The MSI Crosshair 16 Max HX E2W is in many ways the polar opposite of the other MSI laptop I recently tested, the Stealth 16 AI+ B3W. The latter is an ultra-expensive, sleek and subtle machine that limits its power for the sake of thermals, efficiency, and form factor. Not so with the Crosshair: it's a gaming laptop, and it knows it.
I could tell as much as soon as I unboxed it, thanks to its glossy—and I would later discover, RGB-lit—embossed MSI logo on the lid, plus the general thickness, key styling and so on. It's not particularly obnoxious and still has some subtlety to it, but it's not hiding the fact that it's a gaming laptop.
Nor does it hide this fact when it comes to performance, eking as much as it can out of the RTX 5070 GPU and Core Ultra 7 251HX processor, saying to hell with thermals and battery life. I can certainly respect that, but it has to deliver in other respects, too, including price. And in other respects this laptop is not quite so pretty.
English (US)