
Let me start off this review with something that became immediately obvious when I pulled this laptop from the box: The MSI Raider 18 HX AI is a hefty boi. A chungus. A honking, chonking, slab of a gaming laptop.
In a world where laptops like the Razer Blade 16 and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 are redefining what it means to own a portable powerhouse of a gaming machine, the Raider 18 HX sits distinct from its similarly-powered brethren. It's a titanic 3.6 kg slice of hardware that appears to come from a different universe—never mind era—of PC hardware.