The Titan line of laptops from MSI are the pinnacle of their ultra-high-end laptop range, and the MSI Titan 18 HX AI (A2XW) is the king.
Powered by top of the line specs, including up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX processor and up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, the MSI Titan 18 HX AI is absolutely geared towards taking gaming to a new level for laptops.
There’s also a massive 18” Mini LED display, promising fast response and colour accuracy and the unit comes with a large Cherry Mechanical Per-Key RGB keyboard by SteelSeries which includes a numeric keypad.
This doesn’t come cheap, with models of this fully specced up system priced at up to $10,899.
Of course we’re not going to let a price tag get in the way of a little lot of fun, so let’s see how it went.
To say the MSI Titan lives up to its name in terms of design is an understatement. The system includes a massive 18”Mini LED display, and though MSI have used a magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis to cut weight, it still weighs in at a decent 3.6kg.
That larger display allows for a lot more to be included not just under the hood – or hanging out the back like a lot of gaming laptops – but all around the laptop.
The system includes a spacious Cherry mechanical gaming keyboard by SteelSeries which features per-key RGB which you can tune through the SteelSeries GG app which comes pre-installed.
The keyboard itself is a dream to type and game on. It’s responsive, with great feedback to the switches when you press them. It does seem a little louder than traditional keyboards which you’d expect, but it has a nice, though not overly large amount of key travel.
The large display allows it to be nicely spaced with the numeric keypad on the end not feeling cramped.
The RGB lighting extends to the massive touchpad which sits centred on the lower deck below the keyboard. The RGB lighting serves to light up the touchpad which has no physical border, with the entire lower half a single piece.
The SteelSeries GG app can also control the lighting – even making it multi-coloured – with several preset effects which include the keyboard including an audio visualiser.
The touchpad has haptic feedback which works decently well, giving you single and double click feedback – though like many gamers, you’ll probably just plug a mouse in straight away.
The system has plenty of connectivity, with USB Type-A and Type-C ports, including dual Thunderbolt 5 ports supporting DisplayPort and Power Delivery 3.1 and offering some fast data transfers if you have the right drives.
There’s also HDMI out supporting up to 8K at 60Hz, or 4K at 120Hz if you want to use your own display.
If you’re after a fast connection for online gaming, you can choose between the WiFi 7 support on-board, or the 2.5G RJ45 port in the back.
The base of the laptop includes what MSI calls ‘3D Cooling stands’ which aid in airflow to the laptop improving air intake to the internal cooling system which includes a vapor chamber, with dual internal fans and four exhausts located on the rear – which feature sporty blue slash highlights.
The display is the dominating feature of the Titan 18 HX AI. MSI has used a UHD+ resolution MiniLED panel offering ‘IPS-level’ viewing angles. It’s a great display, with excellent colour reproduction and comes with VESA DisplayHDR 1000 certification and support for 100% DCI-P3 gamut.
The panel works well indoors or out, with great brightness levels up to 1000 nits and 2 million to 1 contrast ratio. The display has no touch support leaving MSI free to use a matte finish to cut down on glare.
There’s some bezel around the display, which includes a FullHD resolution Windows Hello compatible IR webcam at the top, which also includes a physical privacy shutter for when you don’t want it used.
On the audio front, you get a 6-speaker setup including dual down-firing woofers on the base of the laptop, and quad 2W upfiring drivers tuned by DynAudio placed at either end of the keyboard.
The audio is decent, with a fairly good depth of sound thanks to the down-firing woofers, though it’s not quite as good as we’ve seen on some other higher-end gaming systems.
You can tune the audio using the Nahimic audio app which includes pre-sets for Music, Gaming, Communication, Movie or Smart. You can set your own profile with a tunable EQ.
The review unit sent across includes an Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX ‘Arrow Lake’ processor with 64GB (32GB*2 DDR5-6400) RAM and 6TB of storage – in a combo of ‘Super RAID’ with PCIe Gen5 + Gen4 SSDs – with the option for up to 4 SSDs if you want to update down the track.
It’s a gaming laptop, so the showpiece is the 24GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX5090 Laptop GPU which absolutely eats up anything you throw at it.
The laptop uses what MSI call their OverBoost Ultra Technology which combines the total performance of laptop and GPU to bring a total of 270W of power.
That’s a lot of power and it generates some heat and noise, with the system hitting 73.9dB around the back at the exhaust on Performance Mode while under load, or a more comfortable 45dB in front of the display – similar to a desk fan on low-speed.
The noise is driven by the dual fans on the base of the laptop, pulling in vast amounts of air for the vapor chamber. MSI have included an additional heatpipe to aid in cooling the new Gen5 SSDs to drive even more performance.
The MSI Center (sic) software lets you control your hardware, with the option to change modes between Extreme Performance, Balanced and Eco/Silent – or use the on-board MSI AI Engine to balance your load, as well as your power settings.
You can also overclock your GPU in MSI Center, in the settings for Extreme Performance mode settings if you want.
As far as the actual performance goes, it’s fantastic. 3D or video rendering, gaming, playing movies, anything you can think of, the laptop eats it up. The combination of Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX/NVIDIA RTX5090, 64GB of 6400 DDR5 memory and Gen4/5 SSDs in Raid0 just makes this sing.
Games like Cyberpunk and Crysis running at full settings still sat at a respectable 50fps, but drop the resolution down to a more pleasant 1920×1200 and you can really see the performance
As usual, we threw it at 3DMark where it performed quite well against the competion.
The laptop includes a massive 99.9Whr 4-Cell Lithium-Polymer battery, with a 400W brick charger included in the box.
In terms of battery life, it comes down to what you’re doing. Using the MSI Titan 18 HX AI as an office machine, I got around three hours with the display around 50% brightness. Throw me into some Crysis or Cyberpunk and the battery life effectively halved down to around an hour to an hour and a half, with the last 10% quite rough in terms of frame-rate.
As an interesting aside, the 99.9Wh battery is the largest you can take on a flight without airline approval – so, it’s definitely packed to the absolute gills.
On the charging side of things, the 400W brick is, like many gaming laptops, massive. It’s also not what I’d call ‘fast-charge friendly’, with the laptop charging around 1% per minute initially before slowing down and taking almost three hours to fully charge to 100%.
The laptop comes with Windows 11 Pro 25H2 pre-installed with support through to October 2027, though you’ll be in line for the 26H2 release later this year.
As far as pre-installed ‘bloatware’ the TItan 18 HX AI is surprisingly clear. There’s not even the usual Norton/McAfee we usually see. The only apps pre-installed are utilities you need, Intel utilities for the WiFi, SteelSeriesGG for the RGB, NVIDIA for your GPU and updates.
You do get the usual Microsoft Office 365 offers, and the Xbox app comes along with the system – but it does include a month’s free trial of Game Pass.
The shining star of the MSI laptop experience is the MSI Center software. Like Lenovo’s Legion, ACER’s Predator Sense and ASUS’ Armoury Crate software, MSI Center is your key to controlling your software experience on your laptop.
Straight up, MSI Center gives you stats on your machine, temps, fan speeds, clock speeds on CPU/GPU and more. It also lets you set the performance profile.
MSI gives you three – Extreme Performance, Balanced and Eco/Silent, or fast, medium and slow to put it in very basic terms. The Eco/Silent option offers the best overall battery life, though another option – MSI’s AI Engine, will automatically recognise a number of scenarios you use your PC in and then adjust things – including performance, sound effects, display mode, and keyboard backlight – to optimise performance and battery life.
One thing I have to give MSI a hat tip on is their theming for MSI Center which includes a Dark Mode – hat tip to you.
The MSI Titan 18 HX AI is a hell of a laptop.
If you’re after a desktop replacement, without the bulk of a large tower and monitor but with similar performance, or just want to be able to pack it away when not in use, this is a gaming laptop you want to consider.
In terms of pricing, at a time when we’re seeing GPU, RAM and SSD pricing going through the roof thanks to various tech interests <cough>AI</cough> – the concept of a ,000 gaming laptop is something we need to come to terms with if you’re serious about gaming.
There are definitely cheaper gaming options, but if you are looking at the cutting edge, this is where it’s at.
The keyboard is excellent, there’s so much power it’s astonishing how well games launch and run and you have a plethora of connectivity options available.
The battery life is about what you’d expect from a gaming laptop, which is to say it’s ok, but definitely not an all-day device, but if you want the best out of your laptop you’ll mostly be using it plugged but it’s something to consider.
As it stands, if you are a dedicated gamer and want the best. The MSI Titan 18 HX AI (A2XW) is definitely one to check out.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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