Anyone have experience with MSI laptops?

nomadic

My old Gigabyte Aero 15 (i7-7700HQ) laptop decided to call it quits, so I am in the market for a replacement.

Wasn't overly thrilled with my Gigabyte laptop:

Had a bad keyboard matrix that prevented certain keyboard combos from working
Had several blue screens from incompatibilities with GPU drivers before I found a driver version that was stable (launched into safe mode and used DDU way too many times in the first few months)
And their support was not very helpful with answering my questions in trying to fix the issue that killed the laptop
Was also due to expire from Windows support in October 2025, so failed a bit prematurely

So I am looking at some other brands.

There are 2 models from MSI that look promising as a replacement, but I figured it would be good to see if anyone had any positive or negative experiences with MSI first.

So has anyone here had an MSI laptop? Anything worth mentioning about the experience?

Also gives me a chance to get a laptop with these new generations of CPUs that just released. Looks like the Intel Series 2 chips won't be what I want (a focus on efficiency to compete with ARM devices and no Nvidia GPU support), so will most likely with get a laptop with AMD's Strix Point 300 Series CPU. Seems to be a good efficiency/performance boost over Intel's Series 1 chips that are also an option I am looking into.

Aaron

@nomadic ThinkPad is always recommended

nomadic

@Aaron Got my sister to use a Lenovo, but don't think there were any ThinkPads that matched my requirements.

Here is list of my requirements in somewhat the order of importance (have to compromise on some to find options):

Numpad on keyboard for AHK keyboard shortcuts and viewer changes in CAD programs and Blender
Dedicated Nvidia GPU for CAD and Blender
Minimal bezel and ideally 16:10 aspect ratio HDR screen (screens with thicker bezels just look bad to me after using a laptop with almost none for 7 years)
IO: 2 X USB-A, 1 X USB-C, 1 X HDMI, 1 X Ethernet, charging input on the right side of the device, SD card reader would be nice to have
99.9 Wh battery
Windows Precision touchpad or one I can easily change out the drivers
Not too thick, but thick enough to have a decent cooling performance
Backlit keyboard (just white is fine)
Not too gamery more professional looking design (no unnecessary angular lines/ excessive non-configurable RGB LEDs)
2 M.2 SSD slots (capacity unimportant because I will be bringing over from my old laptop)
Bottom panel removal instead of keyboard panel removal for access to internals
Bottom panel screws not under stick on rubber feet
Fingerprint reader
Upgradable RAM (and if not, a configuration with at least 32GB)

The lack of a Numpad takes away a lot of good laptops for me. Gotten too used to having one around, even though I never use it to actually type numbers.

sgunhouse

@nomadic My latest laptop is an Asus Vivobook with an i7 processor. Doesn't tick all the boxes, but it is slim, light, and powerful - and has a keypad. Around here, seems all the larger laptops have keypads (harder to have a full-size keyboard with keypad on a smaller laptop, but anything above a 14" screen should).

Given all the hype over AI, Nvidia graphics might be a bit pricey. Of course, if you find one that supports AI it will probably use Nvidia chips, so there's that ...

Pathduck

@nomadic How about, you know, getting a Real Computer and getting a basic cheap laptop for when you need to check your email and do some surfing on the road?

Like, do you really need to do CAD and Blender stuff on a laptop? I just imagine that would be painful on a laptop screen, unless you connect it to a big monitor, and then you might as well just have a stationary PC.

A real tower PC would have upgradeable parts and last much longer than a laptop which would be out of data in a couple of years.

barbudo2005

@nomadic

The million dollar question:

Do you really need to move it indoors or do you need it outdoors?

Aaron

@nomadic Looks like you need a mobile workstation.

nomadic

@Pathduck @barbudo2005 A valid consideration for sure, and ultimately the goal for the future, but not a great fit for my current situation. Would want a powerful rendering desktop PC and something portable like a Microsoft Surface, but it can wait.

I am living in a place for the next year or 2 where I don't actually have a desk or a place that I could put one. I have been renovating houses for these past few years while living inside them, so I have had to be pretty mobile. I don't currently live in the house I am working on, but I do still bring my laptop over to put in measurements, adjust CAD models, and demonstrate designs before working on them. And @barbudo2005, this does often occur outside, hence the preference for an HDR screen, as they are often brighter

I have used a more basic laptop for CAD before, and it could likely get me through most of my needs, but rendering stuff on it was awful. Was the main reason I upgraded to the Gigabyte Aero 15 during college.

Here is a photo of me trying to prevent my more basic laptop from melting doing a fairly basic Blender render. The nice thing about winter is free laptop cooling

A desktop with a nice high powered GPU or 2 would be ideal for rendering needs, but I can live without it for now. Once I get a place of my own, it will make more sense.

Screen size isn't as important for CAD, but Blender would certainly benefit from a nice ultrawide monitor or even multiple, as I am still a novice and often need reference material open.

Got 7 years out of my last laptop and 5 from the one before that, so having the latest and greatest tech isn't the biggest concern for me. It would be nice to have something more upgradeable, but I am fine with just SSD swapping for now until I am in a better place to own something less mobile.

Pathduck

@nomadic Hey I have one of those too!

barbudo2005

@nomadic

I wish you the best of luck with your new machine.

What is certain is that all of us on the forum will benefit from the new acquisition .....

Pathduck

I did a quick check on prices, sorted from highest...

That's about 6,000$ are you willing to go that high?

nomadic

@sgunhouse said in Anyone have experience with MSI laptops?:

My latest laptop is an Asus Vivobook with an i7 processor. Doesn't tick all the boxes, but it is slim, light, and powerful - and has a keypad.

There are some interesting looking Asus laptops. They didn't show up in my search, so I will have to give them a look and see what they might have been missing that excluded them. Thanks!

Edit: The Asus ProArt P16 is so close to what I want, but it is another victim of the lack of numpad trend. The Zenbook Pro Duo 15 was my top choice for awhile, but it hasn't seen a refresh and the price plus possible ergonomic issues have eliminated it for me. The Vivobook Pro 15 & 16X both have some compromises, but are interesting.

Around here, seems all the larger laptops have keypads (harder to have a full-size keyboard with keypad on a smaller laptop, but anything above a 14" screen should).

You would think all larger laptops would have a numpad, but a surprising number do not. The argument seems to be that people prefer a centered keyboard.

I do prefer screens 15" or more, but I didn't put it in my preferences because the other items imply a larger device.

Given all the hype over AI, Nvidia graphics might be a bit pricey. Of course, if you find one that supports AI it will probably use Nvidia chips, so there's that ...

Given up on GPUs ever really being affordable again. First it was crypto; now it is AI. Nvidia is the go to for using Blender, so I am a bit locked in to that decision. Hopefully with 5000 series GPUs being not too far away, the prices of 4000 series won't be too inflated.

nomadic

@Pathduck said in Anyone have experience with MSI laptops?:

That's about 6,000$ are you willing to go that high?

No, not quite that much

Was aiming for around $2,000 USD, but might push a bit past that if I can get a better GPU. Didn't include it in the preferences because it is loose and might be adjusted when I actually go to buy the laptop.

That MSI Creator 16 AI Studio (or the new version called AI+) is one of the laptops I am looking at, but with a much more economical configuration. They sure do love throwing the term AI at these new CPU models.

I already have a 4TB M.2 SSD, so I would get the lowest storage option available and keep the original in the secondary M.2 slot. Would also probably upgrade the RAM myself (have a 16GB stick from my old laptop, but not sure if the speeds would be a good match), unless the price isn't too bad for a higher config. And for the GPU, a 4090 is definitely wasted in a thin laptop form factor. With the power and cooling limitations, it wouldn't be too much better than the lower cards. I am probably going for a 4060 or 4070; anything higher tends to make less sense for price to performance in a thin laptop.

Those configurations bring it to a much better $1,800-2,100 USD price range.

Hey I have one of those too!

An excellent window propping device. Kept the window at just the right height to keep the window in place and not crush my poor overworked laptop. If only that device was useful for something else too. CamelBak making a dedicated window prop seems a bit niche

nomadic

Since no one had any experience with MSI laptops to share, to finish off this thread, I might as well give some insight into the laptop I decided to end up purchasing.

General MSI Laptop Consensus

The overall consensus on MSI laptops seems to revolve around the lower tier models having easily breakable hinges, and the stock thermal paste used on the CPU/CPU dies being poor quality. Luckily, with the requirements I wanted, most of the applicable laptops were from their higher end product lines which don't suffer the hinge issue to the same degree. The thermal paste can also be reapplied if the laptop starts to show thermal issues.

These two points seem to be common among most other laptop brands as well, but were thing I considered when choosing to go with an MSI laptop.

What I Bought

The laptop I went with was the MSI Creator A16 AI+ (Specifically, the laptop model number: A3HVGG-233US) with the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 365 CPU, NVIDIA RTX 4070 GPU, and the 16" 16:10 QHD+ OLED screen.

Laptop Design

Image of the msi creator a16 ai+ laptop

It is basically a more expensive version of their MSI Stealth A16 AI+ laptop, but it had better display options (at least in my region) and came in a gray color, rather than the Stealth's black. Since I wanted a brighter display for viewing outside, I was limited to the Creator version, and I didn't like how many fingerprints my old black colored laptop showed, so the gray color was a nice bonus. If you want a similar laptop, I would suggest going with the Stealth to save some money if those 2 points aren't important to you.

It definitely sacrifices some performance and budget friendliness for its relatively thin design, but it was important to me to not get an overly gamery looking laptop with RGB lights and aggressive unnecessary plastic bits that scream that you are a gamer. The dragon shield MSI logo on the lid of the laptop is still gamery, but if it bothers me enough, I can get a vinyl skin to cover it.

Logo on the back

I, overall, like the design of the laptop. I thought the slight bump for the webcam above the screen would bother me, but I have gotten used to it.

GPU Choice

My reasoning for choosing the 4070 instead of the 4060 version wasn't the most logical. In the laptop form factor, there isn't too much to gain from the 4070 vs the 4060 given power constraints.

A big reason for my choice came down to timing. The particular spec I went with launched mid January, right after the announcements of next generation 5000 series Nvidia GPUs as CES. My last laptop lasted me 7 years, so I wanted something that would give me the best possible performance out of the available options given it was basically already an outdated GPU. The new current laptop GPU sweet spot seems to be the 5070 TI, but laptops with that GPU probably won't launch until March, and I have been without my laptop for long enough already. There is also no word on how expensive those laptops will be.

I also had a 1060 in my previous laptop, so it felt like more of an upgrade to go to a 70 of this GPU generation than the same 60. Again not super logical.

Screen Choice

The OLED screen wasn't initially my first choice. The MiniLED screen could go brighter and would have improved contrast over a typical IPS LCD because of the individually controllable backlight dimming zones, but I got scared off of choosing that option.

MiniLED displays suffer from a phenomena known as blooming where a small light colored object on a dark background can have a bright halo behind it determined by the size of the backlight dimming zone. It isn't visible or a problem in many situations, but in some applications it can be fairly annoying to try and ignore. There is a way to mitigate the problem, by controlling all the dimming zones together, like a normal LCD backlight, in situations where you value consistency over the improved contrast, but as of right now, only ASUS laptops have that option. Since ASUS laptops don't seem to have number pads, they weren't an option for me.

So the only other options were an IPS LCD or an OLED. The LCD was reported to be somewhat disappointing in terms of color accuracy and brightness (that was the main reason I eliminated the MSI Stealth laptop because the LCD was the only option available here in the US). I was worried the OLED wouldn't be bright enough, but I found out it another MSI model got up to 600nits on the OLED, so it was the best choice.

Annoyances with the Laptop

There is nothing too major to make me regret my decision, but there are a few things that annoy me with the laptop.

The charging brick is massive. A price to pay for a powerful laptop. They still could have gone for a smaller denser design. Maybe one of those fancy GaN chargers everyone talks about. My old laptop charging brick feels much denser than this new one.
The laptop doesn't have an SD card reader. You would think a laptop aimed at "creators", typically people with cameras, would have an SD card slot, but apparently not. Not the end of the world. I need to carry an adapter around in my bag for the occasional projector that only has a VGA display input, so getting a new USB-C dongle with both VGA and an SD card reader isn't too bad.
The 32GB of RAM is soldered down, so not upgradable. Seems many laptops with these new AMD CPUs have soldered RAM because they are more sensitive to faster RAM speeds than are available in the SODIMM format used in upgradable RAM laptops. I was living fine with 16GB on my last laptop, so hopefully I won't regret being locked into 32GB for however long this laptop lasts.
When the laptop isn't doing anything too demanding, there can be a slight electrical whine when you perform an action like scrolling. It is very subtle, but noticeable if you are in a quiet place with the laptop close to your head. Don't hear it all the time, and if the fans kick on, it is impossible to notice, but still a minor annoyance.
The keyboard backlighting is annoying to control. The color is much cooler than what you choose in the selector (typical problem with whites produced by RGB LEDs) and there isn't a good way to incrementally adjust the color, so it is a tedious process of guess and check. I just like a white keyboard backlight color, but went with more of an orange to get less of a blue color. My old laptop had much better control.
The speakers were a bit tinny on first use. They do seem to have gotten better over time, but not sure if I am just getting used to it or they are breaking in and actually sounding better. Have heard speakers can do that, but hadn't personally experienced it before. Still not the best speakers in the world.
The space bar on the keyboard has some spots on it where it doesn't actuate. Encountered that a few times while typing this post out, but think I should be able to adjust my typing to avoid that problem.
The worry about the longevity of the screen hinges. People do seem to think it is only a problem with the lower end MSI laptops, but I am still trying to be extra careful with how I open up the screen. Like only opening from the center of the screen and not moving the laptop around by grabbing the screen.
The OLED screen has a slight speckle when showing gray colors on low brightness (like colorless noise in a photo or film grain). It almost looks like the Windows 11 default mica design detail. Not really annoying, and might even look better and more integrated with the rest of the OS in some situations

Conclusion

Overall I am extremely happy with the new laptop. It is better in most ways than my previous one, so while it was annoying to have my last laptop die and leave me without one for a few months, this new one is a definite upgrade.

If you don't go for the low tier MSI laptops, you should be pretty safe. Although, if you don't have the same number pad requirement as me, I would suggest going for an ASUS laptop. They seem to have a great selection through all of their price points.

ingolftopf

@nomadic
Thank you very much,
for your very detailed and very good presentation.

Thank you, great

That's just how you are, great class

pearcem01

@nomadic Sorry I did not see this forum topic until after your purchase to respond prior. I have an MSI Gaming Laptop that I bought in 2013 (GT60 20D) that I am still using.

It is very old now, but still runs exceptionally well and can still play most if not all modern games if graphics turned down some. It has been a very good machine and it now lives in my workshop when I need to look something up that I am working on or listen to music when I am in there. The power brick is huge as you mention and the fans are a little loud when the graphics card is running hard.

The keyboard is a little messed up now as it has had a lot of use and the only "major" problem I have had is that the bios has started to flake on it, so I try to not reboot it if not necessary. I would recommend turning off any MSI splash screen on boot if there is one, because I can not see when I have issues and because of bios issue I mentioned, I can not get it to boot to the bios screen to edit it now.

If your new machine is anything like mine I think you will enjoy for a long time!