The Titan 18 HX A14V: A Shipyard of a Gaming Laptop with a Game-Machine-Like Trackpad
The Titan’s illuminated trackpad is the only unique feature that is found on most gaming laptops. It’s a small sight to behold up close, as the entire front deck of the laptop is a clean sheet of matte-finished glass with the trackpad lighting up in the middle. It’s certainly a look, and it uses MacBook-like haptics to maintain a clicky feel when you press it. It was fun and silly and lands in the part that says, “I know nobody needs this.” I am glad it exists. If you are going to invest $5,000 on a gaming laptop, it should offer a bit of flair and the features to back it up.
Intel’s new 14th Gen Core i9 14900HX processor is part of the Titan 18 HX, which features an 18-inch Mini 4k display with 3840 x 2400 resolution and 120h refresh, an RTX 4080 or 4090 graphics card, and up to 128
Being such a beefy laptop, it has room for plenty of ports, with two Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C ports, three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, HDMI 2.1, and a full-size SD card reader. It costs an eye-watering $5,000 but also weighs a hefty 7.84 pounds and 3.6 kilograms. Like other newMSI laptops, it has a performance profile that is influenced by whether you’re doing other tasks like video conferencing or gaming. Though, I expect almost nobody buying this behemoth is going to do much outside of play games with it and won’t be moving it around. This desktop replacement machine is supposed to mostly live in one spot and play games as it lets the colorful peacock feathers of the lighting shine.
MSI is debuting a bunch of new laptops at CES 2024, but none are quite as over the top as the Titan 18 HX A14V, a boat anchor of a gaming laptop that costs as much as a beater car and has one of the coolest (or most garish, depending on your preference) trackpad designs I’ve ever seen.
Intel has not offered any comparisons to the 13th Gen chips. When we reviewed the 14th Gen chips, we found that they were largely a refresh of name and nature, but had not enough performance to beat the best desktop gaming processor. We will have to wait on reviews to see how Intel does on mobile.
Much like the desktop versions, Intel is bumping the core count on the Core i7 variant. The Core i7-14700HX processor now comes with 20 cores in total (eight performance cores and 12 efficiency cores). That’s four more efficiency cores than the 13th Gen Core i7 model and should improve multithreaded applications and game performance.
Intel has chosen to compare its latest Core i9-14900HX with AMD’s Ryzen 9 7945HX — the first mobile processor to feature AMD’s 3D V-Cache. At 1080p, Intel’s i9-14900HX beats the 7945HX in most of Intel’s tests, with the exception of Horizon Zero Dawn, Cyberpunk 2077, and Red Dead Redemption 2.