CES 2024 | MSI Crosshair makes a comeback with Crosshair 16 HX and Crosshair 17 HX sans polarizing game themes, essentially MSI Swords with bigger batteries

The last notebook from the MSI Crosshair lineup was the Crosshair 15 Rainbow Six Extraction Edition back in 2022, whose theming had limited appeal mainly to Rainbow Six Extraction fans. Now, alongside the new Sword Series, MSI is launching a refreshed Crosshair lineup powered by Intel's new Raptor Lake-HX Refresh processors sans any game themes.

The Crosshair 16 HX and Crosshair 17 HX are more or less akin to the Sword 16 HX and Sword 17 HX with few changes. The CPU of choice remains the Intel Core i7-14700HX across all variants. While the Sword Series offers RTX 4050, RTX 4060, and RTX 4070 Laptop GPU choices, the Crosshairs omit the RTX 4050 and focus on the RTX 4060 and RTX 4070 Laptop GPU.

The other difference between the Crosshair and Sword Series is with respect to the display. Both the Crosshair 16 HX and Crosshair 17 HX offer corresponding QHD+ 16:10 240 Hz IPS-level panels that are slated to cover 100% DCI-P3 color space. The same is offered in the Sword lineup as well, which additionally also offer an FHD+ 144Hz or 165 Hz options that are not available with the Crosshairs.

Both the Crosshair 16 HX and Crosshair 17 HX sport 90 WHr batteries and 240 W power adapters while the Swords make do with 65 WHr batteries and 200 W power adapters.

Aside from these differences, there is not much to differentiate between the 2024 Crosshair and Sword lineups save for some minor cosmetic variations on the keyboard deck. The new Pulse Series also shares a similar design language and features as that of the Crosshair but features Intel Meteor Lake CPUs instead of Raptor Lake-HX Refresh.

Pricing and availability for the MSI Crosshair 16 HX and Crosshair 17 HX are not yet known.

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