MSI manufactures a wide variety of gaming laptops, desktops, monitors, and components; check out all the products MSI makes and you may find yourself scouring the catalog on their website.
Among the gaming notebooks is the Prestige 15 series, which translates MSI’s PC performance and display knowledge into a thin, lightweight notebook built for content creators. While not as sophisticated as its creative competitors from Dell, HP, and others, the Prestige 15 is a great choice for video, photography, and graphics work on the go.
MSI Sword 15 review: Design
The MSI Sword 15 is a beefy laptop with an attractive design. The lid and keyboard are made of white plastic with a shimmering mother-of-pearl finish; the Sword 15 flies under the radar, and even the MSI embossed logo on the lid blends in with the lack of color. The combination of finishes is also interesting. The top of the lid and keyboard are smooth, while the sides are brushed.
Opening the lid reveals the keyboard, which is backlit by blue LEDs on white keycaps. The display is framed in black plastic and makes up the lower half of the chassis; a 720p webcam sits above the 15.6″ (16:9) 144Hz IPS display. The display has a matte finish and minimal bezels on either side. However, the top bezel is slightly thicker and the bottom bezel with the MSI logo is sturdier.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The MSI Sword 15 is a beefy laptop with an attractive design. The lid and keyboard are made of white plastic with a shimmering pearl finish; the Sword 15 flies under the radar, and even the MSI embossed logo on the lid blends in with the rest due to the lack of color. The combination of finishes is also interesting. The top of the lid and keyboard are smooth, while the sides are brushed.
Opening the lid reveals the keyboard, which is backlit by blue LEDs on white keycaps. The display is framed in black plastic and makes up the lower half of the chassis; a 720p webcam sits above the 15.6″ (16:9) 144Hz IPS display. The display has a matte finish and minimal bezels on either side. However, the top bezel is slightly thicker and the bottom bezel with the MSI logo is sturdier.
MSI Sword 15 review: Display
On this laptop, you can choose a single display with a 15.6″ diagonal, Full HD resolution, IPS panel. This display offers a 144Hz refresh rate, which is great for gaming and looks great even on a budget laptop come standard. The panel has comfortable viewing angles, with a maximum brightness of 261 nits in the center of the screen and an overall average brightness of 254 nits, with an impressive maximum deviation of only 3%, making it perhaps one of the most uniform displays we have seen when it comes to brightness.
Graphic and Gaming
The MSI Sword 15 review configuration is powered by an Intel Core i7-12650H processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU. This is a step ahead of competitors such as the Acer Nitro 5 (Core i5-12500H, RTX 3050), which has enough muscle to play most games at 1080p resolution. Control (High, 1080p) was launched and 50 frames during combat Performing slightly below /sec, we were able to jump into the action at a generally smooth frame rate; dropping to 720p and turning on DLSS resulted in a steady performance of around 70 fps under the same game conditions.
For the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark, the Sword 15 outperformed both the Acer Nitro 5 and the Alienware x14 R1 (Core i7-12700H, RTX 3060) with a result of 70fps, but was a few frames per second behind the Asus TUF Gaming F15 However, it lagged behind Asus TUF Gaming F15 by a few frames/second. Note that the TUF Gaming F15 also sneaks in an RTX 3060, albeit with a slightly more powerful Core i7-12700H processor.
MSI Sword 15 review: Performance
Since many high-performance laptops on the market still use Intel’s 10th generation processors, we really wanted to see how MSI Sword’s 11th generation, octa-core, 1.9-4.6GHz Intel Core i7-11800H CPU performed. 16GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and a 512GB NVMe drive, it scored 6554 in PCMark 10, the fastest score of any Intel laptop featured here. Other processor-based rendering tests show similar results, with only Ryzen being faster, recording 1937 in Cinebench R15 and 10769 in Cinebench R23. In other words, Intel’s performance is very impressive, but still not as good as AMD’s.
Battery Life
The battery seems small for such a laptop and we would like to see a larger unit like other MSI devices have; In our MSI Sword 15 review we have found the 53.5Wh battery lasted 6 hours 43 minutes of web browsing and 4 hours 29 minutes of video playback. Testing was done with the Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all programs turned off except the program being tested.
MSI Sword 15 review: Heat
Constant warming and attempts to cool it down can cause noise. Packing powerful components into a thin laptop can lead to high temperatures, especially during gaming. Aluminum enclosures can help disperse some of the heat, but they can still get so warm (and loud) that they are uncomfortable to touch, even with the fan’s best efforts.
Configuration Options
If MSI’s GS66 Stealth is aimed at the heart of Razer’s high-end Blade 15 Advanced, the Stealth 15M aims to take on the more affordable Razer Blade 15 Base model we recently reviewed. And it’s the closest MSI has come to meeting Razer’s excellence in build quality, design, and port selection. unlike the GS66, the 15M is built to feel more cohesive, leaving no doubt about its long-term durability, and is shockingly thin for a gaming laptop.
It is also shockingly thin. But as we complained that Razer’s unibody design needs a revamp, its $1,699 option simply offers more for your money. You’ll get more ports, a larger trackpad, user-upgradable RAM and storage, and more power allocated to its RTX 3060 than you get with MSI’s similarly priced Stealth 15M. The Blade 15 Base is almost a pound heavier and a few millimeters thicker.
Conclusion
Let’s look at notebooks as warriors. That’s what MSI has done with its latest laptop, inspired by both cold and hot weapons. Today we present the MSI Sword 15, which MSI was quick to transform into an actual character by enlisting professional video game artist Tsuyoshi Nagano.
It’s a new and quirky way to market a device, but hats off to MSI for their hard work and out-of-the-box approach: the Sword 15 has a white exterior with blue accent colors, a refreshing change from the near dominance of black + red. It is powered by an Intel Core i7-11800H and has a choice of two RTX Ampere GPUs.
