In the wake of Prime Day, this RTX 5070 Ti laptop is looking mighty alluring next to all those lesser RTX 5070 machines

As post-Prime Day price tags find their way back up to pre-sales prices, I’m happy to see at least some deals that haven’t scarpered. This is most definitely one of them, as you’re getting a laptop with an RTX 5070 Ti (mobile) GPU for the eminently reasonable price of $1577 at Walmart.

For reference, that’s about the price that we’re seeing RTX 5070 laptops go for right now, even when on sale. The RTX 5070 Ti mobile is significantly faster, so it’s no small thing to see this lappy in the same price bracket as RTX 5070 models.

The 32 GB version was on sale last week for Prime Day, but here you’re getting a cut-back 16 GB one, with only half of the storage (512 GB) to boot. It’s therefore not as good of a deal as last week, but the good news is the SSD and RAM isn’t soldered in. There are even two SSD slots, meaning you can upgrade whenever you feel like it. If it were me, I’d be whapping in another TB of storage, or at the very least another 512 GB, ASAP. The RAM can wait.

The main thing to keep in mind with the Vector 16 HX AI 16 is that it’s a bit of a throwback to the old guard of laptops. It’s bulky (see the image below), loud, and not as much of an amazing proposition when unplugged. Otherwise, it’s very performant when plugged in. In other words, it’s more of a desk-body than a modern pack-it-and-go machine.

In his review of the RTX 5080 version of this laptop, our Dave found it to be pretty noisy in its Extreme Performance mode, but he was impressed with its performance while in the much quieter Balanced mode. When it already beats a bunch of similarly specced laptops, dropping into a more efficient mode doesn’t seem too bad of a proposition.

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MSI Vector 16 HX AI gaming laptop — (Image credit: Future)

The Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX in this laptop is an Arrow Lake chip, meaning it’s not the most recent, but it should do just fine for gaming. Notably, you’re still getting eight Performance cores, which is the same as higher-tier laptop chips of the same generation like the Core Ultra 9 275HX.

Dave found battery life to be far from amazing on the RTX 5080 version, and with the RTX 5070 Ti mobile not being substantially less power-hungry, battery life likely won’t be amazing here, either. It’s a pretty thick machine, too, in the style of more traditional gaming laptops and unlike many thin ones you see these days.

Both of those things mean you’ll probably want to keep the laptop as a plugged-in, top-of-the-desk affair. Of course, it will still perform nicely and won’t immediately die when unplugged, especially if you drop it into that Balanced mode.

It’s also not the comfiest for typing over long periods thanks to its scratchy edges, though that’s just one more thing lending favor to my characterization of this lappy as a bit of a throwback. If you know that’s what you’re in for, and you’re okay with that, I doubt you’ll be disappointed in what you’re getting here for the price—especially if you’re happy cracking the thing open and upgrading that SSD before long.