Gaming laptops with massive 18-inch screen sizes are somewhat rare. Maingear’s first 18-incher, the Ultima 18, offers up to 192GB of DDR5 memory and four M.2 SSD options, as well as what you’d expect: an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 mobile GPU.
It isn’t quite the tip-top of mobile gaming laptops, as the Intel “Arrow Lake” Core Ultra 9 275HX is just one 100-MHz step down from the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX Intel launched at CES 2025, but it does retain an edge over the MSI Crosshair 18 HZ AI that MSI launched at Computex 2025, with “just” a GeForce RTX 5070 inside.
Obviously, an 18-inch gaming laptop is not for the weak of wallet, and the Ultima 18 is priced accordingly: it starts at $3,599 and will probably climb precipitously upwards from there.
In addition to the 5.4GHz Core Ultra 9 275HX processor and 175W, 24GB RTX 5090 (or 5080), the laptop offers up to a whopping 192GB of DDR5 DRAM and four M.2 MVME SSDs. That’s par for most competing laptops of this size, though you’ll obviously have to pay considerably extra to populate them all. Maingear tells us that those SSDs include PCIe Gen 5 capabilities, though it’s not clear if all of the slots will boast that speed or not.
Maingear
The 18-inch display is a 3840 x 2400 matte display with 100 percent DCI-P3 color support, 7ms refresh rate, and refresh rates of up to 200Hz. It’s a traditional IPS display, not miniLED, which a Maingear representative said worked best with the mobile RTX 5090 GPU.
On the side are two Thunderbolt 5 ports. Unfortunately, Maingear was the vendor that graciously supplied us with our first Thunderbolt 5 test bed, which apparently split the controller between two ports, resulting in reduced performance. We can hope that Maingear solved the problem this time around. Otherwise, there are dedicated HDMI 2.1, two USB-A ports, microSD, and two 2.5GBit Ethernet ports, which is a bit unusual. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 provide wireless connections.
Maingear
Maingear specifically called out Clevo as its manufacturing partner, and noted that it has a “metal lid” and palm rest, but Maingear didn’t provide further details.
Don’t expect this laptop to anything close to thin and light; it weighs a backbreaking 8.8 pounds, though Maingear claims it can fit inside a backpack. Inside it is a 98Wh battery, plus audio (two drivers, two tweeters and even a subwoofer powered by Sound Blaster Studio Pro 2. The laptop ships with a “backpack friendly” 330W charger, though USB-C charging can be used in a pinch — probably not for powering games, though.
Maingear didn’t provide any performance characteristics, though the laptop ships free of bloatware and with the Control Center control software that allows for adjustments to be made.
