MSI Raider 16 Max Review: This Gaming Powerhouse Is Hefty, Pricey, and Worth It

Pros & Cons

• • Excellent gaming performance
  • Sharp, detailed OLED screen
  • Decent battery life for a large gaming laptop
  • Plenty of gaming and productivity ports
• • Bulk and weight limit portability
  • Loud fan for most applications

MSI Raider 16 Max HX B2W Specs

The MSI Raider 16 Max HX B2W (starts at $2,999.99, $3,299 as tested) isn’t a subtle gaming laptop. It’s got a large screen, a heavy chassis, a loud fan, bright lights, and a power supply that weighs more than some ultraportables. Even the price tag is big, potentially costing more than $4,000 for a high-end model. You’ll get what you pay for, though, as the Raider 16 Max HX B2W also offers better-than-expected battery life, a solid keyboard, a beautiful OLED display, and fantastic gaming performance. Although this laptop isn’t as sleek as the Razer Blade 16, it’s one of the most powerful gaming laptops we’ve tested this year. In fact, the Raider 16 Max HX B2W is our new top pick for the best high-end gaming laptop, replacing the capable Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (G635LW). If you’re willing to invest a few thousand dollars into a premium gaming laptop, the Raider 16 Max HX B2W should be near the top of your list.

Configurations: Three Similar Builds, Three Different GPUs

Choosing which configuration of the MSI Raider 16 Max HX B2W you want isn’t too difficult. MSI has different options, and you can’t customize the builds. What you see is what you get, and what you get is a premium gaming laptop with high-end Intel and Nvidia components. The only decisions you must make are regarding the GPU and the version of Windows 11.(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Every Raider 16 Max HX B2W configuration comes with an Intel Core Ultra 9 290 HX Plus CPU, 32GB of DDR5-6400 memory, 1TB of PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD storage, and a 16-inch OLED at 2,560 by 1,600 resolution. From there, you can choose from these variants: 

• B2WH-004US, with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU and Windows 11 Home
• B2WI-003US, with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU and Windows 11 Home
• B2WJ-002US, with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU and Windows 11 Pro

We reviewed the high-end B2WJ-002US model. Currently $3,299, it’s in a similar price range to competitors like the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (G635LW) and the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16. When available at its full $4,299.99 price, the Raider 16 Max HX B2W will be one of the more expensive gaming laptops on the market. It’s worth noting that even with that price tag, the Raider 16 Max HX B2W still costs less than a fully kitted-out Razer Blade 16, which costs a hefty $5,599.99 for its 2026 model. 

Design: Now That’s Some Heavyweight Performance

The first thing I noticed about the Raider 16 Max HX B2W is that it’s big. The second thing I noticed is that it’s heavy. At 0.86 by 14.3 by 10.6 inches, it didn’t fit in my commuter backpack’s laptop compartment. In fact, it barely fit in my backpack at all. The laptop also weighs 5.73 pounds. That’s manageable to carry around for a few hours, but I always noticed its weight. I usually had to carry the power supply, too, which weighs just shy of four pounds on its own. In total, that’s almost 10 pounds of bulky laptop gear. The Raider 16 Max HX B2W may be a laptop, but portability is not its strong suit. 

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The MSI Raider 16 Max HX B2W is first and foremost a gaming machine. On the lid, there’s a prominent MSI dragon logo, an etched dragon design, and a noticeable vent protruding from the back. When you open the laptop, there are additional geometric designs beneath the keyboard, as well as a full RGB light bar just below the touchpad. The Raider 16 Max HX B2W doesn’t fit into an office environment, and it would even raise a few eyebrows at a library or coffee shop. It looks cool, though, and that’s worth a lot in a gaming laptop. 

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The Raider 16 Max HX B2W is also generous with its ports. On the left, you’ll find two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports and an SD card reader. On the back, there’s a proprietary power port, a USB-A port, an HDMI port, and an Ethernet jack. Two USB-A ports and a 3.5mm audio jack round things out on the right. I often connected a mouse, keyboard, headset, and external display, and still had ports to spare. Having ports on the back in addition to the right and left also helped space things out and kept any one edge of the laptop from getting too crowded.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Display, Keyboard, and Audio: A Cavalcade of Colors

If the Raider 16 Max HX B2W’s gaming performance is its best feature, the gorgeous OLED screen is a close second. The display offers a native resolution of 2,560 by 1,600 pixels (QHD+) and a 240Hz refresh rate, both of which are excellent for gaming. Before I launched a title, I was impressed with the screen’s depth of color and lack of glare. Even just looking at the default desktop background, I could discern the display’s pure blacks, vibrant pinks, and subtle blues. Whether I was scrolling through photos or streaming videos in a darkened bedroom or a fully lit office, the screen showed rich, clear, detailed images.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The keyboard is also a cut above most laptop fare, with a generous 1.7mm of key travel and a full number pad. There are full-size backspace and arrow keys, but only one Fn key, which makes it a bit difficult to control volume and screen brightness.

Where the keyboard really shines, though, is in its RGB features. Using the installed SteelSeries GG software, you can control each key’s color individually or choose from dozens of preconfigured profiles. From animated color waves to stately static combinations, you can make the Raider 16 Max HX B2W’s keyboard look as striking as its chassis with just a few clicks.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

This laptop also has satisfying speakers. I turned on Haydn’s symphonies while working, Black Sabbath’s classic metal compositions while doing chores, and Charlotte Diamond’s catchy preschool melodies while spending time with my daughter. No matter the genre, the laptop provided clear sound with balanced treble, bass, and vocals. 

There’s a lot to like about the 1080p/30fps webcam, which provides clear images in both bright and dark lighting conditions, and comes with a physical privacy shutter. The mic is less impressive, though, with tinny overtones and a fairly quiet pickup. If you plan to buy the Raider 16 Max HX B2W primarily for online multiplayer action, you’ll probably want to supply your own gaming headset. 

Performance Testing: A Premium Gaming Powerhouse

While the MSI Raider Max HX B2W isn’t cheap, it justifies its premium price with excellent performance across the board. When compared with similar gaming laptops, the Raider Max HX B2W took the top spot in our benchmarks more often than not, for both everyday productivity and gaming performance. The machine runs demanding games at high frame rates but offers better battery life than its competitors, making it a good fit for remote work and long travel days, too.

Our review model came with an Intel Core Ultra 9 290 HX Plus CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

For comparison, we’ve chosen the Alienware 16 Area-51 ($5,649.99 as tested), the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 ($3,299.99 as tested), the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 ($3,739.73 as tested), and the Razer Blade 18 ($5,199.99 as tested). Most of these machines are 16-inch gaming laptops, and all of them feature Intel CPUs, Nvidia GPUs, and 32GB of RAM. If you’re thinking about buying the Raider 16 Max HX B2W, these devices are worth considering as well. 

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

Our primary overall benchmark, UL’s PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC’s storage throughput. 

Three more tests are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs’ Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the HandBrake 1.8 video transcoder to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution. 

Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Creators rates a PC’s image-editing prowess using a variety of automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25.

The Raider 16 Max HX B2W ranked either first or second across most of our productivity benchmarks. At 8,681 in the general PCMark 10 test, only the Razer Blade 18 scored higher (8,847), while the Alienware 16 Area-51 (8,480) was a few hundred points behind. The MSI laptop took the top spot in the Cinebench single-core, Handbrake, and Pugetbench tests, with narrow second-place scores in the Cinebench multi-core and Geekbench tests. Based on our benchmarks, the Raider 16 HX B2W excels at everyday productivity and graphic design tasks. 

In my personal experience with the Raider 16 Max HX B2W, the machine handled everyday productivity tasks beautifully, including web browsing, playing videos and music, and editing text documents. In fact, I researched and wrote most of this review on the system, usually with lots of browser tabs open and music streaming in the background. The machine always felt snappy and responsive. 

Graphics and Gaming Tests

We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark test suite. The first two we use, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), stress the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The next pair, Steel Nomad’s regular and Light subtests, focuses on APIs more commonly used for game development, like Metal and DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Lastly, we turn to Solar Bay to measure ray-tracing performance in a synthetic environment. 

Our real-world gaming testing is based on in-game benchmarks for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at the system’s full HD (1080p or 1200p native) resolution—represent competitive shooters, open-world games, and simulations, respectively. If the screen supports a higher resolution, we rerun the tests at a QHD equivalent resolution, such as 1440p or 1600p. Each game runs with two sets of graphics settings at each resolution, for up to four runs in total.

We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Minimum graphics preset—aimed at maximizing frame rates to test display refresh rates—and again at the Extreme preset. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs to their limits, so we run it on the Ultra graphics preset and again on the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset, without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 2024 represents our DLSS effectiveness (or FSR on AMD systems) test, demonstrating a GPU’s capacity for frame-boosting upscaling technologies.

As in our productivity tests, the Raider 16 Max HX B2W generally came in second place for graphical benchmarks, just behind the pricier Razer Blade 18. The only exception was the 3DMark Wild Life test, where the MSI took third place by a narrow margin. In general, the Raider 16 Max HX B2W outperformed the Alienware, Asus, and Gigabyte laptops, although all of the machines performed well. 

We observed similar results in our gaming benchmarks. The MSI laptop took first or second place more often than not, with particularly good performance in the F1 2024 tests with DLSS on and the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III tests at Extreme settings. While the Razer Blade 18 generally won out, the two machines tied a handful of times, and they almost always beat the other three competitors. MSI advertises the Raider 16 Max HX B2W as a heavy-duty gaming laptop, and in our tests, it lives up to its potential. 

In my qualitative tests, the Raider 16 Max HX B2W handled games incredibly well. I ran demanding titles, such as Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Cyberpunk 2077, at full resolution with ultra-high settings and ray tracing enabled. Not only did the games look beautiful on the rich OLED screen, but my frame rates routinely exceeded 200fps. My only quibble is that the fan gets loud, even for lightweight games such as The Roottrees Are Dead. An active fan is better than an overheated laptop, but the Raider 16 Max HX B2W’s excellent speakers don’t do much good when the sound gets drowned out. 

Battery Life and Display Tests

We test each laptop’s battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open- with the display brightness set to 50% and the audio volume set to 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off

In addition, to gauge display performance, we use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

The Raider 16 Max HX boasts much better battery life than its competitors, lasting 13 hours and 4 minutes on a single charge. The next-best machine, the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16, ran for only 8 hours and 23 minutes. The Alienware 16 Area-51 gave out after just 3 hours and 35 minutes. 

Granted, you won’t get 13 hours of battery life from any of these laptops under real-world conditions, especially if you run games on them. Still, in my experience, the MSI machine lasted about four to six hours between charges while it was online, immersed in standard productivity work. That’s not a full workday, but it’s enough to last a long flight or a shift at a trade show. 

In terms of screen color and brightness, the Raider 16 Max HX came in dead center among its competitors for most of our benchmarks. Like the other machines we tested, it can display 100% of the sRGB gamut. However, it maxed out at 90% of the Adobe RGB gamut and 97% of the DCI-P3 gamut. These are good numbers, but some of the other laptops we tested scored a bit higher. Similarly, the MSI exhibited 158 nits at 50% brightness and 506 nits at 100% brightness. The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 and Razer Blade 18 were slightly brighter, while the Alienware 16 Area-51 and Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 were slightly dimmer.

Final Thoughts

MSI Raider 16 Max Review: This Gaming Powerhouse Is Hefty, Pricey, and Worth It

The MSI Raider 16 Max HX B2W is a big bruiser of a gaming laptop that justifies its hefty price with peerless gaming performance and a gorgeous OLED screen.