Gaming laptop deals aren't what they used to be (stares daggers at RAMageddon), which is why I consider Woot's deal on a refurbished Alienware 16 Aurora gaming laptop with Nvidia's RTX 5050 a pretty good deal at $927 for new Woot customers (with code WOOTALIEN used at checkout). It costs $1,029 for returning Woot shoppers, which is a decent discount off the new $1,099.99 price at Alienware's site. Notably, this refurb unit includes a one-year Alienware warranty.
These days, most configurations with Nvidia's RTX 5060 GPU sail well over the $1,200 mark, which is just too much if you ask me. If you're in the market for a relatively speedy and well-designed machine, perhaps this one will be a good fit for your needs and budget. The Aurora has a 1600p 120Hz 16-inch screen, Intel's capable Core 7 240H processor, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 512GB SSD. Its RTX 5050 GPU likely won't be able to play most games at max settings, especially at its native 1600p resolution, but you should be able to get respectable frame rates and visual fidelity with some tweaking.
As for its condition, the company says “it's as close to new as you can get without technically being “new.†The 16 Aurora features two M.2 slots, letting you greatly boost its included 512GB SSD with other drives. It also has two SO-DIMM slots, so you can upgrade the 8GB x 2 (DDR5 5,600MHz) down the line to 16GB x 2 (it tops out at 32GB RAM). If you have other specs you want to dig into, check out Dell's comprehensive spec sheet within its support site.
