MSI Titan 18 HX AI A2XW
At what point does a laptop stop feeling like a laptop? The MSI Titan 18 HX A2XW is such an absurdly powerful machine that the label feels woefully inadequate. Surely a gaming PC with this much gas in the tank should take the form of a glowing red monolith, you know? Something three feet tall and festooned with cords and cables. A PC this powerful should require two keys turned in unison, or at least a comically large lever being thrown. And yet, here we are. All of this obscene power crammed into an (admittedly pretty massive) laptop.
To be clear, my claims about massive power are all rooted in the specs of this device. MSI’s latest and greatest comes with an Intel® CoreTM Ultra 9 processor 285HX, an NVIDIA® GeForce RTXTM 5090 GPU, and 64GB of DDR5 RAM. The display is a 4K UHD+ 16:10 MiniLED with a 120Hz refresh rate. It’s also got a Cherry mechanical Per-Key RGB keyboard and a beefy 99.9Whr battery. Even the SSD on this model is enormous, with 5.56 TB of space available for your many game installs. This thing is the laptop equivalent of an F1 racecar, it’s downright ridiculous.
Colors So Bright You’ll Go Blind
I spent a couple of weeks installing various games. DOOM: The Dark Ages ran beautifully, Forza Horizon 5 defaulted to high/ultra/extreme settings, and Modern Warfare 2 was smooth as silk. Stable 60 frames all around, and the colors look incredible on this display. Avowed looked so crisp and bright I almost had to avert my eyes. Normally, I plug my laptops into a bigger monitor, but nothing I own is nearly as nice as this display. You can also switch from MSHybrid Graphics Mode to Discrete Graphics Mode for an extra boost in performance. I actually noticed a slight jump in stability while playing Forza Horizon 5 after doing this. The Titan 18 definitely has desktop-level power under the hood.
The Titan 18 is not only as powerful as a desktop, it’s also just as portable. That is to say, the battery is exactly as awful as every high-powered gaming laptop I’ve ever used. Which is totally fine! Running a 5090 at 4K presumably takes a crazy amount of power. I’d honestly rather have performance than any kind of portability. My laptops all just hang out in my office anyway, they’re not much for traveling under most ordinary circumstances. If nothing else, this beastly rig still takes up much less room than your average desktop gaming PC.
Powerful Not Portable
This rig gets pretty hot, but not unreasonably so. The fans sound like an F-35 taking off, but they also do the work they’re meant for. The temp gauge never crossed over into the danger zone, at least not that I ever noticed. This is still the one disadvantage most laptops have over proper gaming PCs. A good desktop rig can be as quiet as a church mouse. If you want to keep the Titan 18 from melting down, you’re gonna have to go loud. Since I usually game with headphones on, this doesn’t matter much to me. I assume anyone I’m sharing the space with will be less thrilled.
And of course, a graphics card/processor combo like this one is ready for basically any task you can think of. My usual activities, such as video editing and conversion, were a breeze. I mean, DaVinci Resolve is still a relentless memory hog, but this machine holds its own pretty well. Plus, this laptop, like all new computers now, is ready for whatever AI work you’re into doing. Personally, I don’t mess with that for any reason whatsoever. But you’ve got the option.
I’ve been a laptop guy for most of my adult life. They’re portable, light, and versatile. The MSI Titan 18 HX AI A2XW is almost none of those things. In fact, it barely qualifies as a laptop at all. But it’s obscenely powerful. This is a beastly rig that could give most dedicated gaming PCs a run for their money. I’m willing to trade away a lot of other conveniences for this kind of ridiculous power. Maybe you are too.
