The Titan Is Very Extra: Why the Titan’s Titan is so Exotic (for gaming laptops as halo laptops)
Everything about the Titan is very Extra, as its name implies it very well should be. I’d love to know who actually buys these kinds of halo laptops, which are simply not made for mere mortals and seem to be a bit of a dying breed — the days of laptops like the absurd Acer Predator 21 X are long gone now.
The GT77 HX was able to produce 250W, while the 2024 Titan is capable of 270W. That might be a fine compromise for the lovely Mini LED panel of the new Titan since it uses 16:10 aspect ratio compared to the last-gen’s 16:9 screen. The battery is still a four-cell Li-polymer setup with 99 watt capacity, but it needs a 400 watt brick for fast charging, compared to the previous 330 watt version.
The Titan 18 HX A14V: A Boat Anchor for a Games-Ready MSI Laptop and its Dual Core Graphics Cards
It has room for a lot of ports, including two Thunderbolt4 /usb-C ports and three Type- A ports, as well as a full-size SD card reader. While all of this costs an eye-watering $5,000, it also weighs a shoulder-tiring 7.94 pounds / 3.6kg. And like other new MSI laptops, it has AI-based performance profiles that promise to optimize settings based on whether you’re gaming or doing other tasks like video conferencing. 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 machine is meant to live in one spot and mostly play games as it gives its colorful peacock feathers of RGB 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.
The G14 and G16 are the same graphics cards from last year, but with some changes. The G14 can be configured with up to an RTX 4070, while the G16 goes up to the 4090. I am not worried about that, I am sure that we will be waiting for laptops with the 40-series Super GPUs and the design benefits of the Zephyrus before making a decision. The 40-series cards can be used in both laptops.
While these are far from final review-ready models, Asus seems to have this one ready for a knock out of the park, pending finalized pricing. (Asus declined to share exact pricing for the new models before publishing time.) The usability and feature set are excellent, and gaming performance seems very good. We will have to see how well they fare in the full reviews when they launch in February.
Port selection on both new Zephyrus laptops is more than adequate for such thin laptops (the G14 is 0.64 inches / 1.59cm at its thickest point, and the G16 is 0.69 inches / 1.64cm at the same). The G14 has one left-mounted USB 4 port (which you can use to charge at slower speeds), one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 on the right, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 (one on each side), HDMI 2.1, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a microSD card slot. The larger G16 is mostly the same, but its left-side USB port is Thunderbolt 4, its right-side USB-C also has Power Delivery, and its card slot is a full-size SD with UHS-II speeds.
I overheard some people at the press briefing that were against the laptop opting for a proprietary charge connector over a barrel plug, but I am fine with the slim and reversible power cord. I have used the universal serial bus for most of the time, and it has been great to use it when just doing work or browsing. The 180W and 240W power bricks can be kept out of harms way until they can be used for games.
While in Republic of Gamers land, the ROG Strix and Strix Scar have small updates given to them. The new Strix and StrixScar have 14th Gen Intel chips, which isup to the 14900HX. There are 16:10 QHD screens with a frame rate of 240Hz, and up to an RTX 4080 or 4090 graphics cards, with a range of configurations to choose from. They’re fairly beefy laptops, launching later in January, with the higher-end Strix Scar starting at $2,899.99 for a 16-inch and $2,999.99 for the 18-inch. But of course, it can be specced to the stars and back to prices upward of $4,000. (Asus did not share pricing for the ROG Strix before publishing time.)