The MSI Raider GE78 HX is a beast of a gaming laptop with top-of-the-line specs across the board. It’s a straight-up improvement over its predecessor and our best-performing gaming laptop of 2023. It features a retro aesthetic which might not be for everyone, but it’s subtle enough in our opinion other than the 8-bit pixel RGB lighting on the base. While it features good built quality and overall design, we were a bit disappointed when compared with other laptops in this price segment, especially the keyboard which feels very cramped. However, if it’s pure performance you’re chasing, this is the best we’ve tested to date.
The MSI Raider GE78 HX is the best-performing gaming laptop we tested in 2023, managing to outperform even the earlier iteration of the 2023 MSI GT77 Titan. The latest iteration of the GT77 Titan will most likely outperform the Raider, but not by much considering MSI ships the Raider out with top-of-the-line components as well. We received the top-end model of the MSI Raider GE78 HX, featuring a 13th gen Intel Core i9-13980HX and the NVIDIA RTX 4090 Laptop GPU with a TGP of 175W, the highest allowed configuration from NVIDIA. That is paired with 2 TB of NVMe SSD storage, 64GB of DDR5-5600 RAM, and a 240 Hz, 17-inch QHD IPS display, among other things. The laptop is stacked in the specs department, and we can confidently say that this translates to the performance as well. Let’s dive into the review!
Let’s start things off with the design. The MSI Raider GE78 HX features a fairly retro aesthetic. The usual sharp edges and accents that we’re used to seeing in modern gaming laptops have been replaced with curves and the lightbar at the base of the laptop features “pixel” RGB LEDs. The rear of the laptop features an intricate design for the grill and there’s also a red and gold trim running along the back. The overall look is certainly unique enough that the Raider GE78 HX stands out amongst its peers in the market right now. Whether you like the look or not is ultimately up to you.
Costing close to INR 6 lakhs, MSI certainly hasn’t skimped out on build quality either. They’ve improved on the hinges from previous iterations, with the lid now feeling a lot more secure and stable with minimal bounce or flex. There’s quite a bit of space between the laptop’s lid and base; you can comfortably see through the gap to the other side while the laptop is open. Considering the specs on board, this is a hefty laptop, weighing in at a little over 3 Kg. The laptop uses lightweight metal alloy for the outer lid and the base, while the bottom panel uses plastic.
The keyboard on the MSI Raider GE78 HX was overall disappointing. We’ve seen smaller laptops feature keyboards with plenty of space but the keys on the Raider GE78 HX, especially the arrow keys and numpad, feel especially cramped. The RGB lighting on the keyboard and the pixel RGB lighting on the laptop base can be controlled via the SteelSeries GG software. The touchpad is pretty large so there’s plenty of room, but the feedback is weak and overall feels unsatisfying; we tend to use a mouse anyway.
Coming to the ports, the MSI Raider GE78 HX comes with three USB-C ports, of which one is a Thunderbolt 4 port. The remaining two come with DP and one of them also has PD charging. Then you have two USB-A ports, an SD card reader, an HDMI 2.1 port, and an RJ45 ethernet port.
Our variant of the MSI Raider GE78 HX came with a 17-inch QHD IPS display with a refresh rate of 240Hz. During our display testing, we saw an average peak brightness of 406 nits. While not the brightest display we’ve seen at this price range, it’s still plenty bright. Other than that, we tested sRGB coverage of 99.6 percent and a DCI-P3 coverage of 97.5 percent. So the display is colour-accurate as well, and we found the contrast was good too.
Anything with this kind of hardware is going to be loud. When the fans are cranked to their max RPM the Raider can get very loud to the point of drowning out other ambient sounds. We’re talking close to 60 dB which is definitely among the loudest we’ve ever seen in a gaming laptop.
During long gaming sessions, surface temps can get pretty toasty. The centre of the laptop especially where we recorded temps of around 46 degrees. That’s uncomfortably hot. The WASD cluster also goes north of 40 degrees so you can certainly feel the heat while gaming. The rest of the laptop remains consistent at around the 31-degree mark. The heat affects performance as well, we did notice throttling during our benchmarks but nothing out of the ordinary. With such laptops, it would be silly not to expect heat.
With that, we come to gaming performance. The MSI Raider GE78 HX had the best benchmark and gaming scores we’ve seen in a gaming laptop to date. It doesn’t come as a surprise considering the 13th gen Intel Core i9-13980HX and the RTX 4090 are the most powerful configuration available on a gaming laptop. That’s the best available processor from Intel paired with the best available GPU from NVIDIA. The RTX 4090 comes with a TGP of 175W, which is the highest allowed TGP by NVIDIA. Add to that the 64GB of DDR5-5600 RAM and you can see why this laptop is currently our best-performing gaming laptop.
We got the highest real-world gaming benchmark numbers we’ve seen yet in a gaming laptop on the MSI Raider GE78 HX. After running our laptop through our usual suite of games, we found most titles got north of 200 FPS at high settings in FHD resolutions. You could easily see 60+ FPS on modern AAA titles at QHD resolutions and Ultra settings with the specs on this laptop. The 16GB of VRAM on the RTX 4090 also really helps with high-resolution gaming, and you get the benefits of Frame Generation and DLSS if a game supports it to significantly boost FPS numbers even more. The FPS numbers speak for themselves.
The same applied to our synthetic gaming benchmarks as well, with the Raider scoring the highest scores we’ve seen across the board, even surpassing the GT77 TItan we tested earlier in 2023. We will point out that while both laptops featured RTX 4090s, the Titan we tested came with a slightly weaker Intel Core i9-13950HX, which is why the Raider 78HX was able to inch ahead.
The MSI Raider GE78 HX is a beast of a gaming laptop with top-of-the-line specs across the board. It’s a straight-up improvement over its predecessor and our best-performing gaming laptop of 2023. It features a retro aesthetic which might not be for everyone, but it’s subtle enough in our opinion other than the 8-bit pixel RGB lighting on the base. While it features good built quality and overall design, we were a bit disappointed when compared with other laptops in this price segment, especially the keyboard which feels very cramped. However, if it’s pure performance you’re chasing, this is the best we’ve tested to date.
