The MSI Stealth 15M is a thinner and lighter gaming laptop that still manages to pack in
some good specs despite its smaller size.
So what sort of compromises have been made in order to get away with this?
I’ll show you in this detailed review.
It’s got a clean all aluminium design, I’ve got the carbon gray finish here, but there’s
also a pure white version too.
The Stealth weighs around 1.65kg or 3.6lb, or 2.12kg 4.7lb with the 150 watt power brick
and cables included.
It’s on the slimmer side for a 15 inch gaming laptop with these specs at under 1.6cm thick,
making it quite portable.
Considering that this thing is advertised as a gaming laptop, it’s pretty important
that we check out the screen.
My model has a 1080p 144Hz screen, but there are also 60Hz and 240Hz options too.
There’s no G-Sync, no way of disabling optimus, and no dynamic boost here.
The laptop’s management software, MSI Dragon Center, gives us the option of enabling or
disabling panel overdrive.
I wasn’t actually seeing a difference in response time with it enabled or disabled
though.
I’ve measured the average gray to gray screen response time at 6.2ms, so below the 6.9 that
we’d like to see for a 144Hz panel, a good result, though there was some overshoot in
some transitions.
There’s a link in the description if you need an explanation on these numbers.
Here’s how it compares against others, so not super impressive, but I’ve definitely
had plenty of slower 144Hz laptops too.
I’ve tested the screen with the Spyder 5, and got 61% of sRGB, 43% of NTSC, 45% of AdobeRGB
and 45% of DCI-P3, so on the lower side, I’d want more for content creation.
Brightness wasn’t great either, below the 300 nits or so that I like to see with a lower
750:1 contrast ratio.
Backlight bleed also had some issues, with a glow patch down the bottom left in my unit,
but this will always vary between units.
There’s a 720p camera above the screen in the center, no Windows Hello face unlock support
though.
This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like, this is what it sounds like
to type on the keyboard, and this is what it sounds like if we set the fan to full speed,
so you can still hear me ok over the fan noise.
The keyboard has a single zone of RGB backlighting with limited effects, and you can cycle through
them all or disable lighting with the F8 shortcut key.
All keys and secondary functions are illuminated, but there’s no key brightness control.
I had no problems typing with the keyboard, here’s how it sounds to give you an idea
of what to expect.
The power button is part of the keyboard on the top right, but accidental presses don’t
put it to sleep, you have to hold it for anything to happen.
There are also some air vents behind the keyboard just below the screen.
The precision touchpad clicks down anywhere and works fine, though it felt a little small.
MSI usually uses wider touchpads, but that’s not the case here.
Maybe I’ve just been spoilt.
Fingerprints and dirt aren’t too obvious on the matte interior, but it’s easy to
clean with a microfiber cloth as it’s a smooth surface.
On the left there’s an air exhaust vent, the power input, MicroSD card slot, USB 3.2
Gen1 Type-A port, and 3.5mm audio combo jack.
The right has a Type-C Thunderbolt 4 port with DisplayPort output, second USB 3.2 Gen1
Type-A port, HDMI 2.0 output, and there’s an air exhaust vent over on this side too.
Both the HDMI and Type-C ports connect directly to the Intel Xe and not Nvidia, so VR isn’t
possible.
The Type-C port can be used to charge the laptop.
The back has air exhaust vents towards the corners, while the front just has an indent
in the center for getting your finger in to open the lid.
Opening the lid with one finger is easy, and the screen goes the full 180 degrees back
for sharing, which is further aided by the F12 shortcut key which can be used to flip
the screen around.
There’s some flex to both the chassis and lid, but it’s not too bad considering the
thinner size and not something I noticed during normal use.
Underneath has plenty of air ventilation holes towards the back half.
Getting inside was fairly easy after removing 13 phillips head screws.
Once inside we can see that the motherboard is upside down, like some of MSI’s other
models such as the GS66.
We’ve only got access to the single M.2 storage slot, WiFi card, and battery down
the front.
If you want to access the two memory slots you’ll need to disconnect the motherboard
and take it out, a more involved process.
The speakers are found on the left and right sides towards the front.
I thought they sounded average, minimal bass, a bit tinny, and some wrist rest vibration
at full volume.
My measurement tool wasn’t reporting them as super loud, but my ears were hurting at
max volume, and the latencymon results weren’t great.
The Stealth 15M is powered by a 52Wh battery.
I’ve tested it with keyboard lighting off, background apps disabled and screen at 50%
brightness.
It only lasted for almost 4 and a half hours in the YouTube playback test, a lower result,
and then a little over an hour in gaming, somewhat average.
Let’s check out thermals next.
The MSI Dragon Center software lets us pick between different performance modes, which
from lowest to highest are silent, balanced and extreme performance.
Extreme performance mode lets you overclock the GPU, but no overclock was applied by default,
so I haven’t tested with one.
You can also enable cooler boost mode here, which sets the fan to max speed.
We can also enable user mode for some fan customization.
After just a few days of testing, cooler boost randomly decided to stop working.
I’m not sure what the issue was, but I had to manually uninstall the dragon center software
and reinstall it in order to fix it.
Here’s what MSI shows the cooling solution as looking like, I didn’t film myself it
as I didn’t take the whole thing apart to get to it.
The idle temperatures down the bottom were fine.
Stress tests were done with the Aida64 CPU stress test with stress CPU only checked and
the Heaven GPU benchmark at max settings run at the same time, while gaming was tested
playing Watch Dogs 2.
The CPU was thermal throttling with the stress tests running, but only in the lower silent
and balanced modes as the fans run quieter here.
With extreme mode though, throttling was removed, and enabling cooler boost further lowered
temperatures, but at the expense of fan noise, as you’ll hear shortly.
These are the clock speeds during the same tests just shown.
Despite thermals improving for the CPU in extreme mode, interestingly the processor
performance actually lowers now, however the GPU clock speeds increase with extreme mode.
All is revealed when looking at the power limits.
The Nvidia RTX 2060 Max-Q seems to be capped to 30 watts in order to counter the slower
fans in silent and balanced modes.
As a result, there’s less performance, and many GPU bound games were playing noticeably
bad.
With extreme mode the GPU is able to run up to 65 watts, however with the stress test
at least, it seems that the CPU power limit lowers from 35 watts to 28 watts with extreme
mode.
Now it’s worth noting that MSI are about to refresh this gaming laptop already with
Intel’s new 11th gen H35 processors and Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics.
I don’t think there will be too much difference on the CPU side, the processors will just
have a little higher power limit at 35 watts.
Technically the 1185G7 in this machine has a 28 watt TDP on paper, but as we saw earlier
in some workloads it could exceed this.
Anyway considering that those temperatures could be brought under control with extreme
mode, it does appear that there is thermal headroom available with those H35 processors,
so there might be a little CPU boost owing to that.
Here’s how CPU only performance looks in Cinebench with the GPU now idle.
The results were basically the same regardless of the performance mode in use, both for single
and multicore scores, so it would seem that the processor isn’t limited in a CPU only
workload.
This is how it stacks up against other laptops.
What I found most interesting was that the multicore score was basically the same as
the Ryzen 7 4700U in the Acer Swift 3 just below it, as that’s an 8 core 8 thread part.
The 5700U is about to launch though, which will change this.
At idle the middle of the keyboard was in the mid 30s, so a little warmer than usual
but not an issue you’ll notice.
With the stress tests running in silent it gets around 10 degrees warmer in the center,
so a little warm to the touch in the middle now.
Balanced mode was much the same, makes sense as the internals were basically the same.
Extreme mode was warmer now despite the fans running louder and internals running cooler
as a result of the higher GPU power limit.
The back is quite hot, but you shouldn’t need to touch there, so it's not a practical
problem.
With the fan at full speed it’s much cooler now, still warm, but a significant improvement.
Let’s have a listen to the fan noise.
The fan was still audible when idling in silent mode.
It was louder with the stress tests running, but still not too loud, then just a little
louder stepping up to balanced mode.
Extreme mode was a little louder still, then cooler boost or max fan was significantly
worse.
Personally, I think this is a great thing, as it gives you the option of setting the
fan speed that you like.
If you’re comfortable with more noise you can take advantage of lower temperatures.
In any case it’s much better than being forced one way or the other.
User choice is always best.
Now let’s check out how well the Stealth 15M performs in games and see how it compares
with other laptops.
I’ve tested Battlefield 5 in campaign mode at ultra settings, and the Stealth is highlighted
in red.
The results are on the lower side, in part due to the 65 watt 2060 graphics, though the
Zephyrus G15 with the same power GPU was closer to 70 FPS in the same test, but with a more
powerful 8 core processor.
As we saw earlier, CPU performance is actually lost in extreme performance mode to boost
the GPU, so that could be resulting in the lower 1% low.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark.
The Stealth 15M wasn’t doing great here for a laptop with 2060 graphics, but it was
still near 70 FPS even with the ultra setting preset, so it’s not like it’s not going
to be playable or anything.
That said, still around 10 FPS lower than the Zephyrus G14 and G15 with same tier GPU,
likely due to the processor difference, as this is a game I’ve noticed to be more processor
dependent than others.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested with the games benchmark tool with the highest
setting preset.
This test seems to be more GPU heavy, so the Stealth rises up a few levels, and is now
just 1 FPS ahead of the Zephyrus G15 with the same tier GPU, despite the processor difference.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike, Timespy and Port Royal from 3DMark, just pause the video if you want
a detailed look at these results.
I’ve used Adobe Premiere to export one of my laptop review videos at 4K.
Lower times are better here, and the Stealth 15M was on the lower side, perhaps due to
the power limited quad core processor.
I’ve also tested Premiere but with the Puget systems benchmark, and this tests for more
things like live playback rather than just export times.
Higher scores are better now, and again the Stealth 15M was still lower than most.
Adobe Photoshop was a bit better comparatively in this same selection of laptops, very close
to the Prestige 14 just above it with the same processor, which makes sense as this
is more of a processor heavy test.
DaVinci Resolve on the other hand tends to be more GPU heavy.
That said, it wasn’t scoring as well as the 2060 Max-Q with same wattage in the ASUS
Zephyrus G14 at 561 points, though that does also have an 8 core processor.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
I’ve used Crystal disk mark to test the storage.
The 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD was doing alright for the reads, but half the sequential speed when
it came to writes.
As an Intel 11th gen laptop, PCIe Gen 4 should also be supported if you want to upgrade to
a faster SSD.
The MicroSD slot was doing great, basically maxing out my card, and the card clicks in
and sits most of the way into the laptop.
Finally let’s discuss price, you can check the links in the description for updated prices,
as these will change over time.
At the time of recording the 2060 model with the same specs I’ve tested is $1500 USD
on Newegg.
You could definitely get a better performing laptop with more power and a better screen
for less money, say the Lenovo Legion 5 for example, so it really comes down to how much
you value the smaller and thinner size.
Here in Australia we’re looking at $2500 AUD, or $500 more for the newer H35 and RTX
3060 Max-Q model.
As MSI are about to upgrade this model to the Intel 11th gen H35 processors and Nvidia
RTX 3060 graphics, performance results with that hardware could vary a little to what
we’ve seen in this review, but pretty much everything else should still apply.
So with all of that in mind, let’s conclude by looking at both the good and the bad to
help you decide if the MSI Stealth 15M gaming laptop is worth considering.
The 11th gen processor is performing quite well, particularly in terms of single core
performance, as Tiger Lake does quite well there.
Intel 11th gen also means we get PCIe gen 4 and Thunderbolt 4, so it’s good to have
some nice modern standards.
The RTX 2060 graphics does do alright, but it is limited by that lower 65 watt power
limit, so it can get beaten by cheaper 1660 Ti machines.
The response time of the screen was quite good for a 144Hz gaming laptop, but the brightness,
colour gamut and backlight bleed could be better.
The battery life wasn’t great either, and the upside down motherboard makes memory upgrades
a more involved process.
I’m guessing it just must be a necessity to get it as thin as it is.
It’s a bit strange that there appears to be space for a second M.2 slot that’s wasted,
that could have otherwise been a larger battery.
Overall, I think the Stealth 15M is a bit pricey.
It’s really only worth considering if you really want a smaller and lighter machine.
Perhaps for travel, if that’s ever allowed again.
Let me know what you thought about MSI’s Stealth 15M gaming laptop down in the comments,
and leave a like on the video if it was useful.
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laptop reviews like this one.