU just doesn’t have as many cores as I’d like to see.

IDG / Chris Hoffman

Next, we run a graphical benchmark. We run 3Dmark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance, on all the laptops we review.

With a 3Dmark Time Spy score of 10,263, the Alienware 16 Aurora came in behind other laptops once again — that’s due to the Nvidia RTX 5060 GPU here. This chart helps illustrate how important the choice of GPU is and how much faster higher-end GPUs can be.

After that, we run the benchmarks built into some games. First, we use the benchmark in Shadow of the Tomb Raider to test all the gaming laptops we review. It’s an older game, but it’s a great way to compare GPU performance across different PCs.

IDG / Chris Hoffman

With an average FPS of 132, the Alienware 16 Aurora delivered fine performance. It was behind other laptops with faster GPUs, but not by much. This older game is seeing diminishing returns from higher-end GPUs.

Finally, we run the benchmark in Metro Exodus. This is a more demanding game, and we set the benchmark to 1080p resolution at the Extreme detail setting.

IDG / Chris Hoffman

With an average FPS of 43 in this high-end Metro Exodus benchmark, the Alienware 16 Aurora offered reasonably playable performance even at these brutal graphical settings. It’s a good example of the solid performance you can get without splurging on a top-tier CPU or GPU these days. Of course, it comes in behind more expensive laptops with higher-end GPUs.

Overall, the Alienware 16 Aurora delivered playable performance, but it’s held back by the components compared to higher-end, more expensive gaming laptops.

Alienware 16 Aurora: Battery life

The Alienware 16 Aurora we received had a large 94 Watt-hour battery, although Dell’s spec sheet said it had a 60 Watt-hour battery — expect that smaller battery on lower-end variants and this larger battery on higher-end ones. It delivered surprisingly good battery life away from an outlet for a gaming laptop, likely thanks to its lower-end CPU.

IDG / Chris Hoffman

To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat on Windows 11 with airplane mode activated and the keyboard backlight turned off until the laptop suspends itself. We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks. This is a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this.

The Alienware 16 Aurora lasted 603 minutes on average — that’s just over 10 hours. For a gaming laptop that isn’t particularly focused on battery life, this is quite good!

Alienware 16 Aurora: Conclusion

The Alienware 16 Aurora doesn’t impress, which is a shame because I reviewed it alongside the Alienware 16X Aurora, and that laptop did impress with the value it delivered. The core problem here is the price — $1,499 is just too high for an experience like this one.

It’s a budget experience at a mid-tier price. If this machine had a faster CPU or a more impressive display — ideally both — it would be easy to recommend. For now, you’re probably better off looking somewhere else for a budget gaming laptop — unless Dell is having a big sale on this model.

I would recommend you look at the Alienware 16X Aurora if you’re looking for an Alienware laptop, however — that’s much better value for money. Or, if you’re looking for a budget gaming laptop, check out PCWorld’s best gaming laptops list for better values.