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MSI announces the 'most powerful gaming laptop on the planet' in the form of the 300 W RTX 5090 Raider 16 Max HX

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Most powerful, so presumably most expensive, too?

An MSI Raider 16 Max HX B2W gaming laptop on a swirly background.
(Image credit: MSI)

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.

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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.

The MSI logo on the bottom of the screen of the MSI Raider 18 HX AI A2XW

This is last year's MSI Raider 18 HX AI A2XW. (Image credit: Future)
CES 2026

The CES logo on display at the show.

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