I tested this beastly gaming laptop with flawless performance — but I'm obsessed with a different feature

Closeup of the Alienware Area-51 gaming laptop's RGB keyboard and RGB touchpad. There is a badge on the image that reads, "Editor's Choice Windows Central.".

Last year, I was blown away by the astounding performance of the Alienware m16 R2 gaming laptop (as seen in my Alienware m16 R2 review).

So, when I saw that the gaming laptop line had been rebranded back to its resurrected Area-51 naming convention this year, I knew I had to check the new offerings out. I was certain that the 16-inch would be a good laptop; I just wasn't sure if Alienware was going to be able to improve too much on the previous model.