Having a burst of power at your fingertips is a great feeling, especially when gaming, as we tend to lower our expectations of a gaming laptop. They usually do not have the full potential of a desktop graphics card, as laptops get a slightly underpowered and cut-down version.
The MSI Vector 16 HX gaming laptop houses an overpowering graphics card: theNVIDIAGeForce RTX 4080, which gets 12GB of VRAM but makes up for it by having a TGP of 140W. Currently,B&His offering this model for$1799instead of its original price of $2099, saving consumers $300.
MSI Vector 16 HX
This beast of a laptop comes with anIntel Core i9-14900HXas its brain and has a staggering boost clock of 5.8GHz.A 14th Generation Core i9 processorfuture-proofs the laptop without worrying about slowing down anytime soon. It gets32GB of DDR5 RAMrunning at 5600 MT/s and is user-upgradeable up to 96GB. For storage, a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD is installed with an expansion slot for another 1TB SSD.
This six-pound behemoth isn’t meant to be lugged around as it’s built like a tank, which is a good thing as the laptop is quite sturdy. The outer shell is made of metal, has a premium feel to it, and doesn’t include any sort of tacky RGB lighting on the back, giving it an understated look that a lot of consumers dig. The 16-inch QHD+ 2560 x 1600 IPS panel has arefresh rate of 240Hzand color accuracy of 100% DCI-P3. The bright screen of 495 nits is delightful to behold when consuming high-resolution content.
The graphics card powering the laptop is anNVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080with12GB of GDDR6 VRAMdrawing a TGP of140W. These specs are adequate for 1440p high refresh-rate gaming without any hiccups. Being an Nvidia GPU opens new possibilities to exploreDLSS, which is their AI-powered frame generation technology.
As ray-tracing is taxing on the GPU, enabling DLSS can significantly boost framerates to a much more playable situation. Even without AI frame generation, the GPU’s prowess in graphics rasterization is commendable, meaning the GPU is competent at handling complex graphics processing without any help from AI.
As for I/O, users get an SD card slot, a Thunderbolt 4 port, two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports that support DP 1.4, an HDMI 2.1 port, and two USB-A ports. The laptop comes with Wi-Fi 7 support, 2.5 GbE LAN, and Bluetooth 5.4. Even the RGB chiclet-style keyboard is made with gaming in mind by the folks at SteelSeries, which is clicky and tactile.
The 16-inch MSI Vector 16 HX packs all the right hardware for productivity and gaming and keeps the price tag comparable to a similarly configured desktop. Whether you want to runCyberpunk 2077without skimping on ray-tracing or casually kill hours onFC 2025, this laptop does it all without breaking a sweat. The laptop packs enough power for video and photo editors as well, making it an all-rounder for most users.
