TechHive Editors Choice At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Dual-lens view leaves no blind spots while minimizing distortion No subscription needed for storage or to unlock any features AI search could be a game-changer—but not today Cons There’s a slight visual anomaly where the two camera images are spliced The weak onboard siren won’t dissuade a bad actor from lingering Cheap screws stripped immediately Our Verdict Dual lenses give Reolink’s latest floodlight camera an incredibly wide field of view, while its bright and capable floodlights ensure the scene is effectively lit. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices No matter how wide a viewing angle a given fixed-lens security camera might have, it will invariably suffer from this flaw: It won’t be able to see everything in front of it. And while some cameras try to solve this problem by employing a fish-eye lens to widen that viewing angle, the resulting image usually suffers from a degree of barrel distortion. Reolink’s Elite Floodlight WiFi mitigates that problem via a clever hack. It uses two camera lenses instead of just one to deliver a combined (and relatively distortion-free) 180-degree field of view. It’s a concept that Reolink has pursued with several earlier products, including its Reolink Duo 3 WiFi, and which it improves upon here. Specifications Like most floodlight cameras, the Elite Floodlight is a hardwired device that must be permanently mounted on a wall and connected to a home’s 120-volt wiring. Reolink supplies everything you need to attach the camera to a standard junction box, but it can also be attached directly to a wall (or ceiling) and plugged in with a bare wire/pigtail extension cord (that connection should still be in a weatherproof box). All those pixels really do fill a wide screen, and you can zoom in impressively to catch quite fine details when you need to. Reolink supplies wire nuts for either attachment method (along with various other mounting hardware), but I ended up using my own because the supplied ones felt a bit too small to be secure. Either way, once you use the three nuts to complete the circuit and ground the device, the unit is ready to be mounted to the wall. This is achieved via a mounting bracket that comes complete with a built-in spirit level. Installation and setup As is common with floodlight cameras, you’ll need to hardwire the Reolink Elite WiFi floodlight WiFi to your home’s 110-volt electrcal system.Christopher Null/Foundry The first hiccup with the hardware install was that I found I needed to swivel both the camera housing and the two spotlights well out of the way to access the two tiny channels in which the screws that connect the camera unit to the mounting bracket are placed. (I could also have used a lengthy bit extension for my drill.) I must also complain about the poor quality of the screws included with the kit, two of which stripped completely during installation. Removing them later took more than an hour and a lot of headache. The camera records to its own storage, so you’ll need to install a microSD card (capacities up to 512GB are supported) as a last step. No card is included, and the camera can’t record without one. (Reolink doesn’t require a subscription plan, and unlike other Reolink cameras, this device doesn’t even support one.) Wi-Fi setup was painless in my testing once I got the blaring and endlessly repeating audio instructions silenced, and it’s additionally helpful that the camera supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi networks. Using the Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi Once installed, I felt the camera was slightly more attractive than many floodlight-cam competitors, as it’s a little more compact and less obtrusive—although this is of course a matter personal preference. But overall, the design is similar to that of most other floodlight cameras, with two spotlights providing a maximum of 3,000 lumens of illumination, perched atop a separate camera housing. The Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi is slightly less visually intrusive than most of its competitors.Reolink All three components can be positioned independently, and the entire device carries an IP67 weatherization rating, which our IP code guide tells us means the device is not only impervious to dust ingress, but that it can withstand being submerged in several feet of water for up to 30 minutes. Intriguingly, you can not only set the floodlight’s brightness level, but you can also adjust its color temperature, from a somewhat warm 3,000 Kelvin to a daylight-equivalent 6,000K. The floodlights can be set to always off, on at night, on based on a timer, or on at night based on motion detection, a setting that can be further restricted based on person, vehicle, or animal detection. A detailed scheduling system allows you to define when the camera records, which again can be restricted to types of motion if, for example, you don’t want to record every passing car on the street. Users can also define a “post-recording duration” to set how long to record after motion ends (15 seconds, 30 seconds, or 1 minute), and the camera can be set to record continuously (24/7 or based on a schedule), overwriting recordings at an interval you set (or simply deleting the oldest recording once the available storage is filled). Don’t like the lights? The unit also includes infrared night vision that can be set to kick in if ambient light is dim and the floodlight is turned off. Other features include two-way audio, a configurable siren (albeit a very weak one), a time-lapse recording mode, and the ability to push recordings to an FTP or NAS device instead of storing them on the camera itself. Camera image quality The cameras 8-megapixel image sensor records 4K video (which Reolink defines as 5120 x 1552 pixels) at 20 frames per second, and that ultra-wide angle image takes a little getting used to. Watching playback in Reolink’s app all but requires your phone to be in landscape mode. In portrait view, the image is so small that you can’t see any details. Fortunately, all those pixels really do fill a wide screen, and you can zoom in impressively to catch quite fine details when you need to. One hiccup of note: The use of two cameras means that the image must be digitally stitched together, which creates a visible seam that runs down the middle of the picture, along with a slight visual glitch, invariably where you least want it to be. The Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi’s ultrawide field of view all but requires your phone be in landscape mode to watch its live feed or recordings.   Christopher Null/Foundry The illumination power of the spotlights is solid, but I found the infrared night vision mode to be better from a recording standpoint, as I was able to make out figures further away in IR mode than with the spotlights on, even at full power. I have the opposite opinion when people were much closer the camera and recorded at night, as the floodlight makes up-close figures much clearer. The camera was adept at detecting motion in my testing, and a sophisticated detection-zone system lets you define areas and types of motion within those areas that you might want to ignore. Clips are catalogued in Reolink’s Playback menu, which lets you scrub video on a 24-hour timeline, one day at a time, or you can choose from animated thumbnails below the timeline, showcasing each moment where motion was detected. Each clip is even marked with a small dot to indicate where notable motion events occurred within the clip. The app can also be configured to send notifications of motion via push notification or email; but for the latter, you’ll need to configure mail server settings in the app, which might be more of a headache than most users want to deal with. The camera’s onboard AI leaves much to be desired I was less than impressed with the Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi’s AI (center app screenshot), and the view from its dual lenses isn’t perfectly stitched together (right-hand app screenshot). Christopher Null/Foundry A new feature (introduced in beta test mode just days before the product’s release) lets you search for recorded clips using natural language. This AI-powered search is a potential game-changer, letting you filter clips of people, vehicles, and animals (and only those three categories, not general motion), using written qualifiers. For example: “Person in a blue shirt.” “Cat running.” “Red pickup truck.” My tests with this were all over the map, indicating the algorithm probably has room to grow. It works well with color queries, picking out clips of me wearing a black shirt with ease, but it didn’t find any clips of me “holding a bottle,” identifying just about everything else as a valid clip except the one where I was holding a bottle. The system could find no clips of any person either “with a beard” or “without a beard.” (I have no beard, for the record.) And while it was successful at finding clips of my cat, it also tagged the same clips if I searched for “dog.” As noted, Reolink has work to do on the AI front. Should you buy the Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi? At $220, the Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi is a reasonably priced and capable lights-and-camera combo. It’s also fairly compact and remarkably full-featured, producing high-quality, ultra-widescreen video that you won’t get elsewhere. Apart from its onboard AI–which remember–is still in beta, it’s a solid product. And not having to pay for a subscription is icing on the cake. 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If you’ve spent any amount of time using ChatGPT, you already know that it often requires lengthy explanations, prompt tweaks, and/or extra context to get it doing what you actually meant. Often, but not always. ChatGPT is capable of performing useful tasks with single, one-line prompts. When worded correctly, ChatGPT will perform the following tasks without hesitation, without extra context, and without issue — though as always, AI can sometimes suffer from inaccurate “hallucinations,” so be sure to double check ChatGPT’s work for critical or sensitive needs. Let’s dig in! Get meal ideas from available ingredients Dave Parrack / Foundry Most of us endure busy working lives these days, which leaves little time for doing much of anything else—and that can include grocery shopping for the ingredients needed for home-cooked meals. Thankfully, if you ever find yourself with a small set of ingredients and no idea what to make with them, ChatGPT can help. Just list the staple (and otherwise) ingredients you have available and ask ChatGPT for some meal ideas using them. As an example, I asked, “What meals can I make with rice, eggs, and frozen mixed vegetables?” ChatGPT suggested egg fried rice, a vegetable rice omelet, and baked egg fried rice muffins, among others. Pretty nifty in a pinch. Troubleshoot tech and home repair problems Dave Parrack / Foundry When something goes wrong, your first instinct might be to panic or shut down—but maybe it should be to ask ChatGPT for help instead. ChatGPT can provide troubleshooting help whenever you’re stuck dealing with an unknown or unexpected issue. Just ask ChatGPT to provide a list of troubleshooting steps for whatever has gone wrong. In my case, I’ve asked what I can do about a Windows laptop that has stopped working—my short prompt of “Please list some troubleshooting steps for a Windows laptop that has stopped working” resulted in a solid list of 10 things I could try. This is equally useful for all kinds of other problems, like if your toilet randomly flushes on its own every so often, if your car starts making a weird noise, or if your wireless router is on the fritz. Just make sure you never share sensitive personal data with ChatGPT! Create tailor-made workout routines Dave Parrack / Foundry While YouTube remains an option when looking for a workout routine, ChatGPT can provide you with ones that are as general or as specific as you need them to be. Want exercises for people your age? Or stretches for an aching lower back? Or simple workouts you can do at home without any equiment? Ones you can do at your desk? No worries! I personally asked ChatGPT, “Please create a short workout routine a 40-year-old can do in their lounge.” (I’m a bit older than 40, but what better way to stay young than to work out as a younger person would?) ChatGPT came through for me with a 20-minute low-impact workout routine that I found challenging but doable. It’s one of the many ways you can use ChatGPT to actually improve your life. Generate comprehensive checklists Dave Parrack / Foundry Checklists are so useful for when you absolutely don’t want to forget an important step, like when you’re packing for vacation, hosting a party, or spring cleaning your home. ChatGPT can help by creating checklists for lots of different scenarios—and for best results, you’ll want to include specific details to clue ChatGPT into your specific needs. I asked ChatGPT to “Please provide me with a checklist for packing for a vacation to Italy in September.” Note that I mentioned both the location and time of year I was visiting! The more context you can provide in your prompt, the more accurate and helpful the checklist will be. Explain concepts (like I’m 5) Dave Parrack / Foundry With a single, one-line prompt, ChatGPT can explain even the most complex concepts in a way that you can grasp. Want to understand nuclear fission? Or how EV batteries work? Or what kind of engineering goes into modern data centers? Just ask! But make sure to tack on the “like I’m 5” to your prompt—taken from the ELI5 trope on Reddit—so that ChatGPT dumbs down the subject enough to be digestible no matter your background. As an example, I asked ChatGPT to explain the concept of time travel like I’m 5. (Feel free to change the age or add any other qualifiers you want.) Summarize online articles Dave Parrack / Foundry Do you feel like you’re inundated with so much information that you just can’t keep up or absorb it all? You aren’t alone. There are billions of web pages out there—no one has the time or energy to read every single thing that catches their eye. Thankfully, ChatGPT can help by analyzing any online article and spitting out the most important bits. In the example above, I asked ChatGPT to summarize my own article about mundane tasks ChatGPT can handle for you—and it accurately broke it down, correctly citing PCWorld as the source throughout. In testing, I found that ChatGPT sometimes even pulls info from other sources to fill in details and provide more context. See what happened on a day in history Dave Parrack / Foundry It’s important to not only know what has happened in the past, but to understand why those things happened. You could work your way through encyclopedias and history books, spending years of your life absorbing facts and putting them together… or you could put ChatGPT to work and get it to do all the heavy lifting for you. With a simple prompt, ChatGPT can list all the major historical events that have happened on a particular day. You can ask about a specific day in a specific year, or the same particular day throughout the years. If the response stokes your interest, you can follow up with probing queries and learn more. But for many, the initial one-line prompt should suffice. Answer simple trivia questions Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re anything like me, you frequently come across questions to which you don’t know their answers. Not to worry! You can just ask ChatGPT to answer those questions for you, pronto. I’m talking about questions with definitive answers, such as trivia. Who won a certain sports tournament in a given year? What year was a certain music album released? Which mountain is the tallest in the world? That sort of thing. Any question with an open-ended answer, or one with multiple potential answers, could complicate matters. Learn a new word every day Dave Parrack / Foundry I love learning something new every day, whether it’s practical and purposeful or gimmicky and trivial. One thing that blends both ends of the spectrum is the concept of a “word of the day”—and ChatGPT can provide you with a new word every day via a one-line prompt. Just input, “Please provide a word of the day for today.” ChatGPT will then provide a word along with its meaning, origin, and an example of it used in a sentence. It will then ask if you’d like a different word each day from then on, saving you from ever having to ask again. Combine tasks like this with ChatGPT’s nifty “scheduled tasks” feature to boost your productivity and save lots of time! Translate words or simple phrases Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re traveling abroad, you should try to learn some of the local language. Sure, most people around the world speak enough English to get by, but that’s no excuse for being lazy! Pick a few choice words or phrases and learn how to say them in the language of the country you’re visiting—and that’s something ChatGPT can help you with. To be clear, ChatGPT is more than capable of translating longer phrases and even whole articles, documents, and publications. However, once you enter that kind of territory, you’re leaving the “one-line prompt” zone and will need to write prompts that are more complex. Convert units of measurement Dave Parrack / Foundry As a kid, I never imagined how often I would need to convert one type of unit into another—but as an adult, I’m doing it far too often. While Google and other tools do a decent job of converting all types of units, I’ve actually found ChatGPT more capable. In this example, I asked ChatGPT to “convert 100 centimeters into feet and inches.” It converted 100 centimeters into both feet and inches along with its reasoning. You’ll be pleased to know that the math checks out! Further reading: 9 mundane chores ChatGPT can handle in seconds, saving you hours Read...

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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros High-end CPU performance Bright and beautiful display Great gaming experience Very competitive price Cons You can get better gaming performance with a faster GPU (of course) Some hot air blows out the sides Our Verdict The Alienware 16X Aurora has a high-end CPU, a fast GPU, and a beautiful display. You’d have a hard time finding comparable hardware at this price. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Alienware 16X Aurora Retailer Price $2,149 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices The Alienware 16X Aurora is a 16-inch gaming laptop with a screaming-fast Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, an Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU, and a bright, beautiful, and smooth display. A $1,999 is a good price for these specs. With the Aurora 16X, Alienware is delivering real value. Alienware isn’t just a high-end premium brand anymore. Alienware 16X Aurora: Specs The Alienware 16X Aurora is a 16-inch gaming laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU. This is a high-end laptop gaming CPU based on Intel’s Arrow Lake architecture, although Intel brands it an Intel Core (Series 2) — just like Lunar Lake and some Meteor Lake chips. Our $1,999 review unit had an Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU, although Alienware also offers this machine with RTX 5060 graphics. It had 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, but Dell offers this machine with up to 64 GB of RAM. Dell offers other configurations of this laptop starting at $1,549. Model number: AC16251 CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX Memory: 32 GB DDR5 RAM Graphics/GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 NPU: Intel AI Boost Display: 16-inch 2560×1600 IPS display with 240Hz refresh rate Storage: 1 TB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 1080p camera Connectivity: 2x USB Type-C (one Thunderbolt 4, one USB 3.2 Gen 2), 2x USB Type-A (USB 3.2 Gen 1), 1x HDMI 2.1 out, 1x Ethernet (RJ-45), 1x combo audio jack, 1x power in Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: IR camera for Windows Hello Battery capacity: 96 Watt-hours Dimensions: 14.05 x 10.45 x 0.92 inches Weight: 5.86 pounds MSRP: $1,999 as tested Aside from a reflective Alienware head on the lid, this laptop is all business and looks like it could be a workstation laptop. It doesn’t have extreme ‘gamer’ aesthetics. Alienware 16X Aurora: Design and build quality IDG / Chris Hoffman The Alienware 16X Aurora, with its “Interstellar Indigo” color scheme, looks deceptively like a black laptop from some angles, but the dark-blue-to-violet shades are visible at the right angles. Aside from a reflective Alienware head on the lid, this laptop is all business and looks like it could be a workstation laptop. It doesn’t have extreme “gamer” aesthetics. The 16X Aurora has an anodized aluminum lid and bottom cover, giving it a more premium feel — Alienware’s more budget-focused Alienware 16 Aurora just has the anodized aluminum lid. However, it’s not all aluminum — the area around the keyboard is matte plastic. Still, it feels good and looks good. It does pick up fingerprints more than I’d like, as you’ll see in some of the photos — that’s the main issue. The laptop is solid and the hinge action is great — it’s easy to open with one hand. Alienware 16X Aurora: Keyboard and trackpad IDG / Chris Hoffman The Alienware 16X Aurora has a full-size keyboard complete with a number pad. With 1.4mm of key travel, it feels good. It doesn’t have the wow factor of the snappy mechanical keyboard you’ll find in a high-end Alienware 16 Area-51 or the surprisingly hefty feeling keyboard with the higher actuation force you’ll get in a Razer Blade, but it works well. This laptop has a customizable backlighting, but it’s one zone: You can choose a single color to apply to your entire keyboard. The Alienware 16X Aurora includes a trackpad with a plastic surface. It’s fine — it’s a little on the small side and a glass trackpad would be nicer, but this works well. Alienware 16X Aurora: Display and speakers IDG / Chris Hoffman The Alienware 16X Aurora has a 16-inch 2560×1600 resolution IPS display with a 240Hz refresh rate and up to 500 nits of brightness. It’s a solid display with advanced features like Nvidia G-Sync for variable refresh rates. That high refresh rate makes the experience “buttery smooth” in games and on the desktop, and the high brightness combined with excellent color reproduction delivers a much better display experience than the lower-end Alienware 16 Aurora’s display. You’re getting a noticeably better display for your money here. While I’m often wowed by the vivid colors on OLED displays, this display delivers a beautiful picture. A high-end IPS display can look incredible, too, and this panel proves it. This isn’t a touch-screen display, so it doesn’t need the glossy coating touchscreen laptops tend to have. The matte display and its anti-glare coating combined with a high brightness means this laptop’s display does an unusually good job of minimizing reflections and glare.   I test every laptop’s speakers by playing Steely Dan’s Aja and Daft Punk’s Get Lucky. The Alienware 16X Aurora delivered decent sound quality, with a brighter, more detailed sound in Aja — the instrument separation was crisper than on the less expensive Alienware 16 Aurora I reviewed at the same time. Get Lucky had a fun sound. But, as always, it could use more bass — laptop speakers lack bass in general, and the better the rest of the speaker setup is, the more the lack of bass stands out to me from an audio quality standpoint. Alienware 16X Aurora: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The Alienware 16X Aurora has a 1080p webcam, and it’s significantly better than the 720p webcam found in the lower-end Alienware 16 Aurora. The image quality and color reproduction beat that lower-end hardware. For a gaming laptop, though, this is fine. Also, because there’s an NPU in this machine, you get access to Windows Studio Effects for fixing eye contact, blurring your background, and more. The dual-array microphone setup in this laptop sounds decent, but it isn’t up to the audio quality standard I’ve heard in business laptops where video conferencing is a major concern. The Alienware 16X Aurora features an IR camera for Windows Hello, so you can sign into Windows with your face. It works well. Alienware 16X Aurora: Connectivity IDG / Chris Hoffman The Alienware 16X has a good number of ports, and the only thing you might miss is an SD card reader. On the left, this machine has a USB Type-A port, Ethernet jack, and combo audio jack. On the back, there’s a second USB Type-A port, two USB Type-C ports (one of them is also a Thunderbolt 4 port), HDMI 2.1 out, and power-in port. You could nitpick — sure, it would be nice if both USB Type-C ports were Thunderbolt 4 ports — but this is a good setup. I always love to see ports — especially the power connection — on the back of the gaming laptop so peripherals get out of the way. Alienware includes Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 hardware in this machine, which is also good to see. The Wi-Fi worked well. Alienware 16X Aurora: Performance The Alienware 16X Aurora’s cooling system kept the system cool and the fans stayed at a reasonable volume level. Playing the latest big games like Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 and Doom: The Dark Ages, the keyboard stayed a little warm, but not too hot, and most of the hot air was propelled out of the back of the machine. Some hot air does come out of the sides of the laptop — not a lot, but ideally it would all be pumped out of the back and away from your mouse hand. With a high-end Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and Nvidia RTX 5070 graphics, this machine delivered excellent performance in those games — and the display delivered beautiful image quality, too. As always, though, we ran the Alienware 16X Aurora through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs. IDG / Chris Hoffman First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. With an overall score of 8,794, the Alienware 16X delivered incredible performance — edging out even the more expensive Alienware 16 Area-51 in this benchmark. It’s within the margin of error, but the high-end Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU here is doing work. 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 multithreaded score of 13,872 in this benchmark, we once again saw just how impressive this machine’s CPU is. 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 16X Aurora completed the encode in 477 seconds on average. That’s just under eight minutes. On this benchmark, the higher-end Alienware 16 Area-51 beat the 16X Aurora, despite both machines having the same CPU. I’d bet that’s thanks to the higher-end cooling setup on the more expensive Alienware laptop. 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 machines we review. With a 3Dmark Time Spy score of 13,342, the Alienware 16X Aurora’s Nvidia RTX 5070 graphics came in in the middle of the pack — a good ways ahead of the Alienware 16 Aurora with its RTX 5060 graphics but far behind Nvidia RTX 5080-powered machines. 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 183, the Alienware 16X Aurora delivered excellent performance. You likely won’t get better performance without going up to a laptop with an RTX 5080 or 5090. 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 53 in this high-end Metro Exodus benchmark, the Alienware 16X Aurora offered good performance even at these brutal graphical settings. Of course, it once again comes in behind laptops with higher-end GPUs. Overall, the Alienware 16 Aurora delivers incredible CPU performance thanks to its high-end CPU, but gaming laptops tend to be more GPU-constrained. You might be better off with a gaming laptop with a slower CPU and Nvidia RTX 5080 graphics, if you can find that as an option. The GPU is the bottleneck here — which is fine, but it’s not as high-end as the CPU. Alienware 16X Aurora: Battery life The Alienware 16X Aurora has a massive 96 Watt-hour battery, which is about as large as they’re allowed to get before the Transportation Security Administration won’t allow them on airplanes in the U.S. Many 16-inch gaming laptops include smaller batteries. While the hardware is power-hungry, that battery ensures you can squeeze more runtime out of your laptop when you’re away from an outlet. 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 16X Aurora lasted 407 minutes in this benchmark — that’s just under seven hours. In the real world, you’ll get a few hours away from an outlet. That’s fine for a gaming laptop — you’ll need to plug in for good gaming performance, anyway — but this isn’t the ideal machine if you want a gaming laptop that can also deliver long battery life away from an outlet. Alienware 16X Aurora: Conclusion The Alienware 16X Aurora is an impressive machine. At $1,999 for an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, an RTX 5070, and a display of this caliber, it’s serious value compared to what you’d pay for competing laptops with similar hardware — at retail price, it undercuts many similar laptops by a few hundred bucks. It’s a great experience, but some people might want a faster GPU for better gaming performance, an OLED panel, or a higher-end all-metal build quality. You’ll pay extra for touches like that, though. This is a mid-range laptop that delivers value and doesn’t feel like a budget machine. 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