The 11 best Windows laptops for 2026, tested by us
The Alienware 16X Aurora with Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card is my favorite gaming laptop for most people. It’s a truly solid mid-range that offers exceptional performance for the price, an incredible 240Hz matte display, and a dream keyboard. It’s also not particularly flashy, so if you don’t want a machine that looks like a stereotypical gaming laptop, go for it (although its noisy fan will probably give it away).
Note: The Alienware 16X Aurora 2026 will have an anti-glare OLED display and new Intel Core Ultra 200HX processors. It will be available in the first quarter, but we don’t know its price yet.
The 16X Aurora offers surprisingly good performance for a laptop that costs $2,000 as tested. Its Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 19,774 means it’s the third fastest laptop we’ve ever tried after the $3,600 Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 OLED (20,369) and the $3,650 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M4 Pro chip (22,758). That’s not a huge surprise, considering the 16X Aurora I tried came with a new, high-end Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, but hey, so does this Lenovo model. You get comparable punch for a fraction of the cost.
In 3DMark’s TimeSpy benchmark, which we run on gaming laptops to measure their graphics performance, the 16X Aurora achieved a score of 14,023. This is the fifth best score in our database, and 15% better than the score of the Alienware m16 R2 with a latest generation RTX 4070 graphics card. (It’s its predecessor and our previous top pick in this category.) Suffice to say, AAA games works very well on it. We tried RTX 5080 gaming laptops and they scored at least 20,837 – that’s a big jump – but they cost at least $3,400.
The downside to this power is that the 16X Aurora runs loud and warm. Its keyboard and the vent above it were always a bit toasty in my testing, even when I was just using the laptop to browse the web. Plug and Play Cyberpunk 2077 made the fans roar, even though its surface never developed any real hot places, so I guess they were doing their job. Unplugging the 16X Aurora significantly reduces fan noise, but the problem is that the machine doesn’t last very long on battery power. When I had it run our CG test with its dedicated GPU and the RGB keyboard backlight turned off, it died after five hours and 40 minutes. (Enabling both features will drain it much faster.) You’re kind of in a bind: either learn to plan your gaming sessions around its charging cycles, or invest in an amazing pair of noise-cancelling headphones.
On a more positive note, I have no major issues with the design of the 16X Aurora. I don’t think it’s very controversial, as gaming laptop aesthetics can sometimes be. It’s bathed in a dark navy blue color called “Interstellar Indigo” and its only accent is an iridescent Alienware logo on its lid. Its top and bottom panels are made of smooth aluminum; it retains fingerprints but has an otherwise premium feel. My hands hovered over its clickable island-style keyboard, which includes a number pad. Its touchpad is plastic like the rest of its keyboard, but it felt nice and smooth. (I’ll mention that it’s off-center, which might bother some people.) Its webcam is grainy garbage, but that’s no big deal. Anyone doing serious streaming on this thing will buy a separate webcam.
My absolute favorite component is probably the Aurora 16X’s screen. It has a 240Hz refresh rate, a sharp 2.5K resolution, vibrant colors, and best of all, a matte finish. I haven’t seen a laptop screen this matte since I tried the Dell XPS 13 (RIP), and I think it makes for a really comfortable and enjoyable viewing experience.
Like most gaming laptops, the 16X Aurora is bulky and heavy. It weighs almost six pounds on its own, and its 280W charger adds two more. Plan to park it on a desk.
