In all the maddening volatility of the triple-T era (Trump, Tariffs, Trade war) I have been surprised by just how resilient and stable the laptop market has been. At least so far, anyways. Sure, Razer panicked and pulled down pre-orders temporarily for its new Blade laptops because of the Orange One's fiscal foibles, but it's still possible to buy new gaming notebooks for a normal price.
Case in point: the new MSI Vector 16 HX AI can be picked up today for just $2,500 with an RTX 5080 GPU inside it, and not a horribly compromised one either. MSI's Vector range of gaming laptops has reliably been one of its more affordable lines of notebooks, though that's regularly been more of a 'down the line' kinda thing than necessarily launching with a stellar price. That said, this Vector 16 HX is one of the cheapest RTX 5080-based gaming slabs you'll find on the market right now, and if you let it loose it will also deliver some of the highest frame rates, too.
