Maingear Unveils Ultima 18 Laptop With RTX 5090 Power For 4K/200Hz Beast Gaming
Maingear might be best known for its elite lineup of custom desktop configurations like the Apex Force we reviewed a couple of months ago, but don't sleep on the boutique builder's laptop lineup. That's especially true of its newest model, the fully-loaded Ultima 18. No, Lord British isn't coming out of retirement, but if he was considering it, this is the kind of laptop that could convince him to do so.
Just so we're clear, the Ultima 18 is not in any way affiliated with Lord British, Britannia, or the Ultima game series. Instead, it takes root in the realm of Clevo, which worked in tandem with Maingear to "redefine what a gaming laptop can be" with "desktop-level specs."
Holy hyperbole, right? Well, the Ultima 18 backs it up with nary a weak point, at least from what we can discern from the spec sheet. First and foremost, it features a bodacious 18-inch display with a 4K resolution (3840x2400, 16:10 aspect ratio), fast 200Hz refresh rate, and NVIDIA G-SYNC support. It also serves up 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut.
It's powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor based on Arrow Lake. This is the second-fastest chip in the Arrow Lake stable with 24 total cores, including 8 performance cores clocked at up to 5.4GHz and 16 efficient cores clocked at up to 4.6GHz. It also boasts 40MB of L2 cache and 36MB of L3 cache.
Sitting shotgun is NVIDIA's flagship mobile GPU, the GeForce RTX 5090 with 24GB of GDDR7 memory and a 175W TGP. That represents the highest power rating for the 5090 in mobile form, which can be configured from 95-150W, plus another 25W via Dynamic Boost. In other words, Maingear is driving the 5090 at full throttle.
"Ultima 18 isn’t just a laptop, it’s a no-compromise desktop-class gaming rig that fits in a backpack,"
said Wallace Santos, CEO of Maingear. "We’ve engineered this notebook to handle the latest AAA
games, creative workloads, and AI-driven applications with headroom to spare. From the raw
horsepower to the fine details, this system embodies everything our gamers expect from a premium
Maingear gaming system."
It doesn't stop with the high-end CPU/GPU combo, either. The Ultima 18 supports up to a generous 192GB (4x48GB) DDR5 memory and offers ample storage options—users will find four M.2 slots underneath the hood, including a single Gen5x4 and three Gen4x4 slots for speed solid state drives (SSDs).
Connectivity options on the wireless front include Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. As for the wired I/O, the Ultima 18 serves up a pair of Thunderbolt 5 ports, dual 2.5Gbps LAN ports, a single HDMI 2.1 output, a microSD card slot, and dual USB-A ports with power delivery.
Other features include five built-in speakers (2x tweeters, 2x drivers, and 1x subsooofer) powered by Sound Blaster Studio Pro 2; a 5.0-megapixel webcam with Windows Hello support, presence sensor, and privacy cover; a customizable per-key RGB keyboard with a dedicated CoPilot key; and a rather big 98Whr (8-cell) battery with an included 330W charger. Maingear notes that users can also charge the laptop via USB-C in a pinch.
We haven't spent any hands-on time with the Ultima 8 (yet) so we can't speak to the overall experience. But we can reasonably surmise that even with a big battery, you'll want to stay near a wall outlet for extended gaming sessions. There's a ton of power on tap here.
All of this hardware bliss also means it's the polar opposite of an affordable ultrabook—this thing checks in at 8.8 pounds (3.99kg) and starts at $3,599. That said, you get the same boutique experience here as you do with Maingear's desktops, meaning it's "free from OS-chocking bloatware."
Maingear's Ultima 18 is available now.
