Table of Contents
amazon MSI Prestige 15 reviews
Pack.
MSI Prestige 15 is placed in a genuine cardboard box, with pretty paper material, like some high-end mooncake boxes. In addition, the words on the box are pressed with gold emulsion to bring a feeling of Luxury when you touch it.
Design
The MSI Prestige 15 is one of the thinnest and lightest 15-inch laptops you can buy right now. Thickness 16.9mm and weight 1.69kg. It’s only slightly thicker and heavier than most typical 13- and 14-inch laptops. When you first hold it, there’s a difference between what you’re feeling in your hand and what you’d expect a 15-inch laptop to weigh. Although the Prestige 15 is heavier than the LG gram 15 – 1,120g, that is still too good.
The chassis is aluminum and is bluish-gray from some angles. The edges of the screen cover are beautifully stylized diamond-cut. The build quality is generally good but there is still some room for improvement. While it doesn’t feel completely premium and solid, it is MIL-STD-810G certified for the military. That means it has some resistance to shock, vibration, temperature, dust, and pressure.
Screen
MSI calls its display True Pixel and that’s one of the highlights of this machine. The bezels aren’t the thinnest, but the brightness and colors are some of the best I’ve seen on a 15-inch laptop. MSI says it covers 100% of the AdobeRGB color space, which is factory-calibrated and Calman-certified. This version is the version using the FullHD screen, so the image is sharp at a good level, and the images and text are sharp and clear. If you need everything smooth like on a MacBook, add another $450 to have a 4k screen. Besides, it is also equipped with a 3H hard coating and 1 anti-glare layer, so glare and annoying reflections are kept to a minimum.
The webcam and microphone on Prestige 15 are of sufficient quality to use with video calls or talk while playing online games. If you need to Livestream, you should buy an external webcam for better quality.
Connection
Prestige 15 has a sufficient number of connections. On the left, you have two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports with built-in PDs that can quickly charge other mobile devices, a single full-size HDMI 2.0 port that can output to a second monitor at 4k/ 60Hz, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the right, there are two USB-A USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports and a microSD card reader that supports high-speed UHS-II cards. In terms of wireless connectivity, the Prestige 15 supports the latest WiFi 6 standard as well as Bluetooth 5.1.
Keyboard and touchpad
The keyboard is pretty good. Unlike most 15-inch laptops, the Prestige 15’s keyboard omits the numeric keypad. Users whose most frequently used application is Excel may be confused by this decision, but for others, it means larger keys and a less cramped layout. The keys are large and the layout is quite conventional, although it must be noted that there is an extra column for your navigation keys. Since the arrow keys are full-sized, the right Shift key will be slightly smaller. The key travel is 1.5mm, the key feel is also well appreciated and the white backlight is very bright. The only minus point is that MSI uses too stylized fonts, so it feels a bit difficult to see.
The trackpad is 14cm wide and 6.5cm from top to bottom. It is narrow but wide. It’s smooth to the touch and uses the Windows Precision driver, so it’s smooth and responsive. There is a fingerprint scanner located in the top left corner, which can be a bit awkward for right-handed people to use. All in all, this is a well-made trackpad but I wish it had a bit more room for more comfortable scrolling down.
Performance of the MSI Prestige 15
The MSI Prestige 15 is one of the first laptops to launch with the latest 11th Gen Intel Core i7 – 1185G7 processor, With that powerful CPU and 16GB of RAM inside, it’s a laptop built to handle heavy software. It works quickly and rarely lags in any way, and it’s capable of handling multiple browser tabs or multiple apps at once.
MSI has packed a solid discrete graphics card here: the NVIDIA GeForce GTX1650 (Max-Q). It’s not powerful enough for MSI to call this a gaming laptop, but it can still run today’s games with a steady frame rate at 60fps. However, when switching to games with higher graphics requirements, the fps will drop to about 42fps at Medium settings. Overall, I find its gaming performance still quite good.
where can you get a MSI Prestige 15 online
MSI Prestige 15 15.6″ FHD Ultra Thin and Light Professional Laptop: Intel Core i7-1260P RTX 3050 Ti 32GB LPDDR4X 512 GB NVMe SSD, Thunderbolt 4, MicroSD Card Reader, Win 11 Pro: Carbon Gray A12UD-005: Buy it now
MSI Prestige 15 15.6″ FHD Ultra Thin and Light Professional Laptop Intel Core i7-1185G7 GTX1650 MAX-Q 16GB DDR4 512GB NVMe SSD Win10 – Gray (A11SC-034): Buy it now
MSI Prestige 15 Thin and Performance Driven Laptop: 15.6″ FHD 1080p, Intel Core i5- 155G7, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, 16GB, 512GB SSD, Thunderbolt, WiFi 6E, Win10PRO, Carbon Gray (A11SC-048): Buy it now
MSI Prestige 15 15.6″ FHD Ultra Thin and Light Professional Laptop: Intel Core i5-1240P GTX 1650 16GB LPDDR4X 512GB NVMe SSD, Thunderbolt 4, MicroSD Card Reader, Win 11 Home: Carbon Gray A12SC-011: Buy it now
MSI Prestige 15 Thin and Performance Driven Laptop: 15.6″ FHD 1080p, Intel Core i7-1195G7, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, 16GB, 1TB SSD, Thunderbolt, WiFi 6E, Win10PRO, Carbon Gray (A11SC-044): Buy it now
Temperature
Such hardware in a body just 16.9mm thick will always cause thermal problems. The Prestige 15 runs very warmly. Thanks to the slightly changed design from Cooler Boost 3, CPU and GPU temperatures are within acceptable limits, but the body will get extremely hot when running at full capacity. The top corners of the keyboard are only 50°C and very hot to the touch. It’s also 10 degrees hotter than other 15-inch laptops we’ve tested. The palm rest is also hot – the warmest of all the other 15-inch laptops. In short, you probably won’t want heavy software if you’re using this laptop on your lap.
Battery life
Battery life is commendable for a laptop with a 15-inch screen with nearly 5 hours of continuous operation.
You can extend battery life by using the “Super Battery” mode in the Creator Center app. This application dims the screen and forces the processor to run in its most efficient mode. You lose performance but use up more battery. When I ran the app I found that I was able to extend its battery life to almost 11 hours – more than double that.
Possibility to upgrade
Prestige 15 is pre-installed with 2 sticks of 8g ram, so if you want to upgrade the ram, it needs to be replaced but cannot be added. And the highest amount of ram the machine can receive is 64GB.
Prestige 15 also has 2 ssd m2 slots (1x NVMe PCIe Gen3 and 1x NVMe PCIe Gen4)
Epilogue
The Prestige 15 is a commendable attempt at creating a powerful 15-inch laptop that’s still relatively thin and light.
Performance is in line with expectations, but without the “High Performance” mode enabled, the CPU performance isn’t much better than that of a 13- or 14-inch laptop. Graphics performance is a step up but then it falls behind other 15-inch laptops with more powerful discrete GPUs. There’s the heat issue. As analyzed above, this laptop is very hot when operating at full capacity. I don’t normally use the heatsink, but with the Prestige 15, I think you might need it.
As I mentioned at the beginning, its closest competitors are ASUS’ ZenBook 15 and Dell’s XPS 15. Now, I haven’t had any hands-on experience with them yet, but in theory, the ZenBook 15 is the closest competitor since it has an identical CPU and GPU. On the other hand, the XPS 15s are more powerful machines. XPS 15 more powerful 45W CPU and a more powerful discrete graphics card. The downside is that they are thicker and heavier, but not by much so I would pick them up if I need a powerful, moderately flexible 15-inch laptop.
However, if portability is important to you then the Prestige 15 is well worth a close look. Few other 15-inch laptops are this thin and light. The LG gram 15 is lighter but it relies on integrated graphics so its performance can’t compete with the Prestige 15. While the ZenBook 15 may have identical specs, it’s thicker and heavier than the Prestige 15. The XPS 15 may be more powerful but still heavier. Both are about 400g heavier than the Prestige 15. If you need to carry your laptop around all day, every gram counts.
So while Prestige can be an awkward balance between performance and portability, it at least makes a niche for itself in the market.