While MSI had let slip a few details on the new Titan GT77 last week, the full details are now here at CES 2023 and the gaming laptop certainly delivers on its name with titanic specs.
The highlight is that world’s first 4K mini-LED laptop display at 144Hz, but the hits keep on coming. The Titan GT77 can be powered by up to an Intel 13th Gen Core i9-13980HX CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, and up to a preposterous 128GB of DDR5 RAM.
If you are looking for a desktop gaming experience that you can pick up and take with you it is hard to imagine a better fit than the Titan GT77, but let’s dig a little deeper.
Display
Let’s hit that world’s first display to kick things off. The 17.3-inch mini-LED 4K display features a 144Hz refresh rate, but it doesn’t stop there. MSI claims it tops out at 1,000 nits of brightness with DisplayHDR 1000 for superior visibility throughout the full color gamut. It also offers K-Zone local dimming.
We’ll of course run the display through our full complement of tests when we get the Titan GT77 in for testing, but on paper, this sounds like an absolute beast for gaming and content creation alike.
Performance and battery life
The Titan GT77’s tagline is “Total Dominance” and it’s hard not to concede that point when you look at what you can put inside it. Again you can scale all the way up to the top-of-the-line from Intel and Nvidia with a 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13980HX CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU with 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM.
If you are worried about taxing the RAM then you can jam the Titan GT77 to the brim with up to 128GB of DDR5 RAM. You can similarly eliminate any storage concerns with a trio of M.2 2280 SSD storage slots allowing you to max out at 6TB. Two NVMe Gen 4×4 and one NVMe Gen 5×4.
Needless to say all of this power needs extensive cooling and MSI upped its game there as well with 4 fans and 8 pipes with a dedicated pipe for the VRAM.
Connectivity is also top-of-the-line with Killer E3100G LAN and Killer AX1690 Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
Now given the power we shouldn’t expect miracles out of the battery life on the Titan GT77, but it won’t be for a lack of trying with a 99.9Whr battery (the largest allowable on a plane) and to ensure you are getting the max charging speed and performance when plugged in it comes with a 330W adapter.
Design
While it’s what’s inside your gaming laptop that really counts, it would be unfortunate if it were encased in a boring chassis, but MSI isn’t letting you down there either.
The Titan GT77 has a strong angular look and the familiar dragon badging on the lid. And if you a fan of RGB lighting to really get you in the mood for gaming there is RGB everywhere. From the dragon logo, to the per-key RGB keyboard and the projective Mystic Light bar across the back of the laptop you can put on a show. It’s not all just for looks either, with Steelseries GG the lighting can cue you to real-time in-game status updates.
At 0.9 inches thick and 7.3 pounds the Titan GT77 isn’t going to disappear into your backpack, but it is impressively thin and light considering what’s inside.
While some gaming laptops ditch the webcam entirely the Titan GT77 features an IR HD cam. While the 720p at 30fps isn’t going to cut it for streamers, it does give you the benefit of facial recognition login if you prefer that over the built-in fingerprint sensor.
Ports
MSI once again hits it out of the park with every port you could ask for. That includes a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, an HDMI port, a miniDP port, a full size SD card reader, an RJ45 Ethernet port and a combo headphone/mic jack.
It’s hard to imagine needing to pack a USB-C hub with all of that onboard.
Outlook
If you are truly looking for a desktop replacement gaming laptop it is hard to imagine beating the MSI Titan GT77 HX, at least on paper. We’ll have to get it in for testing to see if it lives up to the hype, but with that display paired with just the kitchen sink of performance components it’s hard to imagine it failing.
Pricing may the one thing that has you balking on the Titan GT77 HX with the base model that includes an RTX 4080 GPU, 64GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage starting at $4,299. Add $300 to that to bump up to the RTX 4090 and for a nearly fully specced out model with 128GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD you are looking at $5,299. Being a Titan doesn’t come cheap. We are expecting these models to arrive next month, so stay tuned for those reviews.
