By There aren’t many gaming laptops with enormous 18-inch screens. The Ultima 18, Maingear’s first 18-inch model, has four M.2 SSD options, up to 192GB of DDR5 memory, and, of course, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 mobile GPU.
Although the Intel “Arrow Lake” Core Ultra 9 275HX is only 100 MHz slower than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX that was introduced at CES 2025, it still has an advantage over the MSI Crosshair 18 HZ AI that was introduced at Computex 2025, even though it only has “just” a GeForce RTX 5070.
An 18-inch gaming laptop is not for the faint of heart, and the Ultima 18 is priced appropriately, starting at $3,599 and likely rising quickly from there.
The laptop has four M.2 MVME SSDs, up to a massive 192GB of DDR5 DRAM, a 5.4GHz Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, and a 175W, 24GB RTX 5090 (or 5080). That’s standard for the majority of competitive laptops this size, though filling them all out will undoubtedly cost a lot more. According to Maingear, those SSDs have PCIe Gen 5 capabilities, but it’s unclear if every slot will support that speed.
The 18-inch display is a matte 3840 x 2400 screen with a refresh rate of up to 200 Hz and 100% DCI-P3 color compatibility. According to a Maingear official, the mobile RTX 5090 GPU performed best with this conventional IPS panel, not miniLED.
There are two Thunderbolt 5 ports on the side. Unfortunately, the vendor that kindly provided us with our first Thunderbolt 5 test bed was Maingear. It appears that this caused performance issues by dividing the controller between two ports. Hopefully, Maingear was able to resolve the issue this time. Other than that, it has two USB-A ports, microSD, two 2.5 Gbit Ethernet connectors, and a dedicated HDMI 2.1 port—which is a little odd. Wireless connections are made possible using Bluetooth 5.4 and Wi-Fi 7.
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 be 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.
