This is not a drill. It's also not the MSI Vector 16 HX AI we usually recommend as the cheapest RTX 5070 Ti gaming laptop money can buy, as it's almost always on discount. This is the non-AI version, which means you get a fire-breathing 16-core 32-thread AMD Ryzen 9 Dragon Range CPU at the helm instead of an NPU-equipped Intel chip. Oh, and it's $1,299 at Walmart right now.
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It's also got a 240 Hz 1200p display, which is perfectly matched to its super-chonky internal hardware. Sure, 1200p sounds like a low resolution when compared to some of the 1600p and 1800p laptops you'll find on the market, but it'll still look great for games in a 16-inch form factor.
It's also not a huge amount of pixels for the RTX 5070 Ti to push, which means you'll be able to take advantage of that stratospheric refresh rate for a seriously smooth gaming experience.
So, why's it so cheap? Well, best as I can tell the only thing really letting the spec down is the RAM, which is 16 GB of DDR5-5200. That's a bit pedestrian, and while you can upgrade it with ease, DDR5 (and in fact, virtually all RAM right now) is nowhere near as affordable as it was a few months ago.
Still, 16 GB is fine to get started with, and while I'd like to see some faster stuff installed (especially when paired with such a monstrous CPU), it's really not going to hold your gaming performance back by any great degree—as long as you don't have too many background apps running in most games.
Plus, this machine's got a proper 1 TB SSD. We've seen the Vector 16 HX AI listed for very reasonable cash with a mere 512 GB on board, but at least here you should have room for a Windows install and a fair few games. SSD drives also haven't been hit as hard as RAM when it comes to price rises, so I'd be very tempted to put the saved cash towards a cheap 2 TB drive while I was at it.
Other downsides? It's got the same chassis as the AI-branded version, which is a bit plastic-fantastic, and the fans can be very loud in performance mode, although you can back that down to Balanced in the MSI software without sacrificing much performance.
Other than that, this machine is a genuine winner, and for the money it's making some of our other cheap gaming laptop deals look rather silly. I'd imagine it'll fall to this price again when Black Friday kicks off proper on November 28, but in the meantime, this is an early deal I can absolutely stand behind.
1. Best overall:
Razer Blade 16 (2025)
2. Best budget:
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen 10
3. Best 14-inch:
Razer Blade 14 (2025)
4. Best mid-range:
MSI Vector 16 HX AI
5. Best high-performance:
Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10
6. Best 18-inch:
Alienware 18 Area-51
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