MSI Crosshair A16 HX E8WGK review: a gaming laptop that nails everything except the price

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If you want to get the most out of gaming and graphically intense productivity tasks on the go, you’re probably looking for a gaming laptop like the MSI Crosshair A16 HX E8WGK-009US ($2,699). Despite the impressive capabilities of phones and the rise of portable PC gaming devices like the Steam Deck, you still can’t completely replace a laptop when it comes to becoming an absolute powerhouse thanks to its relatively large screen and keyboard. This is also true for productivity on the go; As much as other devices are capable of, writing a review like this or editing a long, complex video for YouTube aren’t tasks your smartphone is well suited for.

The MSI Crosshair A16 HX packs a list of specs to grab any gamer’s attention, and in a world where the components needed to build such a device are both hard to find and extremely expensive to purchase, buying them all in one convenient chassis is very compelling. However, this laptop comes at a particularly high price, so it remains to be seen whether or not it manages to deliver the kind of experience you’d expect from such a device at this price point.

The appearance of the MSI Crosshair A16 HX is very much what you probably imagine when you think of a gaming laptop; black, with vents, feet and graphics added to the exterior that give off a cyberpunk aesthetic. The material used for the top of the lid is a bit unusual in its matte texture, but the effect is unfortunately somewhat cheap. This doesn’t bother me, since it’s the keyboard, the screen and what’s under the hood that really matter.

Andy Zahn/SlashGear

Andy Zahn/SlashGear

Andy Zahn/SlashGear

The model I tested (E8WGK-009US) features a 1TB SSD, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, an AMD Ryzen 9-8940HX processor, and an Nvidia Geforce RTX 5070 graphics card. That’s a pretty impressive list of specs, and with the scarcity of RAM these days, the laptop’s high price is certainly a little less painful.

Andy Zahn/SlashGear

The ports available here are pretty standard: audio, two USB-A ports, 2 USB-C ports (one with DisplayPort and power delivery capability), HDMI, and an RJ-45 port. You also get a 720p webcam and microphone array, and I like that the webcam features a physical shutter. The result is that the Crosshair A16 HX basically ticks all the essentials you want from a laptop.

The 16-inch QHD+ resolution monitor features a remarkably high refresh rate of 240Hz. This results in a very pretty picture and more potential frames per second than you’re likely to use. It’s of course not as precise and beautiful as an OLED, but it’s certainly better than average. This IPS panel gets reasonably bright, and overall it’s pretty good for a mid-range gaming laptop display.

The keyboard has a nice feel, better than many laptops I’ve used. While I often need to adjust to a new laptop keyboard, this one felt instantly familiar to my fingers, and the experience of typing and playing on it is quite pleasant and satisfying. It’s a full-size keyboard with a number pad, and I’m surprised at how much I like the layout and feel of the keys themselves. The customizable backlighting is excellent, and the macro functions on the arrow keys are nice; Fn + up arrow increases the fan speed to maximum, Fn + left arrow acts as play/pause, Fn + down arrow activates the crosshair function, and Fn + right arrow forces the computer into a sleep state.

Andy Zahn/SlashGear

Following this model, the MSI Crosshair A16 HX’s speaker system is also what I would describe as better than average. It’s not particularly exceptional, but it’s also much better than what you’d usually expect from a laptop. This is quite sufficient for gaming, watching shows or listening to music, although of course you’re better off having a good pair of headphones or external speakers.

I got hooked on “Battlefield 6” this year, and given its high level of graphical fidelity, it was an obvious choice for testing the MSI Crosshair A16 HX’s gaming capabilities. I played around with the graphics to get the most out of them, and while it was possible to improve the game until it was pretty close to its maximum settings, I found the best experience with this laptop to be a few rungs away from there. This moderately high level of graphics configuration is pretty much what the game chooses to implement automatically, and honestly, it looks great. I was very impressed with how the laptop also handled heat dissipation under load, given that despite prolonged gaming sessions under heavy load, it never got too hot.

This heat dissipation efficiency is likely due in part to the powerful fans built into the device, in addition to the noticeably tall feet on the laptop’s base that allow for good air circulation underneath. The downside is that the laptop roars like a jet engine if you’re doing something that requires a bit of graphics horsepower, but that didn’t bother me because I was simultaneously testing the best noise-canceling headphones I’ve ever used at the same time.

I also tried less intense gaming experiences and wasted far too many hours on “Drop Duchy,” a sort of hybrid between “Settlers of Catan” and “Tetris.” It’s much less demanding, but the laptop still cranked its fans to a very loud level. On the other end of the spectrum, I was able to get an acceptable benchmark of 72fps in “Cyberpunk 2077” at the Ray-Tracing Low setting level.

Unfortunately, modern gaming laptops and pre-built desktops almost invariably come with Windows 11 pre-installed, meaning they’re automatically bombarded with a barrage of bloatware and “features” that most users would prefer not to infest their computer. This isn’t the manufacturer’s fault, but it’s still worth mentioning here. I made sure during the setup process to opt out of most of the extra garbage that Windows 11 throws at you, so that it wouldn’t be too intrusive for testing, but you might want to go further and eliminate even more of the extra fluff that infests the operating system.

Aside from Windows 11, the only thing I’d call blaotware in the Crosshair A16 HX is the inclusion of Norton Antivirus software (complete with irritating popups), which would be the first thing I’d remove from the system (closely followed by Microsoft Copilot) if I owned this laptop. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find that MSI makes all of its companion software optional, so you can ignore them or choose the programs they offer to install.

After testing the laptop without any additional MSI software, I installed everything to get the full experience. These programs include Game Highlights, MSI Companion, Mystic Light, AI Noise Cancellation Pro, Performance Analysis, Hardware Diagnosis, AI LAN Manager, Smart Image Finder, System Diagnosis and MSI AI Engine. The ones I would personally choose would be Mystic Light, Performance Analysis, Hardware Diagnostic, and System Diagnostic.

As of this writing, the only configuration-specific example of the MSI Crosshair A16 HX I’ve tested costs $2,699 at Amazon, and it’s in no way worth that kind of money when the 18-inch version is only $1,999 at Best Buy. The two laptops have very similar specs, except the 18-inch model I found uses Intel instead of AMD for its processor and currently comes with a 7-in-1 dock with a built-in 1TB hard drive. To make things even stranger, the less powerful base model Crosshair A16 HX costs $1,649 at Newegg, which is a pretty reasonable price for what it offers. For some reason, the specific model I tested seems to command a price that far exceeds what a laptop like this should cost.

If you can find one for around $2,000, I’d say the MSI Crosshair A16 HX E8WGK-009US is a very capable gaming laptop. It doesn’t really stand out in any particular way, but it does everything a modern gaming laptop should do.