MSI Stealth 18 HX AI review

Bigger is always better in computing. Just maybe don't try and tell that to the SFF guys with their Fractal Terras and neat cable routing. But in these terms the 18-inch gaming laptop is a desktop replacement beast; it's the largest form of laptop and a crazy idea that pushes against the idea of a portable computer actually being portable in the service of higher TDPs and more fans.

I mean, it is still portable. But only in the way that your desktop PC is portable if you pick it up and put it down somewhere else.

But of course they're usually pretty good fun to play with, as long as you've got a reinforced concrete desk nearby and don't try to use them on your lap. The heady combination of the weight and sheer amount of heat being forced out the bottom soon becomes an uncomfortable experience if you try and rest a desktop replacement anywhere organic.

MSI's Stealth 18 HX AI, however, does things slightly differently. It's a gaming laptop that wants to be taken seriously, that doesn't want to stand out any more than such an enormous slab of plastic and metal has to. It eschews much of the fancy lighting and flashy logos that are the usual costume in which gaming laptops drape themselves, and instead chooses a plain black chassis and a backlit keyboard.

The MSI logo on the lid lights up too, but it's not too offensive. "Slim. Sharp. Stylish" is MSI's tagline for the machine, suggesting that its looks rather than its rendering power is what matters, and if you want more of that go look at the MSI Raider HX AI (which is more expensive).

It's also slim, though that's definitely a relative term here. A fat boy like the MSI Vector 16 HX AI (cheaper than the Stealth) can be up to 28.5 mm thick, making the Stealth appear positively svelte at just 22 mm, whereas the Razer Blade 14 (cheaper but lower-spec in Dave's review) is just 16.2 mm at its thinnest point. Weight is also an issue: at a hair under 2.9 kg, the Stealth weighs as much as two Asus ROG Flow Z13s.

Luckily, it's about twice as good, especially in GPU tests. There's an RTX 5080 buried inside the Stealth, along with the same Core Ultra 9 processor every top-end gaming laptop is using this year: the Ultra 9 275HX which has 24 total cores split between 8P and 16E. It's a potent combination, as evidenced in all the other laptops that have chosen to use it, such as the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 and Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10. But those are out-and-out gaming laptops, with no attempt to blend in and be ‘stealth' models—they beat this MSI 18-incher in Cyberpunk 2077, in Baldur's Gate 3, and in many other ways you'll be able to explore using the charts on this page.

Why is that? Well, firstly the GPU is running at 150 W rather than the 175 W seen in other RTX 5080 laptops. The rest probably comes down to cooling. While the Stealth 18 has a very impressive heat dissipation system which includes a vapour chamber cooler and a pair of intraflow fans to exhaust the hot air from the back and sides.

There's a plastic ridge underneath the magnesium casing to raise it up from the table top a bit—another sign that it's not meant for use on your lap,as they're quite pointy—to improve airflow, and visible vents from which a hot wind (and a bit of a howl) blows when the processors are under load. It doesn't get significantly hotter than comparable machines (in fact its CPU results in Metro Exodus are actually cooler than others') but then it's not exactly pumping out the same number of frames per second, either.

This isn't to say it's a bad performer. It does well at 1080p in the PCG benchmark suite and can push even its 4K-adjacent native resolution up to 60 fps in many titles if you enable frame gen. The benefits of an RTX 50-series GPU are well-known, with multi-frame gen pushing those figures even higher, with 4x enough to get close to the screen's 120 Hz max in Cyberpunk with all its twiddly bits turned on.

So really there's very little to complain about regarding the Stealth's performance, but I suspect people are going to anyway, because bigger is always better… and that applies to numbers too. This is not a cheap machine, and if you can get better results from a similarly-specced laptop then why wouldn't you go for that alternative? The 18-inch form factor is most useful if you're not intending to hook it up to an external monitor, and you want every inch you can get from the built-in display. If you're going to use one of the best gaming monitors with your laptop, why not get something cheaper?

Luckily, the display is a very good one. MiniLED is rapidly becoming my favourite display technology, and I'm aware of what a total dork that makes me sound. My reasoning is that OLED, while excellent, has a couple of downsides that are perhaps not entirely universal, but which make me cross. The first is that they're quite reflective, making any usage in an environment with bright overhead lighting a trial. And as someone with sweaty bear paws in place of hands, I find that the way OLEDs collect smeary fingerprints to be unbearable.

An OLED touchscreen, therefore, is my nemesis.

MiniLED, on the other hand, is plenty bright and contrasty without these distractions. The Stealth's panel hits a huge 715 nits and can display 97% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, has a 16:10 4K-ish resolution, and that 120 Hz refresh rate. What's not to like?

Image 1 of 10

There's more. Thunderbolt 4 gives a lot of options for connecting fast peripherals and more screens, though a full-size HDMI 2.1 takes care of that too, and you even get a SD Express card slot to add more space for your game library. Take the back off, and the SSD is clearly exposed, potentially allowing a user upgrade if 2TB becomes a bit tight.

The Stealth's battery life is pretty low, at less than an hour and a half, so you'll need to carry the large power brick with you, adding extra weight, but really this isn't a portable computer, it's a desktop replacement that can be easily tidied away, the sort of gaming PC someone with out a lot of room might consider. It looks good, the performance isn't that far off the mark, and only its gargantuan price tag (the model reviewed here isn't even the top of the line one) should give you pause.