MSI Titan It’s not for the faint hearted person. This is an 18-inch giant that fits in the “desktop replacement” class of gaming laptops. This is especially for PC gamers who want not only the best performance, but also some sparkly ones.
It’s going to be difficult to find a gaming laptop with this many high-end features. It has a mini-driven display, mechanical keyboard and an invisible tactile touchpad, so there are no other 18-inch gaming laptops. That also means flashy prices.
Big and beautiful
The MSI Titan is huge. It is 1.26 inches thick at its largest point and weighs nearly 8 pounds. You read it correctly. 8 pounds. Gaming laptops are not known to be particularly portable, especially for laptops with an 18-inch screen, but the MSI Titan HX is almost entirely heavier than the Razer Blade 18.
But as you would expect from a $5,000 North laptop, it’s huge and well made. Although it’s not one of the machined aluminum like the Razer Blade 18, the magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis feels sturdy. The MSI Titan HX uses a thermal shelf on the back to make the laptop bigger, but also offers additional ventilation and port protrusion. The MSI keeps it rather minimalist with its totally black interior and silver trim, especially compared to the older version of this laptop. The invisible touchpad gives this even more modern feel. Still, the Razer Blade 18 and Alienware 18 Area-51 This is a design that I am more familiar with in my book.
Photo: Luke Larsen
Photo: Luke Larsen
Photo: Luke Larsen
At the rear there is a power jack, HDMI 2.1 port, and Ethernet. Beside some huge vents there are three USB-A 3.2s. The Gen2 port is a side port along with two Thunderbolt 5 ports, an SD card slot and a headphone jack. It’s almost every port you can imagine, but the Thunderbolt 5 port is an interesting part.
Intel has sent us some Thunderbolt 5 accessories to demonstrate the bandwidth the new specifications offer. Set up two 32-inch 4K 240-Hz OLED gaming monitors, all mounted via one USB-C cable. Despite the 240 Hz refresh rate, it’s magic to see these two expensive rate monitors come together in a daisy chain. In the past, the Thunderbolt 4 port was limited to two 4K monitors at 60 Hz.
Even if you don’t have two expensive gaming monitors to connect, the MSI Titan 18 HX comes with a very solid mini leading display. You can hit 414 nits brightness with SDR and it can hit twice the brightness of HDR. It’s not as good as an OLED gaming monitor, but it’s bright enough to notice the difference in HDR. The saturation of colour is also great.
Even if you don’t always want to play games at that native resolution, if it’s spread over an 18-inch screen, you’ll need that 4K resolution. It’s incredibly sharp. This is the best screen you can get on an 18-inch laptop as it is not yet common for this large screen size. MSI also offers an IPS version of this panel and a low resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 240-Hz IPS option.
Unfortunately, the speakers and webcams are not that premium. The 1080p camera is noisy and the six-speaker audio system is mediocre. The speakers are pretty much irrelevant, at least when it comes to the gaming.
I’ll trick that sleeve
Photo: Luke Larsen
The keyboard is unique and an absolute joy to type and play games. It is a modest mechanical keyboard from Cherry MX that is thick and tactile. This captures the feel of a laptop’s mechanical keyboard, unlike the laptop I’ve typed in. My only complaint is that many keys are not mechanical, such as arrow keys, number pads, and rows of functions. Before I knew it, it was a bit harsh.
