MSI Crosshair 16 HX AI Review

There are some impressive new laptops on the horizon, but MSI is one of few manufacturers that has actually got one to market. The MSI Crosshair 16 HX AI is an upper mid-range gaming laptop that’s designed to look good and perform well. So, should you buy it?

MSI Crosshair 16 HX AI Specs

Full specs here.

Features, Ergonomics and Design

MSI says that the latest Crosshair takes its design cues from futuristic space ships and ray guns – not unlike its forbear. Whatever image that conjures up in your mind, the Crosshair 16 HX AI is likely to very pleasantly surprise you. The matte black lid would be unassuming but for its glossy, iridescent flourishes that shine every colour of the rainbow when the light catches them just so. It’s both understated and head-turning and one of the nicest-looking laptops I’ve seen in a long time (MSI has some other corkers about to land).

Opening it up reveals the 24-zone RGB back-lit, semi-translucent, Scrabble-tile keyboard. We’ve seen it many times before and it’s one of our favourites, with just the right amount of weighting to be both accurate (for gaming) and comfortable (for typing) for long periods of usage. There’s a full number pad, the arrow keys aren’t squished and there are useful shortcuts everywhere.

The trackpad below it is smooth and accurate. The button actuation is a little loud and clicky compared to many models I’ve reviewed lately, but it’s not annoying and most buyers will be using a separate mouse anyway.

The 16-inch IPS screen has a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution which displays a very sharp Windows Desktop. It’s bright and colourful and makes multimedia looks great. Some people will prefer the vibrant impact afforded by a glossy screen, but give me a reflection-free matte display, any day of the week. It’s not an HDR display but contrast is generally very good. Details are revealed in shadowy areas, blacks approach true black (though they can’t match OLED or Mini-LED displays) and my only gripe is that details can get lost in blown-out highlights, a smidge too easily.

There’s very light stepping in colourful transitions and monochromatic equivalents can get a little noisy, but I’ve seen much worse and this wasn’t particularly annoying.

It also has a rapid 240Hz refresh rate and this partners with a very fast pixel response time to keep very fast-moving objects impressively blur free. Only top-tier pro FPS players might want for more.

Above the screen is an HD (720p) webcam. It’s not the sharpest in this day and age, but it’s fine for general web-conferencing and streaming. It performs as well in low light as it does in bright light. It’s partnered by a microphone array that does an excellent job of capturing clear audio, even in noisy environments. Just note that there’s no Windows Hello facial recognition (or fingerprint) login.

The Crosshair’s two, 2-Watt speakers produce a loud, well-rounded sound for all tasks. The lack of sub means that bass response is generally OK, but not the best. Few will grumble, though.

Ports & Connectivity

Inside there’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. While this doesn’t quite represent the bleeding-edge of connectivity, few would complain about such a complete, high-performing connection complement.

All in all, MSI’s Crosshair 16 HX AI is a very well specified laptop. It’s not got the latest and greatest of everything, but it doesn’t feel wanting in any way. It also looks fantastic.

Features, Ergonomics and Design Score: 5 / 5

Performance

The MSI Crosshair 16 HX AI is the second laptop I’ve tested that uses Intel’s latest Core Ultra 9 275HX Arrow Lake processor. This has eight Performance cores and 16 Efficient cores that operate between 2.1 and 5.4GHz. It’s also got an NPU (for Ai tasks) and an integrated octa-core Intel Arc GPU that operates at 1.9GHz. The latter affords some gaming ability when the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 (with 8GB of GDDR7 RAM) is disabled, meaning it can potentially do some power-efficient gaming when not plugged in.

Our review unit came with a 2TB SSD in the PCIe 4.0 slot but there’s an additional PCIe 5.0 slot available if you want to add more. It also sported a generous 32GB of DDR5-5600 RAM.

You can read about how we test laptops, here. The tl;dr is that in addition to posting raw benchmark scores, we post a 5 / 5 Star Rating which is mathematically calculated according to how a score compares to everything else that we’ve tested. One is the least good score we’ve seen from a laptop. Five is the best. There have been some upheavals in some recent benchmarks so, if there’s isn’t a star rating, it’s because it’s not comparable with all previous reviews (usually because the benchmark itself has changed) but we list it for reference.

I was particularly keen to see how this MSI laptop performed because, unlike the (Arrow Lake and RTX 50 Series GPU-wielding) Pioneer DreamBook Power X56 RTX 5090 which uses stock speeds, the Crosshair makes use of the company’s vaunted OverBoost technology which automatically overclocks the components (and adapts the cooling) when in Extreme Performance mode. There’s also headroom to manually overclock even more and tweakers will like the fact that the Crosshair can deliver 55-Watts to the CPU while simultaneously delivering 115-Watts to the GPU. Super-premium gaming laptops can do even more, but this should be enough to register some solid numbers.

General Computing & CPU Tests

Our first round of benchmarks focuses on the processor and the whole system in general. Here are the raw results…

The PCMark 10 score is a good indicator of all-round performance and the Crosshair scores highly – only super-premium gaming laptops with more power and beefier GPUs beat it.

I suspect that the best-ever Cinebench R23 score we’ve seen is down to the combination of the Arrow Lake processor and MSI’s CoolerBoost 5 technology. The laptop simply doesn’t run hot and the consistent performance throughout this benchmark must have helped.

The Arrow Lake technology also gave very high scores in the UL Procyon Photo Editing test and the Ai Vision test (which uses the NPU). Considering the laptops that beat this will likely cost double the price, the Crosshair delivers some impressive pound-for-pound punching power when it comes to this category of performance.

Graphics & Gaming Performance

The Crosshair 16 HX AI is the first laptop we’ve seen with Nvidia’s upper-mid-range RTX 5070 GPU. The raw scores are:

The above scores represent a significant step-up over what we’ve seen with laptops that have the previous-gen Nvidia RTX 4070 GPUs.

While the Crosshair’s results in the difficult ray-tracing tests, Speed Way and Port Royal, represent the limits of playability (there’ll likely be some stuttering in equivalent games) they’re 10 to 12 fps quicker than the 4070. This means you won’t need to be so judicious when it comes to resolution and detail setting drops with the latest, eye-candy-rich games, to get them playable.

The difficult, 4K Steel Nomad test illustrates that there’s some UHD gaming potential (when using an external monitor). But, you’ll need to reduce some settings to keep everything running smoothly all the time.

I also ran the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 built-in benchmark. At default settings (native resolution with automatically optimised settings) the Crosshair 16 HX AI averaged 166fps with the lowest one per cent (1% Low Score) averaging 126fps. At Full HD resolution with Minimum Settings, these scores rose to 211fps and 180fps respectively. So, no issues for CoD players.

I also ran this Blops 6 benchmark using the integrated Intel GPU. It averaged 28fps and had a 1% Low of 15fps. That’s barely playable, but it should still manage less-demanding Fortnite-like shooters with no problems, without the Nvidia GPU.

Ultimately, the Crosshair 16 HX AI takes most games in its stride, but you will need to drop the resolution and detail settings to get the most complex titles running smoothly at high resolutions.

I also ran the GPU version of the UL Procyon Ai Vision test and it scored 639. Ai people who know what that means should like this result. MSI states that it’s enough to run Small Language Model applications. Score: 3.4 / 5

One of my favourite tests is the (relatable) UL Procyon Video Editing benchmark which uses Adobe Premiere to encode four different (900MB) UHD video files. The Crosshair scored 40,447 (3.7 / 5). This means that the hardest encoding workload (UHD, H.265, 60fps) took just 51 seconds. We’ve seen an Nvidia RTX 4070-sporting Creator laptop take 90 seconds to perform the same test while lesser, ultraportable laptops tend to take between five and ten minutes. This means that the Crosshair 16 is a good choice for those regularly working with video.

Cooling

It’s not often that I make a fuss about the cooling technology, but the tried-and-tested MSI CoolerBoost 5 technology, in the Crosshair 16 HX AI (which utilises two fans and five heat pipes) works very well with the Arrow Lake CPU and Nvidia GPU. It runs silently under general usage. When forced to Maximum Performance mode, the fans deliver a robust, but relatively low, whoosh and the laptop simply doesn’t heat up. Very impressive.

Ultimately, the Crosshair 16 HX AI is a powerful beast that will serve most gamers (and those who need a powerful AiPC) with aplomb.

Portability and Battery Life

I haven’t always expected much in the way of portability from gaming laptops, but we’ve also tested plenty of models that can operate for well over a working day when disabling the discreet GPU. So, after turning on the MUX switch to disable the 5070 graphics chip, I ran the PCMark 10 Modern Office Battery Benchmark and was impressed to see the (90Wh-battery) last for 14 hours and 45 minutes. It did that without making the (inherently power-sapping) screen getting particularly dark, either.

The chassis is rock solid and the lid is very stiff with almost no flex when a twisting force is applied. The hinge (which folds-down flat) is also sturdy and wobble free. I expect it to survive a life of being carted around, but don’t be too rough with it.

It’s not the lightest laptop, at 2.66KG but that’s understandable considering what’s inside. It’s also worth noting that the slim power brick and cables only add an extra 742g – I’ve seen much heavier with laptops of this ilk.

Price, Value & Availability

MSI’s Crosshair 16 HX AI isn’t cheap at $3,799. However, considering the performance and features on offer, it still represents decent value.

Value Score: 3.9 / 5

Conclusion: Should You Buy the MSI Crosshair 16 HX AI?

If you want a gaming (or do-it-all) laptop – and can afford it – the answer is a resounding yes. The combination of features and performance means, for the moment at least, the MSI Crosshair 16 HX AI is peerless in the market. It’s not just our new Best Gaming Laptop, it’s our new Best Laptop. Congratulations MSI!

Overall Score: 5 / 5

Last Updated on June 29, 2025 by Nick Ross