Subtlety is overrated, and MSI just proved that. The Taiwanese laptop maker has rolled out a sweeping refresh, unveiling more than a dozen new gaming laptops spread across its Cyborg, Crosshair, Raider, Stealth, and Titan lineups.
The models cover 15-inch, 16-inch, and 18-inch form factors, ensuring there’s something for every gamer or professional user, making it hard for buyers to run out of excuses for not upgrading this year.
So, what’s actually new inside these machines?
It is Intel’s newly announced Arrow Lake-HX Plus chips, specifically the Core Ultra 9 290HZ Plus, that acts as a catalyst for MSI’s new lineup. Other manufacturers, such as Acer, Asus, and Dell, have already launched laptops powered by these chips. MSI is late, but it’s here fully loaded.
Eight of the new MSI laptops, including the Raider 16 Max HX, Raider 18 Max HX, Stealth 18 HX, and Titan 18 HX, run on the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus chipset. Further, they feature a wide variety of powerful GPUs, ranging from the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080 to the RTX 5090.
Out of all, the Crosshair 16 Max HX is the first laptop to ship with Nvidia’s yet-to-launch 12GB RTX 5070 laptop GPU. Meanwhile, the Raider 16 Max HX, which was present at the CES 2026, delivers a combined system power of 300W, out of which 175W comes from the GPU alone.
Should budget gamers even care?
Yes, absolutely, MSI has also refreshed the Crosshair 16 HX with relatively older Intel 14th-gen processors and RTX 5050/5060/5070 GPUs. The entry-level Cyborg 15 series returns with quite accessible specs.
Although MSI hasn’t revealed pricing yet, the lineup spans multiple segments, likely from mid-range to premium laptops. To me, the lineup looks like it was launched under some sort of pressure (from competition), as even I’m having trouble keeping a count of the models and their specifications.
Ref: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/msi-unveils-a-barrage-of-laptops-with-up-to-rtx-5090-graphics-and-intel-arrow-lake-chips/
