Black Friday and Cyber Monday have all of the best deals when it comes to gaming and technology, and this year hasn’t held back when it comes to delivering those crazy good deals. We have been weighing so many of these deals back and forth, looking for the best Black Friday/Cyber Monday option for gaming laptops, and after several heated discussions in our war room, we finally came up with the winner. It was this beast of an MSI 16″ Vector 16 HX AI Gaming Laptop at B&H for just $1,899.
This came as a surprise, as although B&H is known for offering some incredibly tempting specials on cameras and other professional gear, gaming laptops aren’t always at the top of that list. Usually, this prize goes to somewhere like Newegg or Micro Center. But this came crashing through the holiday sales like Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball, wishing you the best this season
It offers a flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 2nd-gen processor (275HX) with a grand 24 core-count, meaning it will be incredibly powerful for heavy productivity and creative design projects, including video/3D rendering/editing/encoding. With 32GB of DDR5 RAM, it can also handle a heavy load of multitasking or virtual machine/environment needs. While also rocking an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 (16GB) graphics chipset inside (with full 175W power distribution), which also means it will be a powerful laptop for all of your favorite games, including the new Battlefield 6.
With these specs, it can achieve up to 240 Hz via its 16-inch IPS 2560 x 1600 display (LCD). This will provide some killer frame rates and smooth motion. This one doesn’t offer an OLED screen, but this is fine for many users, especially if you are worried about burn-in.
There is also something else that stood out for us with this model, which helped it stand firm among some of the other options out there. It was the fact that this laptop has Thunderbolt 5 ports (that’s plural). Many of the deals on gaming laptops right now include one or two Thunderbolt 4 ports, but this monster comes with two Thunderbolt 5. Bringing with it the ability to work with some of the latest Thunderbolt 5 hubs and eGPU solutions that tower over the capabilities of Thunderbolt 4 or earlier. Usually, you are reaching $3K and beyond to gain these ports, but MSI seems to want to shatter that barrier for mid-range budgets, while still delivering heavy performance.
To help make sure that performance is delivered, it offers a very effective cooling system. This helps to minimize thermal throttling brought on by high temperatures. An issue that many gaming laptops right now have been suffering from due to poor ventilation. MSI did a great job on its redesign of the Vector 16 HX AI chassis, as well as the cooling system inside.
It also rocks a 2.5GbE port for wired gaming, as well as Wi-Fi 7 for wireless connectivity, giving users the ability to tap into some of the latest internet speeds and take advantage of the latest robust networks. As well as Bluetooth 5.4 for all of your accessories and wireless audio, and also sports an HDMI 2.1 port, two USB-A 3.1/3.2 Gen 2 ports, and an SD card slot (SD/SDHC/SDXC).
It recently fell to $2,649 and then further to $1,899 thanks to Cyber Monday. Marking one of the best gaming laptop deals we have found this year, when it comes to what you get for how much you pay.
This pricing reflects what the product is listed at at [sic]the time of writing this. It may go fast, so if these specs fall under what you have been patiently waiting for, you might want to jump on it while you still have the chance. The offer ends Dec 01 at 8:59 PM PST.
