Gigabyte Aorus and MSI Titan laptops eat your heart out: This nearly 10 pound gaming laptop mod is even chonkier and has all the power of, er, a PS5

The BBook AI Original Edition side on. — (Image credit: PenBar)

As a gaming laptop reviewer I've seen my share of unreasonably fat laptops but this new PlayStation 5 gaming laptop mod really takes the biscuit. All of the biscuits, it looks like. In fact, I'm not exactly sure how you can class it as a portable gaming machine at all. Yet here we are.

There was me thinking this was the era of gaming handhelds, then PenBar posts this massive, 3D printed retro gaming laptop that looks like it could take my old DVD player in a fistfight. Still, it's a gorgeous little passion project that deserves some attention, so here's the BBook AI Original Edition—yes, it's really called that—in all its glory (via TechSpot).

At over 31 mm thick and with a 17-inch panel, the BBook AI Original Edition is chonky as all heck. It weighs around 9.5lb/4.3kg, which is even heavier than some of the mightiest RTX 40-series gaming laptops of today. It even outweighs the new Gigabyte Aorus 17X and the abhorrent MSI Titan 18 HX, a pair of notorious gaming laptops requiring a crane just to move rooms. The real question is, what could this thing possibly be packing to warrant that level of poundage?

Well, you're looking at a full-sized keyboard and a 4K IPS panel, though the screen is locked to a 60 Hz refresh rate. Otherwise, you're getting exactly the same hardware as the standard PlayStation 5. Granted it's a few pounds lighter than the original PlayStation even with the screen attached, though there's one more slight drawback that keeps it from being portable. The BBook AI's designer has opted to do away with a battery altogether, which sort of negates the point of it being a laptop if you ask me.

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The BBook AI Original Edition. — (Image credit: PenBar)

Aside from that, it's said this thing kicks up a fuss when running at full power. With a hairdryer-matching 71.3 decibels of noise it's not going to be great for a quiet gaming session while your significant other is asleep.

The BBook AI isn't available to purchase, but its suggested price is in the region of $2,748. A bit expensive for a laptop of its performance caliber, then, but there's of course the artisan mod premium on top of the components and materials. That said most of the best gaming laptops do at least come with a battery, even if it is generally unlikely that you'll get more than an hour of gaming out of it.

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Having been obsessed with game mechanics, computers and graphics for three decades, Katie took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni and has been writing about digital games, tabletop games and gaming technology for over five years since. She can be found facilitating board game design workshops and optimising everything in her path.