The former Cook Islands Prime Minister and Pacific Islands Forum secretary-general rejoins the ruling party of Prime Minister Mark Brown, who continues as party leader. Read...

The prime minister says the public still have plenty of time to get enrolled to vote despite scrapping same-day enrolment for elections. Read...

Reports say Attorney-General Judith Collins has found 100,000 people could be disenfranchised by the changes. Read...

Sources say new model combines o3 reasoning with general GPT capabilities. Read...

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. That’s very impressive coming from a brand like Alienware that’s historically been more high-end, especially with prices climbing all around. Read...

The United States is pushing for domestic manufacturing, and by “pushing,” I mean throwing markets into chaos with tariffs against specific countries and products decided seemingly at random. But how much will computer chips, probably the most complex and in-demand general production item on the planet, cost to make stateside? AMD’s CEO has an answer, or at least a guess. Dr. Lisa Su said that chips produced at the new fabrication facility in Arizona will be “more than 5 percent but less than 20 percent” more expensive compared to Taiwan, speaking to AI industry leaders, government officials, and press in Washington DC. Su elaborated that the extra expense is worth it to diversify the incredibly complex supply chain, reports Bloomberg. The Arizona plant is owned by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC, the global giant of chip fabrication that partners with essentially every major cutting-edge chip designer for at least some of its output. Billions of dollars are being poured into a US push for domestic semiconductor output via the CHIPS Act, with the Arizona fab being the largest. TSMC Arizona Fabs is currently outputting hardware, but won’t be fully completed until 2026. Other American chip fabs are planned for New York, Texas, Idaho, Ohio, and other locations, from corporations including Intel, Samsung, and Micron. 5-20 percent more expensive than the established manufacturing in Taiwan and other countries is a rather general figure…and one that could be easy to fudge for Dr. Su by leaving out some crucial details. Semiconductor manufacturing is a mind-bogglingly complicated business, with new fabrication plants taking years of development, to say nothing of the process of designing, testing, and finally rolling out new chip designs. It’s also a cutthroat competition between corporations and the governments that want to host them. For a full and authoritative breakdown, be sure to check out PCWorld’s recent interviews with Dr. Ian Cutress. At the Hill and Valley Forum, AMD both courted government officials including U.S. president Trump, and tried to put on a brave face to competitors. The biggest of those is undeniably Nvidia, which has rocketed to the top of the tech industry on years of growth selling chips to the AI industry. AMD is also making good on the AI boom, but is notably behind the 800-pound gorilla. Both corporations are trying to create favorable conditions by lobbying US politicians, crucially scoring tax breaks and favorable exceptions to export restrictions for countries like China. Read...

Nope, it’s not just you: Reports of Google Assistant strugglng to perform even basic smart home commands have been surging in recent weeks, and now Google is admitting that something’s amiss.  The lead executive for Google’s Home and Nest division tweeted on X that he’s heard the complaints “loud and clear” and revealed that his team is “actively working on major improvements.”  “I want to acknowledge the recent feedback about Google Assistant reliability on our home devices,” said Anish Kattukaran, the director of product management for Google Home and Nest. “I sincerely apologize for what you’re experiencing and feeling!”  Kattukaran’s assurances come after a steep rise in complaints about Google Assistant on Google’s Nest speakers and displays. Some users have been reporting that their Assistant routines have stopped working, while others say their Assistant-enabled devices have lost contact with smart lights, fail to play Spotify playlists, or can no longer control their Chromecast streaming devices with voice commands.  “We hear you loud and clear and are committed to getting this right – and making sure we have a long-term solution that provides better reliability and capability,” Katturkaran promised.  Kattukaran’s statement on X come during a turbulent time for Google Assistant, which is gradually being phased out to make way for Gemini.  Google kicked off a test of Gemini on Google Nest speakers late last year, before announcing in March that a “new experience powered by Gemini” will soon replace Google Assistant on Google’s smart devices.  In the meantime, Google has been quietly shedding features from Google Assistant and dropping support for some key Nest smart products, including its first- and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats. Google has also discontinued its Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide alarm and Nest x Yale Lock and handed off the development of further devices in those product categories to third parties.  Of course, Google isn’t the only company facing a difficult transition period for its voice assistants. Alexa is in the middle of a glacially slow rollout of its AI-enhanced Alexa+, with mixed success. Meanwhile, Apple’s rumored smart hub has been reportedly delayed until next year due to speedbumps with Siri’s AI makeover.  In any event, Google has been promising big things for Google Home in the fall, including new devices and—presumably—this “new experience powered by Gemini” that we’ve been heading about. Sounds good, but at the rate things are going for Google Assistant and Google’s Home efforts in general, these promised autumn improvements couldn’t come a moment too soon. Read...

Windows Security is not the same across Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft’s built-in security suite protects against online and offline threats in both operating systems, but Windows 11 gets extra features. Not that most people know about it—few users keep up with the latest additions to background protections. So Microsoft has taken steps to get more use out of a particular Windows 11 exclusive—Smart App Control. Smart App Control screens apps, analyzes them via Microsoft’s cloud security service, and determines if they’re safe. It works broadly across all programs too, whether installed directly by a user or via the Microsoft Store app. As a supplement to the antivirus, firewall, and other protections in Windows Security, it provides an additional layer of defense against compromised executables and malware.  And as of January 2025, Windows 11 can automatically start Smart App Control in an audit mode, where it monitors your usage to see if you’re a good candidate for the feature. (Some developers and gamers run programs that Smart App Control can interfere with.) If all’s well after 30 days, then it will automatically switch on. But this security feature has one wrinkle—only clean installations of Windows 11 behave this way. For most people, that equates to when you initially begin using a new PC. This Windows 11 PC will need to be reset in order to turn on Smart App Control.PCWorld So, if you’ve just bought a laptop or desktop, you should open Windows Security after you first boot up. Head to App & browser control, then verify that Evaluation mode is selected. Pretty sure Smart App Control won’t conflict with your usual apps? You can also jump straight to turning the mode fully on. If Smart App Control is set to off on your PC already, you can still activate it. You must reset Windows—but a full clean wipe isn’t necessary. You can do the version that lets you keep your apps and data. Just make sure to back up your system to ensure you don’t lose any of your files. Microsoft has sound reasoning for allowing only clean installs to use Smart App Control—it better ensures the screening process begins on an uncompromised system. But this decision makes Windows 11 security even more convoluted—and security in general is already a muddle, thanks to the explosion of scams, phishing attempts, malware, and other attacks in the last couple of years. Using a password manager, antivirus, and keeping your software up to date is now very much the bare minimum. Read...

One of the handier features on new cars is the ability to remotely unlock and start them. Microsoft is adding the opposite — the ability to remotely lock your PC — to its Windows toolkit. Windows Central is reporting that it’s seeing an update to the Microsoft Link to Windows app on Android, whose latest update adds the ability to remotely lock your PC, even if you’re not nearby. As the site notes, Windows already allows you to automatically lock your PC when you walk away, so it basically uses your phone’s Bluetooth connectivity as a “fence” of sorts. Go beyond that fence and Windows can lock your PC as a protective measure. If you don’t have that feature turned on, the Link to Windows app update allows you to manually lock your PC, especially if you’re going to be unexpectedly delayed. Windows Central’s tests of the new app show that Microsoft is reorganizing some of Link to Windows’ functions in a more organized interface, too. In general, the interaction between your Android phone and Windows has been relatively one-sided. On a PC, the Phone Link app provides an interface to share files, photos, texts, and more between your PC and the phone. The Link to Windows app has traditionally been pretty rudimentary, simply allowing you to specify whether you want Windows to be able to share certain files or connect to it as a hotspot. Now, it sounds like Microsoft is beefing up its Android app, and the ability to remotely lock your PC sounds like a definite improvement. Look out for version 1.25071.165 or higher in the app to trigger the new feature. Read...

For me, the biggest difference between a “gaming” mouse or keyboard and a regular one is the software. Gaming accessories need a lot more customization options, and preferably a tool that lets you change settings automatically for each game. But mouse maker Endgame Gear distributed a little something extra with its mouse software: a remote access trojan. Upon downloading the official software tool for the OP1w 4K V2 mouse (catchy), directly from Endgame’s website, some Reddit posters discovered that it was packing a remote access trojan that triggered multiple virus scanners, but notably not Windows Defender. Other Reddit users on the Mouse Review subreddit discovered other Endgame installers with different malware packages, as reported by German security site Igor’s Lab. Investigations found that the Endgame site itself had likely been compromised sometime on or after July 2, though clean versions of the relevant mouse software had been replaced by July 17. Endgame Gear has been notably quiet about how malware was posted to its own official download repository. One vague statement on a Discord server after the (apparently correct) file was re-uploaded is all that’s been issued so far, with no public-facing messages on either the company website or the Reddit thread where the problems were first discovered. Endgame customers are, in a word, pissed, and it’s hard to blame them. Igor’s Lab and Reddit users note that if the Berlin-based manufacturer (Pro Gamersware GmbH) has discovered a malware infection with access to user data, it could be in violation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by withholding full disclosure. “From what I can tell, EndgameGear has not addressed this publicly, which is incredibly irresponsible,” says /u/Admirable-Raccoon597, the original poster. “The malicious ZIP file was silently replaced with a clean version, which clearly shows they were aware something was wrong.” Read...