The Prestige 15 is a new thin and light laptop from MSI featuring Intel’s latest 10th gen
CPUs, so let’s check it out in this detailed review and help you decide if it’s a laptop
you should consider.
Starting with the specs my unit has Intel’s new 10th gen Comet Lake 6 core CPU, the i7-10710U,
what a nice name. Before 10th gen the U series chips only went up to 4 cores, so this now
means we can get 6 cores in thinner and lighter machines. Unlike Ice Lake though, this is
still based on their 14nm architecture.
For the graphics my unit has an Nvidia GTX 1650 Max-Q, so it should still be capable
of some light gaming which we’ll check later. I’ve got 16gb of memory running in dual
channel, a 15.6” 1080p 60Hz screen, though it’s also available in 4K, and a 512gb NVMe
M.2 SSD, though it does have two PCIe capable M.2 slots.
The Prestige is available in a few configurations, including a smaller 14 inch model. You can
find examples and updated prices linked in the description.
For network connectivity it’s got the latest WiFi 6, so 802.11ax support and Bluetooth
5. It’s too thin for an ethernet port though, so you’ll have to use a dongle if you need
that.
The metal lid has a dark blue sort of colour to it with a clean and subtle MSI logo in
the center. The interior is also all metal with the same dark matte blue, and there are
blue trims around the edges of the machine and around the touchpad. Design wise it looks
a little similar to MSI’s PS63. Overall the build quality felt very nice for a slimmer
machine, thanks for that all metal build.
The weight is listed at 1.6kg, though mine was approaching 1.7kg. The total weight increases
to 2.1kg with the 90 watt power brick and cables for charging included.
It’s quite a portable 15 inch machine, at 35.7cm in width, 23.4cm in depth, and just
1.6cm thick. This allows the screen to have thin bezels at 7.5mm on the sides.
The 15.6” 1080p 60Hz IPS-level screen has a matte finish and viewing angles were fine.
I’ve measured the panel with the Spyder 5 and got 95% of sRGB, 68% of NTSC, and 73%
of AdobeRGB, fair results. At 100% brightness I measured the panel at 291 nits in the center
with an 840:1 contrast ratio, again fair results but nothing really impressive. Expect much
better results with the 4K panel option, as MSI claim that it’s got 100% AdobeRGB coverage.
There was some minor backlight bleed in this worst case test, but I never actually noticed
this while viewing darker content, but this will vary between laptops and panels.
There was some screen flex, though less than expected considering its thinness due to the
metal exterior. The hinges felt sturdy enough, and the screen can bend all the way back.
The F12 key is a shortcut to flip the screen, this is meant to allow you to quickly push
the screen back and flip it to show things to someone in front of you.
It was easy to open up with one finger, the weight felt well balanced and no issues at
all using it on my lap.
Despite the thin screen bezels the 720p camera is located above the display in the center.
This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like on the MSI Prestige 15. Here’s
how typing sounds, and this is what it sounds like when we set the fan speed to maximum,
so you can still hear me over the fan.
The keyboard has white backlighting which illuminates all keys and secondary key functions.
Key brightness can be adjusted between 3 levels or turned off by using the F8 key. There’s
no numpad, but I don’t personally use it anyway. Overall I really liked typing with
the keyboard, however the keys were a little shallow feeling to press. Here’s how typing
sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
There was minor keyboard flex while pushing down hard, likely due to the metal body, and
I found letter keys needed 56g of force to actuate and it’s got 1.5mm of key travel.
The touchpad uses precision drivers, and like many of MSI’s other recent laptops it’s
stretched out and is quite wide. In general I enjoyed the extra space, and I never had
any problems with it getting in the way while typing, the times that I did touch it while
typing nothing happened so the palm rejection seemed decent.
There’s also a fingerprint scanner in the top left corner of the touchpad, and I found
this to work quite fast for unlocking the laptop.
On the left from the back there are two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C ports, both can be used to
charge the machine, support Thunderbolt 3 and DisplayPort, followed by a HDMI 2.0 output
and 3.5mm audio combo jack.
On the right from the front there’s a UHS-II Micro SD slot and two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A
ports.
On the back there are just air exhaust vents towards the left and right corners, while
the front just has a subtle indentation for you to get your finger in to open the lid.
The base of the machine is more of that matte blue colour and the bottom panel is also metal.
There are some holes for air intake towards the back, and the two speakers are found near
the front. The speakers are ok, maybe a little below average. There was a little vibration
in the palm rest at max volume, but it seemed to get loud enough, and the latencymon results
looked alright.
The bottom panel was easily removed by taking out 11 Phillips head screws.
Once inside we’ve on the left we’ve got the WiFi 6 card, two M.2 slots just above
the battery on the left, and two memory slots near the center.
The laptop is powered by a 4 cell 82 watt hour battery, and I’ve tested it with the
screen brightness at 50%, keyboard lighting off and background apps disabled. The battery
was one of the best I’ve ever tested. These sorts of thin and light ultra book machines
typically last a lot longer than the gaming laptops I usually test due to having lower
powered specs, though the Prestige 15 does still have discrete graphics available. I
was getting over 9 hours just watching YouTube, and 2 hours while playing the Witcher 3 at
medium settings capped to 30 FPS with Nvidia’s battery boost.
It also charges using either of the two Type-C ports on the left hand side with the small
included 90 watt adapter.
The laptop comes with MSI’s Creator Center software installed which is basically the
control panel to manage it. By enabling creator mode we can configure the amount of resources
and priority of specific applications to try and optimize performance for them. We can
use this to swap between three performance modes, which from lowest to highest are ECO,
Comfort and Sport. We’ve also got the option of leaving fans on auto speed or enabling
cooler boost for max speed.
Let’s take a look at thermals next. Air is pulled in underneath the machine through
the holes towards the back, it then gets exhausted through the vents below the screen. Inside
there are a couple of fans, and a single heatpipe is shared between processor and graphics.
Thermal testing was completed in an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius, so
expect different results in different environments.
At idle both the CPU and GPU were looking fine.
The rest of the results are from combined CPU and GPU workloads, and are meant to represent
worst case scenarios as I ran them for extended periods of time.
The gaming results towards the upper half of the graph were tested by playing Watch
Dogs 2, as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics. The stress test
results shown on the lower half of the graph are from running the Aida64 CPU stress test
with only the stress CPU option checked, and the Heaven GPU benchmark at max settings at
the same time to fully load the system.
Whether gaming or under combined CPU and GPU stress test, thermals were the lowest with
ECO mode enabled, as this caps the power limits and performance. When actually playing this
game in ECO mode it wasn’t very playable due to the limits, we’ll see some FPS benchmarks
soon. This is why temperatures rise when we step up to comfort mode, and then again to
the highest performance mode, sport mode. By simply setting the fan to max speed from
automatic the CPU temperature lowers by 10 degrees, a nice improvement. Applying an undervolt
to the CPU didn’t change thermals in the stress test, but it did help slightly with
this particular game.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. ECO mode had the lowest
performance due to the power limit caps in place, again comfort mode stepped up the performance,
then sport mode offered the best experience. Although we saw the CPU temperature drop by
10 degrees in the last graph with the fan at maximum, there wasn’t actually any clock
speed difference as there was no thermal throttling taking place, the limitation was power. This
is why undervolting helped improve clock speed, however it still wasn’t possible to reach
the full 3.9GHz all core turbo speed of the i7 chip in either of these workloads.
These are the average TDP values during these same tests. In most cases the GPU was hitting
its max 35 watt limit, and the CPU seemed to be doing well considering this is a 15
watt chip, however the laptop manufacturer does have the option of configuring a higher
25 watt TDP.
HWInfo reported total system power draw with the stress tests running at 86 watts, and
using an external power meter showed the laptop was consuming 88.7 watts from the wall. The
Prestige 15 comes with a 90 watt power brick, so under these worst case combined CPU and
GPU loads it seems that we’re hitting the limits of the power brick, and this is why
the 3.9GHz all core turbo boost wasn’t being hit. Both thermal and power limits of the
actual machine were fine, but the power brick just couldn’t give it any more. There was
also some slow battery drain, but I never saw it drop below 90%.
Here are the CPU clock speeds while under a CPU only stress test, the results are higher
as the Nvidia graphics are now idle, so there’s more power available and less heat. Sport
mode allowed us to hit the full 3.9GHz all core turbo speed with this workload. We can
see that the temperature dropped back 11 degrees by undervolting the CPU, despite no difference
in actual performance in this workload. When in a CPU only workload like this the average
TDP was actually sitting on 36 watts sustained, quite impressive for a U series chip and well
above the 15 watt base spec.
To demonstrate how this translates into performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks from
these different modes. The results were quite surprising, in sport mode the multicore score
is actually in line with the i7-9750H, due to that higher power limit that’s possible
in CPU only workloads. Due to these results I’ll compare this 10th gen chip with the
9750H in a future video, so make sure you’re subscribed for that one.
Given this is meant to be a content creators laptop I’ve also compared Adobe Premiere
video exporting performance against the 9750H, and like Cinebench, with both chips running
at the same 45 watt power limit the 10th gen chip was exporting the same 4K video file
8% faster.
So how do these different changes actually affect game performance? I’ve tested a couple
of games to find out.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark at highest settings.
As this test tends to be more GPU bound, especially at max settings, undervolting the CPU changed
nothing, comfort mode performed a little behind, with a larger difference seen in ECO mode.
Far Cry 5 was tested with the built in benchmark at ultra settings. There wasn’t much difference
between comfort and sport, a little boost to 1% low mostly, and then a bit extra to
1% low once undervolted. ECO mode meanwhile was significantly lower.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was quite cool, around the typical 30 degrees I usually see. With the stress tests in ECO
mode it’s a bit warm in the center around the mid 40s towards the back. In comfort mode
it’s now a bit warmer, despite the fan speed increasing the internals are now hotter. Here’s
the highest option, sport mode, which gets to the 50s in the center, and mid 50s up the
back which was hot to the touch, granted you won’t be touching there. When playing an
actual game it was similar, the WASD keys and wrist rest was fine but the middle was
quite warm. By setting the fans to max speed the temperatures drop a fair bit.
Here’s what the fans sound like during these different tests.
At idle in ECO mode it was completely silent, no fan noise or coil whine at all. With the
stress tests going in ECO mode it was still fairly quiet. Playing games in this mode was
hit or miss, some worked ok while others were unplayable. Comfort mode only rose fan speed
a bit, and then they rose further in sport mode. In sport mode the fan speed did gradually
change between 44 and 47 decibels despite the same consistent workload. With the fan
at max speed it was quite loud, or at least it sounded higher pitch than usual.
Next let’s take a look at gaming performance. Although this is not designed as a gaming
laptop, we should still be able to do some light gaming on the Nvidia 1650 Max-Q graphics.
Let’s start out with Dota 2, as it’s not a particularly resource heavy title. Generally
this is a CPU bound test, and at low to medium settings the performance is close to what
we’d see with a much higher specced gaming laptop. Although performance does dip a bit
comparatively at ultra, these are still good results and the game plays no problem maxed
out.
Fortnite was tested with the replay feature, and low to medium settings was again able
to provide some high levels of performance. Although the frame rates drop down at higher
settings levels a fair bit, we’re still running with 60 FPS averages at epic settings.
Overwatch was tested in the practice range, and it was still working perfectly fine at
epic settings, the 1% low performance maxed out is higher than the refresh rate of the
screen, and much higher frame rates were achieved at lower settings.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and this is another CPU bound test so the
average frame rates at lower settings aren’t too far off other higher specced gaming laptops.
The 1% lows are down a bit though, but in the end 150 FPS at max settings is still quite
good.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark, and over 60 FPS was still averaged
at ultra settings in this test, with 100 FPS being hit at medium settings and below.
Apex legends was tested with either all settings at minimum or maximum, as it doesn’t have
built in presets. It was playing very nicely with everything set to minimum, but there
was a large hit to performance with everything maxed out, though you could find a nice middle
ground by tweaking the settings more.
Let’s also check out some more demanding games. Battlefield 5 was tested in Campaign
mode, and it played well enough at low and medium settings, high wasn’t bad, but ultra
was noticeably stuttery.
Control was tested walking through the start of the gamel. I don’t have much experience
playing this game yet, but it played ok at low settings, started slowing down a bit at
medium, then was chugging at ultra.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested using the game’s built in benchmark, and given
this seems to be fairly GPU heavy it’s no surprise that the results are on the lower
side at higher settings.
Borderlands 3 was also tested with the built in benchmark, and 60 FPS averages and above
were still reached at low settings.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint was also tested with the built in benchmark, and I was only seeing
higher than 60 FPS averages at low settings in this test, again not surprising as it’s
somewhat resource heavy.
Next let’s also take a look at how this config of the Prestige 15 compares with other
laptops, use these results as a rough guide only as they were tested at different times
with different drivers.
In Battlefield 5 I’ve got the Prestige 15 highlighted in red, and due to it having one
of the lowest GPUs I’ve tested it’s down the bottom of the graph. Again this isn’t
a gaming laptop, and it can run the game just fine at lower settings.
These are the results from Shadow of the Tomb raider with the built in benchmark at highest
settings. This time it wasn’t quite as far behind the other machines with higher powered
graphics.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark.
This time it’s actually beating the L340 despite it having a better GPU, probably as
this is a CPU heavy test and the L340 has a quad core with single channel memory.
If you want to see more games, check the card in the top right to see the results from 18
games. As the Prestige 15 has two Thunderbolt 3 ports it should be possible to attach an
external GPU enclosure to improve gaming performance, but I’ll test this out in a future video.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike and Timespy from 3DMark, just pause the video if you want a detailed
look at these results.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD and the speeds were quite
fair. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to test the Micro SD slot as I don’t have cards
that size.
For updated pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording in the US the MSI Prestige 15 with these same specs is going
for $1400 USD. Here in Australia it’s going for $2300 AUD, though it’s currently on
sale.
There are of course cheaper and more powerful gaming laptops available, but they’re typically
larger, heavier, and have much worse battery life.
With all of that in mind let’s conclude by looking at the good and bad aspects of
the Prestige 15 laptop.
The biggest issue of note was that when under heavy combined CPU and GPU load the 90 watt
power brick didn’t seem to be adequate. This does at least mean the power brick is
on the smaller size for travel. Full performance wasn’t too far off and this was only when
fully loading up both processor and graphics together, though undervolting did help out
a bit. The power and thermal limits of the machine weren’t actually being reached,
but it did get hot with the fans in auto mode, however by raising these temperatures dropped
back substantially.
In CPU only workloads like Cinebench, the i7-10710U was quite impressive compared to
an i7-9750H, look out for my upcoming comparison video between these two. In terms of GPU performance
such as gaming, the limitation here was the 35 watt 1650 max-q, though it was still capable
of light gaming with lower settings, and should be enough to accelerate various creator specific
tasks like video editing.
Despite being on the thinner and lighter side it’s still got two M.2 slots and both memory
slots are user upgradeable. I liked typing on the keyboard, though the presses felt a
little shallow, and I had no problems using the wider touchpad which had good palm rejection
and a fast acting fingerprint scanner.
For the most part the MSI Prestige 15 is a good portable laptop for content creators
with a solid metal build. It’s got two Type-C ports with Thunderbolt 3 support, micro SD
card slot, though personally I would have preferred full size, excellent battery life
and a decent screen all in a thinner and lighter package. The 1080p screen was about average,
though the optional 4K panel should be much better, if you’re planning on doing pro
level photo or video editing I’d probably go for that one for the better colour gamut
and accuracy.
Let me know what you thought about the MSI Prestige 15 laptop down in the comments, and
if you’re new to the channel consider getting subscribed for future laptop reviews and tech
videos like this one.