MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V review: monster performance, mechanical keyboard and 4K MiniLED screen

The MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V is a flagship gaming laptop that combines the most powerful modern components and has almost no direct competitors on the market. The combination of Intel Core i9-13950HX and RTX 4090 can easily handle all modern games in native 4K resolution at high frame rates and any heavy graphics processing software. The MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V can serve as a portable workstation and a complete replacement for a stationary powerful PC. 17.the 3-inch 4K Mini-LED screen delivers stunning images with extremely high levels of brightness and colour accuracy, allowing you to use the laptop for professional graphics, photo and video processing. Also worth noting is the impressive speed of the drives and support for SSDs with PCIe 5.0 interface. The mechanical Cherry keyboard used is one of the best (if not the best) that can be found in laptops today. Other undoubted advantages of the laptop include a fairly high-quality audio system, upgrade options, and a good set of modern connectors. In general, it's hard to find any significant drawbacks in such laptops. In this case, we can only mention the high noise level of the cooling system at maximum load. Undoubtedly, the MSI Titan GT77 is a niche product and a kind of demonstration of capabilities and technologies with a high price. It is not designed for the mass buyer, but it will definitely be of interest to buyers who are looking for uncompromising performance and are willing to pay a large sum for it. The closest competitor is ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 (2023). It has a significantly lower price with a similar combination of Intel Core i9-13950HX and RTX 4090. However, it has fewer RAM and SSD slots, does not support PCIe 5.0, does not have a mechanical keyboard, has a lower display resolution, and a smaller battery.

6 reasons to buy MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V:

• Maximum performance
• Stunning 4K Mini-LED screen
• Great mechanical Cherry keyboard with RGB backlighting
• Very fast SSD array
• Upgradeable drives and RAM, support for SSDs with PCIe 5.0 interface
• Powerful audio system

2 reasons not to buy MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V:

• High noise level of the cooling system at maximum loads
• High price

Quick Transition:

1. What's in the box?
2. What about the appearance and construction of MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V?
3. How convenient is it to use the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V?
4. How good is the screen?
5. What about performance and battery life?
6. In dry balance

What's in the box?

The laptop is packed in a large black box. The package is interesting, which is not surprising given that we are looking at an uncompromising flagship model. Inside is the laptop itself, a massive 330W power supply, a power cable, a gaming mouse, a USB stick, a branded keychain, and documentation.

The bundled mouse is the MSI M99 Pro. The mouse has an asymmetrical body for right-handed use with additional buttons and honeycomb-shaped holes for better ventilation and weight reduction. It is equipped with a PixArt (formerly Avago) 3050 sensor with a resolution of 4000 dpi. The polling frequency is 500 Hz and the maximum tracking speed is 60 IPS. The cable has a fabric braid and is 1.8 m long. There is RGB backlighting. The mouse is quite comfortable in shape, size, and weight. The sensor is not state-of-the-art, but it's enough for the first time.

The bundled USB stick is quite interesting. It's made of zinc alloy and has two connectors: a full-size USB Type-A on one side and Type-C on the other. It has a capacity of 128 GB and supports USB 3.2. The read speed is up to 110 MB/s, the write speed is up to 40 MB/s.

And a kind of souvenir keychain in the form of a black dragon:

What about the appearance and construction of the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V?

The MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V is a rather large and massive laptop, which is fully justified by the impressive components inside. In terms of power, it is a complete replacement for a modern gaming desktop. The laptop is completely black. The top lid and working surface are made of metal with a matte surface. But it still collects fingerprints a bit. There is an MSI logo below the display. And below the working surface is a part of the decorative radiator that goes further beyond the display unit.

The first two speakers are located on the sides of the keyboard. In total, the laptop's audio system from Dynaudio includes four speakers. On the left side of the keyboard there is a logo of Cherry company, which developed this keyboard. There is a lot to tell about it and we will return to this issue.

To the right of the touchpad, under the arrow block, there is a fingerprint scanner for identifying the owner of the laptop. It works perfectly. It's fast and accurate.

The top cover is made of a nice matte black metal. At the top is the backlit logo of MSI's gaming line.

Due to its slightly unusual design and massive rear unit with a cooling system, the laptop is quite deep at 33 cm, so it won't fit into a standard laptop compartment in a backpack. But MSI has a proprietary Titan Gaming Backpack model for large GE and GT series laptops.

The back of the laptop is made of matte black plastic. There are no ventilation holes at the back, behind which there is a full-width cooling radiator. The entire structure has RGB backlighting that can be configured in the MSI Centre app.

The lid is attached to the main body of the laptop with two massive bronze-coloured hinges. They work very smoothly and secure the lid well.

All available ports are located on the sides. On the left there is a power supply connector, two USB Type-A 3.2 Gen2, an SD card reader, a combined 3.5mm audio jack, and ventilation vents:

On the right is another hot air exhaust area, USB Type-A 3.2 Gen2, HDMI 2.1 (with support for 8K at 60Hz and 4K at 120Hz), Mini-DisplayPort, RJ-45 and two USB Type-C (Thunderbolt 4, DisplayPort), one of which also supports Power Delivery, so the laptop can be charged from a third-party power supply. But, of course, Type-C power supplies will not allow you to use the laptop at full capacity, because the Power Delivery standard currently supports no more than 240 watts. And the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V supports PSUs with Power Delivery up to 100W.

The front of the laptop has only two more audio system speakers.

The screen has a very thin perimeter bezel. The 720p webcam is in its usual place, above the screen. Next to it are microphones, a power indicator, an infrared camera for owner identification, and a physical camera shutter.

The entire bottom lid of the laptop is made of black plastic. It has many holes for the cooling system to draw in cold air, massive rubber feet and speaker holes. The laptop has upgrade options: there are four SO-DIMM slots (up to 128 GB of RAM is supported) and as many as three M.2 connectors for drives. One supports the NVMe PCIe 5.0 standard, and two more support PCIe 4.0. However, given the factory seal, we can conclude that MSI does not encourage independent manipulation of the laptop's insides.

The laptop is quite large. But still, the days of giants not suitable for transport are over. If earlier the most powerful laptops weighed 5 kg or more and were as thick as the palm of your hand, now everything is much better. In fact, the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V is currently the most powerful laptop available. At the same time, its dimensions are 397x330x23. The 23 mm thickness is impressive, considering the components inside. The weight is 3.3 kg. The laptop is assembled very well, the panels hardly bend, and the parts are perfectly matched to each other.

How comfortable is it to use the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V?

The hinges are very nice and reliable. The display is well fixed in the desired position and almost does not wobble. The maximum opening angle is about 145°, which is quite enough for a gaming model.

The keyboard layout of the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V is typical for MSI's large-format gaming models. It is full-size, with an additional number pad. But with some features that take some getting used to. The top row is reduced in height and ends with a power button with a built-in LED. The left Shift is of the usual length, and Ctrl is slightly longer: there is no Fn button on the left, it is only on the right side of the main keyboard unit. Therefore, when using the top row of function keys, you will have to use your right hand. Enter is a single-level long key. The navigation block is not separated from the main block and has standard-sized buttons. To do this, we had to slightly reduce the right Shift. The number pad has three columns. Additional Enter is located under the block, and "+" and "-" are above it, next to NumLock.

But the most interesting thing is the switches. The mechanical keyboard used is the Cherry MX Ultra Low Profile, which is designed specifically for laptops. The keyboard has a two-piece design and a gold cross-contact system for clear actuation. The keys have individual RGB backlighting. The keyboard has a very clear, pleasant and informative stroke with a click characteristic of mechanics. It feels very similar to a full-size mechanical keyboard. It's a pleasure to use both during games and for typing. It's one of the best laptop keyboards I've ever used. Perhaps the only one better was the MSI GT80 Titan. But it used full-fledged full-size mechanics with the corresponding consequences in the form of a much thicker and heavier laptop.

Gaming laptops are mostly used with a mouse and the quality of the touchpad is not as critical as for ultraportable models. But MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V has a large touchpad with a good level of sensitivity. So for everyday tasks, browsing, working with documents, it is quite enough.

How good is the screen?

MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V has a 17.3-inch display with a 4K resolution (3840x2160), the standard aspect ratio is 16:9. A MiniLED display is used, which means that a matrix of miniature LEDs is responsible for the backlight. Thanks to this, local dimming is implemented. Therefore, the screen has a very high level of contrast, uniform and very bright backlighting. The refresh rate is 144 Hz, the declared maximum brightness is 1000 cd/m2, and it has DisplayHDR 1000 certification. The maximum contrast ratio is 1,000,000:1. AmLED ACR (Ambient Contrast Ratio) technology is used, which ensures brightness, saturation and clarity of colours even when used near windows or in direct sunlight. Visually, the display is of excellent quality: very bright, with rich colours and maximum viewing angles without distortion or loss of contrast. The picture is very clear thanks to the high resolution. But (subjectively), 4K is not a necessity for a laptop. There is a configuration with a QHD (2560x1440), 240 Hz screen. MSI claims that the screen is well calibrated from the factory. And the proprietary software has different display/colour gamut modes:

Tests with a hardware colourimeter showed that the screen is truly unsurpassed, both in terms of brightness and colour reproduction. The maximum luminance is an impressive 948.718 cd/m², the black field brightness is 0.001 cd/m², and the static contrast is 948,718:1. The colour gamut is much wider than the sRGB space. And the colour accuracy indicators are as close as possible to the reference values. The colour temperature is very close to 6500K, and the colour error ΔE does not exceed 2, which is an excellent indicator. All in all, this is one of the best screens in laptops.

What about performance and battery life?

Inside, the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V has the most powerful components available in a laptop solution today: nIntel 13th Generation Raptor Lake HX Series processors and GeForce RTX 4000 graphics cards. The top configuration with the Intel Core i9-13980HX processor, which includes 24 cores, has arrived: 8 performance cores with clock speeds up to 5.6 GHz and 16 energy-efficient cores up to 4.0 GHz. Up to 32 threads of computing are supported, with a cache of 32 MB. Intel ABT and TVB technologies are supported. Intel ABT (Adaptive Boost Technology) improves performance by increasing the turbo frequency under multi-core loads. And Intel TVB (Thermal Velocity Boost) increases the frequency by an additional 100 MHz. The standard TDP level is 55W. But MSI's OverBoost Ultra technology allows you to increase the figure up to 75W, as well as provide maximum combined performance of the processor and video card. The processor is manufactured using the Intel 7 process technology. There is integrated Intel UHD Graphics (32EU) with a frequency of up to 1.65 GHz. There is 64 GB of DDR5-4800 RAM. Up to 128 GB is supported, with four SO-DIMM slots. The Killer DoubleShot Pro X3 gaming module is responsible for communication. There is Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) (Dual band) 2x2, and a LAN port with support for speeds up to 2500 Mbps. The top-of-the-line NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop is used as a discrete video accelerator. The base frequency is 1690 MHz, the boost is up to 2140 MHz with a standard TGP of up to 150 watts. But thanks to Dynamic Boost, the TGP rises to 175 W and the frequency to 2340 MHz. The video card has 16 GB of GDDR6. The laptop is equipped with a MUX Switch multiplexer to directly connect the graphics card to the display, disabling the built-in graphics. This reduces latency and increases performance. Switching requires a system reboot.

The benchmarks are simple and obvious. The laptop outperforms almost all competitors in terms of performance. With the exception of top-end desktop PCs with desktop versions of Intel Core i9 and GeForce RTX 4090. This applies to both processor and graphics tests. Therefore, MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V can easily handle not only all modern games, but also heavy specialised software such as Blender, Maya, CAD, DaVince Resolve, Unreal Engine. And there is a performance margin for several more years.

The laptop uses a powerful cooling system with a large almost full-width radiator, 4 fans, 8 heat pipes and 6 hot air outlets.

The noise level of the cooling system depends on the load. When working with documents or browsing, the laptop is quiet. The maximum system load (and noise, respectively) was achieved only in the AIDA64 stress test. At maximum revs, the CO works really loudly and you will have to use headphones for comfortable gaming. At the same time, the keyboard and the working surface remain cool. Testing was carried out in the maximum performance mode, the processor temperature was kept at 92-95°, and there was a slight throttling. At the beginning of the test, it was up to 13%, then no more than 5%. However, in real-world tasks, including the most demanding games, the processor was not overloaded.

The laptop has two Samsung PM9A1 2TB PCIe 4.0 x4 SSDs combined in a RAID 0 array.

The drives demonstrate impressive performance that is unattainable with all SSDs currently available on the market. This includes PCIe 5.0 models. Read speeds reach almost 13,700 MB/s and write speeds are just over 10,000 MB/s:

The laptop's performance allows you to play all modern games with maximum graphics settings in native 4K resolution at a frame rate of over 60 FPS. In the vast majority of cases, there is no need to use DLSS. Cyberpunk 2077 is still a demanding game for hardware. Especially with the new Overdrive Mode. With the mode enabled and automatic DLSS, the FPS level is in the range of 50-60 frames per second.

If you turn off Overdrive Mode (with all other settings at maximum), the FPS level increases to 80-95:

Death Stranding at maximum settings without scaling runs at 90-130 FPS:

Gears 5. Ultra settings, 100-130 FPS:

God of War. Maximum settings, without DLSS: 80-90 FPS

Callisto Protocol. Maximum settings, tracing at maximum: 60-70 FPS

The Ascent. Maximum settings. 60-80 FPS.

The Last of Us Part I, version 1.0.3.0. Maximum settings, without DLSS. 70-90 FPS:

Witcher 3 (updated version). Maximum settings with tracing: 100-120 FPS.

The MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V uses an audio system that includes four 2W speakers each. The laptop sounds really loud, with enough power reserve even to "shout out" the cooling system operating at maximum speed. Low frequencies are present. But, of course, it's not worth comparing the sound quality to individual audio systems.

To adjust the sound, the Nahimic app is used with presets for different scenarios, frequency adjustment, and other additional features.

The laptop has a large 99.9 Wh battery. But given the power of the hardware, don't expect record-breaking battery life. In FullHD video mode with comfortable brightness (50%), it lasts about 6 hours. With an increase in load, the operating time decreases sharply: the maximum load eats up the battery in just over an hour. Typical performance for a powerful gaming model. It takes just under 3 hours to fully charge from the bundled 330W power supply. At the same time, 80% is reached in less than 2 hours, and then the process slows down significantly.

For basic laptop settings, the MSI Centre applicationis provided. It includes MUX Switch, performance scenarios, system monitoring and diagnostics, MSI App Player, Android game emulator, wireless network analysis, and more.

A separate SteelSeries app is used to configure the Mystic Light backlight.

Four things you need to know about the MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V.

• The MSI Titan GT77 HX 13V is the most powerful laptop you can buy at the moment
• It features a great Mini LED screen with 4K resolution, 144Hz refresh rate and extraordinary brightness
• The laptop uses a very comfortable low-profile mechanical keyboard designed by Cherry
• The RAID 0 SSD array delivers impressive performance

Go Deeper:

• MSI Clutch GM31 Lightweight Wireless Review: Ultra-lightweight wireless gaming mouse
• ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023) Review: total dominance on the virtual battlefield
• ASUS ROG Flow X16 Review: Powerful gaming laptop with docking station
• Lenovo Legion Slim 7: Crossover gaming laptop
• MSI Clutch GM31 Lightweight Review: Lightweight gaming mouse with precision sensor