Subtlety is overrated, and MSI just proved that. The Taiwanese laptop maker has launched a major refresh, introducing more than a dozen new gaming laptops 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 not to upgrade this year.
So what’s actually new about these machines?
It’s Intel’s newly announced Arrow Lake-HX Plus chips, specifically the Core Ultra 9 290HZ Plus, that are serving as the catalyst for MSI’s new lineup. Other manufacturers such as Acer, Asus and Dell have already launched laptops with these chips. MSI is late to the game, but it’s at full capacity here.
Eight of MSI’s new 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. In addition, they have a wide range of powerful GPUs, from the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080 to the RTX 5090.
Overall, the Crosshair 16 Max HX is the first laptop to ship with Nvidia’s yet-to-be-released 12GB RTX 5070 laptop GPU. Meanwhile, the Raider 16 Max HX, which was introduced at CES 2026, delivers a combined system power of 300 W, of which 175 W comes from the GPU alone.
Should budget gamers even care?
Yes, absolutely, MSI has also refreshed the Crosshair 16 HX with relatively older 14th Gen Intel processors and RTX 5050/5060/5070 GPUs. The entry-level Cyborg 15 series returns with fairly accessible specifications.
Although MSI hasn’t announced pricing yet, the offering spans multiple segments, likely from mid-range to premium laptops. To me it looks like the range was launched under some pressure (from competition) as even I have difficulty keeping track of the models and their specifications.
