Overview: The MSI Titan 18 is the most classic high-performance work and gaming laptop available today. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for most potential buyers, considering the price MSI is offering, the peculiarities of the case, keyboard, monitor, and the performance and cooling of this series compared to other options. In the review, we’ll go into all these details in detail. This is my review of the 2024 MSI Titan 18 HX performance laptop.
However, it’s still somewhat gaming-oriented. The illuminated dragon logo on the lid and RGB touchpad allow you to control the RGB within the scope, or turn it off completely for business/school environments. But there’s still some blue around the exhaust pipes on the back of the laptop, pointing to the gaming DNA of this series. In comparison, something like the Blade 18, ROG Scar 18, or Alienware m18 with all the RGB lights turned off looks cleaner and is better suited to these strict use cases.
However, you’ll likely need to use both hands to move it around, as it weighs 8 lbs / 3.6 kg in our test configuration. That’s about a pound heavier than the Scar, Blade, and even the Predator Helios 18. And don’t forget, it also comes with a 400W power module, which adds 2.5kg / 1.15kg of weight to your backpack. In reality, a 400W charger isn’t that heavy, but it’s still bigger and heavier than the 330W modern chargers offered by most competitors. Overall, the weight difference between the Titan+ Charger and other 18-inch laptops is about 1 to 1.5 pounds, with the only heavier option being the Alienware m18, which weighs in at about 10 pounds for the Laptop+ Charger.
Overall, this MSI Titan 18 HX is an excellent case in terms of materials, build quality and ergonomics, however, some design choices are controversial, such as the limited RGB on the one hand and the questionable combination of black and grey areas with blue accents on the other, which may make this laptop unacceptable in very strict office or school environments.
Keyboard and touchpad – Cherry switches and RGB lighting
In everyday use, the 3840 x 2400 pixel resolution is superbly sharp. Whether you’re viewing SDR or HDR content, everything looks beautiful with colors that pop and are incredibly vibrant. Plus, it’s super bright with a matte anti-glare finish, making it suitable for a variety of use cases, including bright office spaces. Hardware and Performance
Our test model was the top-spec configuration of the 2024-generation MSI Titan 18 HX codenamed Titan 18 HX A14VIG – based on an Intel Core i9-14900HX processor, 64GB of DDR5-4000 memory and 2TB of fast SSD storage. Dual graphics cards: An Nvidia RTX 4090 16GB dGPU and UHD iGPU are integrated into the Intel processor.
Before we continue, please note that the review unit was sent by MSI running software (BIOS E1822IMS.10E, GeForce 551.76 drivers) that will be available in early April 2024. It’s been a few months since this laptop hit store shelves, so we don’t expect any subsequent software changes at this time, but a new BIOS update was released in mid-April, and others will likely be released throughout the year. We also tested the Balanced PD Power mode, which also limits the CPU to only 55W.
Finally, in the Extreme profile, CPU power consumption on battery power fluctuated between 25-55W, with some fluctuating results during this test. Details below: CPU-wise, this laptop benefits from higher PL1/PL2 power settings than any other mobile computer. However, as mentioned before, this results in a score improvement of almost 1-3% compared to the i9-13980HX in the Scar 18 or last year’s Titan GT77. This is meaningless in real-world applications.
On the GPU side, this Titan 18 outperforms other RTX 4090 laptop configurations by a few percentage points, but that’s because the default OC setting in Extreme mode is +200 MHz core/memory, which is more aggressive than the GPU’s default OC setting; other laptops are usually limited to around +100 MHz.
This is the extreme performance mode, but given the weight and cooling of this laptop, the cooling and performance of the other profiles should be particularly interesting, which we’ll discuss later. Battery life
This Titan comes with a built-in 99.9Wh MSI Titan 18 laptop battery , which is the largest MSI Titan 18 battery capacity for a laptop .
This is the MSI laptop battery life we got on our review unit with the Nvidia GPU in Optimus mode, a screen brightness of about 120 nits (brightness about 50), and a default refresh rate of 120Hz . This implementation consumes more power than the other i9-14900HX models we tested, but this is not surprising considering that the 4K display is also important. Therefore, you can expect 3-4 hours of use per day on a single charge, which is a good thing since you won’t get the battery efficiency of the MSI Titan 18 battery on the Intel HX platform.
I should also add that this Titan 18 laptop comes with a 400W power brick. It’s a fairly chunky unit, weighing over 2.5 pounds, with a fairly short cable that connects to the power brick. You can’t leave the brick on the floor; you can only connect the cable to a table, and you have to take the charger from the table. In comparison, the latest 330W chargers offered by rival laptops tend to be smaller and have longer, more ergonomic cables. This laptop supports USB-C charging with up to 100W of power through one of the left-side USB-C slots. I didn’t test the general behavior of the USB-C power supply or whether USB-C passthrough is implemented, but I expect it won’t be.
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