MSI announces the 'most powerful gaming laptop on the planet' in the form of the 300 W RTX 5090 Raider 16 Max HX
The PC gaming industry is now essentially a repeating cycle of product announcements generating an excitable 'ooh' followed immediately by a sigh of recognition: this isn't for me. Case in point is my reaction upon hearing about the "most powerful gaming laptop on the planet"—'ooh!'—followed by the immediate dual recognition that this will be very expensive and probably very loud and scarcely worth unplugging from the mains—'oh, yeah'.
It is undeniably impressive, however, that MSI is packing very powerful hardware in such a small form factor.
The company says about the Raider 16 Max HX and Raider 16 HX: "Don’t let its size fool you. The Raider 16 Max HX is the world’s first gaming laptop capable of delivering a massive 300W total system power. Under full-load conditions, it unleashes 175W to the RTX 5090 or 5080, while simultaneously feeding 125W to the Intel Core Ultra 200HX processor—making it the most powerful gaming laptop on the planet."
What's also impressive, and a welcome seeming trend for CES this year, is an element of modularity to these Raider laptops. It's not quite the complete modularity we've seen elsewhere, but here we're getting "an exclusive quick-access bottom panel" that "allows users to easily expand memory and storage without removing the entire back cover."
Apart from this, the Raider 16 HX laptops—judging from the specs sheets, it seems the 'Max' just designates the top-tier model, but non-Max ones can also come with a beefy RTX 5090, too—have 2.5K, 240 Hz, OLED displays. Which is, of course, a good pairing for the "most powerful gaming laptop on the planet."
I do of course wonder whether this will also be the most expensive gaming laptop on the planet. A big reason why our Andy rated the MSI Raider 18 HX AI A2XW so low in his review is that it's incredibly expensive. As in, over $4,000; that kind of expensive.
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And that one 'only' had an RTX 5080 inside. He did find it to be quieter than the Titan 18 HX, though, so perhaps sound won't be as big of an issue. Although we're working with a smaller form factor here, which will presumably mean more work for the fans to undergo to keep everything cool.
On that front, MSI explains: "MSI equips the Raider 16 Max HX with the all-new Cooler Boost Trinity with Intra Flow thermal system—featuring three fans, six heat pipes, five exhaust vents, and phase-change thermal compound."
At 2.6 kg, it's lighter than those 18-inch whoppers, but heavier than sleeker 16-inch gaming laptops like the Razer Blade 16. That laptop also offers 175 W of power to the RTX 5090 inside, but I suppose MSI's selling point here is that it's also giving 125 W to the Core Ultra 200HX at the same time. Which will be great for some productivity workloads, and also some more CPU-intensive games.
As for whether all that power will be worth the inevitably high price tag, we'll have to wait and see what it's like in practice.