The jump to the Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs and the avalanche of tariff woes make our gaming gadgets more costly for only marginal performance gains. Out of this murk of price gouging is Maingear, a company best known for making custom gaming desktops. Its new “Super 16″ 16-inch gaming laptop, announced at the same time as IFA 2025, does more than most companies to set itself apart, but it’s the starting price for its specs that makes it more enticing than competing notebooks.
Maingear worked with the Taiwan-based laptop brand Clevo on its new $2,400 gaming laptop, but the design still has a subtle amount of Maingear’s usual flair with its clean, uniform look and minimalistic RGB backlit keyboard. The stated specs of the Super 16 won’t surprise anybody paying attention to today’s laptop slate. It’s packing an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti mobile GPU running at a full 140W. What actually sets the laptop apart is the display—a 300Hz IPS LCD at 2,560 x 1,600 resolution. You’ll easily miss the beautiful black levels and contrast of OLED on devices like the $2,600 Razer Blade 14 or even mini LED on a $3,300 HP Omen Max 16. On the bright side, the screen can display high frame rates.
The RTX 50-series GPUs are capable of topping 100 fps with the help of multi-frame gen. This is a technology that inserts multiple AI-generated frames in between natively rendered frame rates, artificially boosting the overall fps. While the technology isn’t necessary for playing games at playable frame rates (you normally need at least 40 or closer to 60 fps for frame gen to work without experiencing odd visual glitches), it can make games run smoother than normal. The RTX 5070 Ti won’t be able to push the most-demanding Cyberpunk 2077-level games to their peak with ray tracing on Ultra settings, but it should be enough for most of your Steam library at the laptop’s max resolution. You can find other budget-friendly gaming laptops with 240Hz OLED screens, like the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16S, for $1,900. That’s still more than last year’s Helio Neo 16 models. Acer said it hiked prices earlier this year in response to Trump’s tariffs.
While Maingear’s Super 16 supports Wi-Fi 7, it only includes up to Thunderbolt 4 USB-C instead of the more modern Thunderbolt 5. Otherwise, the device’s I/O still comes through in a pinch with two USB-A, HDMI, and a microSD card slot. What’s more, the device doesn’t use any proprietary port for charging. The 230W AC adapter uses a 100W USB-C plug. Framework made a big deal out of its 240W USB-C charging through USB-C on its upcoming Framework Laptop 16.
Maingear’s first 18-inch “Ultima” gaming laptop looks sleek in its ocean blue color, but it also costs $3,400 at the low end with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX GPU and RTX 5080 GPU, or $4,300 with an RTX 5090 mobile GPU. That’s not bad considering the competition for 18-inch devices, such as the high-end $4,050 Alienware 18 Area-51 config, especially with its 200Hz display. The major difference between Alienware and Maingear’s top-end notebooks is the former has ultra-clicky mechanical keys that make typing a joy. Every laptop will have tradeoffs. The lone remaining question is whether Maingear’s Super 16 may have enough going for it to make up for what it lacks.
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