Maingear ML-16 Gaming Laptop Review: Premium, Powerful, Customizable
Maingear's ML-16 Is A Sleek And Powerful Meteor Lake Laptop With GeForce RTX 40 Graphics
Maingear ML-16 Gaming Laptop: Starting $1,699 (w/ 4060), $1,977 (w/ 4070) The Maingear ML-16 is a powerful, portable gaming laptop with a super-fast 240Hz display and premium build quality.
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The Maingear ML-16 is part of the company’s new custom laptop lineup, and comes equipped with an efficient Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (Meteor Lake) processor and choice of an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 or 4070 mobile GPUs. It can be configured with up to 64GB of DDR5 4800MT/s RAM, and up to 8TB of T-Force A440 Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSD storage. Granted, Core Ultra Meteor Lake mobile CPUs aren't Intel's latest offering, but the 16 core, 4.8GHz chip on board here should offer reasonably good horsepower for gaming, creator and productivity tasks.
Maingear ML-16 Build Quality & Design
In its closed position, the silver casing of this machine is accentuated with the black trim that surrounds the display, and the keyboard area inside. The lid has a clean look with only the Maingear logo in the middle.
One of the customization options buyers can get with a Maingear laptop, that they won’t find elsewhere, is the ability to have a custom laptop lid. So, whether it is a business logo, image from a favorite game, or one from Maingear’s curated list, it can be placed on the laptop lid at an additional cost.
When it comes to ports, the ML-16 has its fair share. On the backside of the laptop is an HDMI 2.1 output, and a 1Gbps LAN Ethernet port.
On the left side users will find a MicroSD card reader, (1x) 3.2 USB-A port, and (1x) 3.5mm audio and mic combo jack.
On the right side of the laptop is (1x) Thunderbolt 4 port with Power Delivery, (1x) USB-C port with Display Alt Mode, and (1x) USB 3.2 USB-A port. The right side also houses the port for the included power brick to charge the system's 80-Wh battery.
Maingear's Selection Of A QHD+ 240Hz Display
The display performed nicely for both gaming and productivity tasks. Images were rendered crisp and clear on the X-Rite Pantone color calibrated IPS panel, with action games free of tearing in conjunction with G-Sync and the panel's 240Hz refresh rate. In terms of brightness, the ML-16’s display was more than bright enough in any scenario it was placed, inside or outside.
The ML-16's Sweet Mechanical RGB Keyboard
One area that might disappoint some about the RGB keyboard, however, is that it only supports a set of static colors. There are no options for having multiple colors or preset RGB effects. It is possible that third-party software could be downloaded to add some of these options.
Exploring Intel AI Playground On The Maingear ML-16
The app is designed with an intuitive user interface that allows users to get working with generative AI or chatbots quickly. Settings are written and designed using terms that make sense for the task, without users having to be educated on AI specifically, to get up and running. Though this wasn't pre-installed on the machine, it was a feature that we wanted to explore on this Intel platform and it was actually pretty slick. That said, Maingear leaves the machine in a pristine state, software-wise, with only a Windows 11 Pro setup and NVIDIA RTX Studio Drivers installed.
Let's fire this 4 pound mobile gaming beastie up for some benchmarks, next...