My favourite hardware news stories lately have all followed a similar line of logic: 'Why? Well, why not?' But when it comes to the laptop MSI just unveiled as part of its 40th anniversary, I can't move past 'But why though?'
The sticking point for me is the Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition's ludicrous $7,000 price tag. Sure, you're getting an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU with a pretty face-melting 24 GB of GDDR7, plus an Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus processor. And, sure, some versions of the RTX 5090 will set you back a couple grand all on their own, but not usually the slimmer laptop kind. Anyway, 7,000 smackers is still a lot of money for the power.
I hate to say it but the oodles of SSD storage and the whopping 96 GB of DDR5 might have something to do with it (thanks, memory crisis). Hey, at least if you buy directly from MSI, you also get a free code for Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.
This very pricey gaming laptop also enjoys an 18-inch MiniLED screen, which features a maximum resolution of 3840×2400. The refresh rate is a not too shabby 120 Hz, but at this price point I was kind of expecting something fast enough to make my eyes roll back in my head.
Joking aside, I'm struggling to understand who this gaming laptop is really for, beyond an MSI super fan (or a scaly fan with deep pockets and terrible taste in dragon art).
It's far from the only spenny anniversary hardware we've seen this year. For instance, the Asus' ROG sub-brand celebrated two decades, launching a shiny, aluminium-dressed-up-as-copper motherboard back in May. The Astral ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 and a China-exclusive DRAM kit also got anniversary editions. Again, it's all a bit too rich for my blood, but I'll admit that those glistening gold designs are almost tasteful.
