msi's delta 15 is the first gaming
laptop featuring amd's new radeon rx
6700m graphics but there are some
important things that you need to know
about before considering this laptop
let's discuss in this review my delta 15
has an 8 core ryzen 7 5800h processor
radeon rx 6700m graphics 16 gigs of
memory and a 15.6 inch 1080p 240hz
screen the delta 15 has an all-aluminum
body with a grey metal finish and all
corners and edges feel smooth there's
some flex to the interior particularly
above the touchpad which i suppose is
expected despite the metal finish as it
is on the thinner side it felt solid
enough during normal use anyway there's
also some flex to the lid despite it
being metal as it's on the thinner side
it's not too bad but what's more
annoying is the screen wobble i first
noticed it if i picked up the laptop to
move it or if i bumped the table the lid
just flips around it's not quite hp
victus levels of wobbly but it's more
wobbly than most others fortunately it
doesn't really seem to move when typing
on the keyboard even when i try typing
aggressively so i don't think it's going
to be too much of a problem in practice
unless you bump it the laptop alone
weighs less than 2 kilos or about 4.3
pounds then 2.8 kilos or 6.1 pounds with
the 240 watt power brick and cables it's
on the smaller side for a 15 inch gaming
laptop in all dimensions and relatively
thin too so quite portable the delta 15
has a 15.6 inch 1080p 240hz panel but
there's also a 144hz option so expect
different results with that
unfortunately there's no mock switch so
we're stuck with the integrated graphics
but the screen has freesync reasonable
color gamut for a gaming laptop and
average contrast it's pretty average
when it comes to brightness just able to
get above 300 nits at maximum so decent
but not amazing these days the msi
center software the control panel for
the laptop gives us the option to enable
or disable panel overdrive which affects
screen response time with overdrive
disabled we're looking at about a seven
millisecond average greater grade
response time not bad there's a link in
the description if you need an
explanation on these numbers with
overdrive enabled which is default we're
now just under a five millisecond
average response time this does
introduce a little overshoot and
undershoot but at least you can turn it
off if that's an issue for you it's
doing all right when compared to other
gaming laptops not quite the 4.17
milliseconds needed for all transitions
to occur within the refresh window but
also not as slow as some other 240hz or
even 300hz screens that i've tested i've
also measured the total system latency
which is the amount of time between a
mouse click and a gunshot fired in cs go
the result is about average a couple of
milliseconds behind the highest spec
6800m laptop even though that had a
slower screen response time backlight
bleed wasn't too bad some small patchy
spots that i never noticed during
regular use but this will vary between
laptops there's a 720p camera above the
screen in the middle no ir for windows
hello though this is what the camera and
microphone look and sound like this is
what it sounds like while typing on the
keyboard and we can see that the screen
isn't really wobbling too much while
doing this and this is what it sounds
like if i set the fan to full speed so
it's not doing a great job of isolating
my voice over the fair noise the
keyboard has one zone of rgb
backlighting it lights up all keys and
secondary functions and you can cycle
between five different effects with a f8
shortcut key there's no keyboard
shortcut for adjusting key brightness
but there are four brightness
adjustments that can be made through the
msi center software and this also lets
you change the colors typing was all
right though the keys don't press down
too far just part of a thinner laptop
design
i like that the arrow keys aren't tiny
but i had a problem with my down arrow
key it just felt different to press down
and it had to be pushed harder to
actually work properly but i'm guessing
this is probably just an issue with my
specific early unit the power button is
right next to delete and backspace but
an accidental mispress doesn't do
anything even if windows is configured
to sleep on power button press you have
to hold it to make it sleep there are
holes for air ventilation above the
keyboard below the screen the precision
touchpad worked all right it's in the
middle as there's no numpad here and
although my right palm did rest on it
while typing it never triggered any
clicks for me the touchpad could feel a
little loose right down the front though
the left has an air exhaust vent the
power input usb 3.2 gen 2 type c port
usb 3.2 gen 2 type a port 3.5 millimeter
audio combo jack and a battery charge
status led the right has a second usb
3.2 gen 2 type a port usb 3.2 gen 2 type
c port with displayport support hdmi 2.0
output there's an air exhaust vent on
this side too and a kensington lock up
the back i'm just guessing that it's
hdmi 2.0 instead of 2.1 because the msi
website only notes 4k at 60 hertz it
doesn't actually specify the version and
unfortunately i don't have a hdmi 2.1
screen to test unfortunately neither
type c port can be used to charge the
laptop but the type c port on the right
has displayport support and both that
and the hdmi port connect directly to
the rx 6700m graphics bypassing the
integrated gpu so connecting an external
monitor to either of those two should
boost performance in games the back just
has some air exhaust fans towards the
corners the front has a little lip in
the middle that sticks out to help with
opening the lid and the screen goes the
full 180 degrees back for sharing
underneath has some events towards the
back and when seeing where the light
shines through it looks like there's
quite a bit of ventilation getting
inside requires unscrewing 13 phillips
head screws of the same length it was
relatively easy to open using the tools
linked below the video inside we've got
the battery down the bottom and access
to the wi-fi 6e card just above on the
right the wi-fi performance wasn't the
best but it was a decent result and
similar to many others with intel wi-fi
6 cards unfortunately my router doesn't
support the newer 6e if it did that may
give it a further boost to access
everything else you've got to unscrew
the motherboard and remove 5 cables
connecting the motherboard and take out
the wi-fi card at this point the
motherboard was still connected by a
cable but we can now access the two
memory slots and two m.2 storage slots
as well as the heat pipes should you
want to re-paste so yeah a bit more
annoying to get to not hard just a bit
time consuming the memory in my delta 15
was at least accel rather than the
slower x16 stuff a lot of laptops this
year have so there's less of a need to
upgrade unless you're after more
capacity now after all the testing in
this review was complete i did change
the ram and ssd in my delta 15 for an
upcoming comparison that i'm working on
and after doing that i did find that if
you press the power button to turn the
laptop back on it doesn't work now don't
panic you just need to plug it into wall
power first and then it will turn on
fine with the power button but yeah just
something to be aware of so you don't
panic and think that you broke the
machine like i did the two speakers are
found underneath on the left and right
sides towards the front i thought they
sounded average a bit muffled at higher
volumes but there's a little bass
present and there's some wrist rest
vibration too the latency mode results
were looking alright the delta 15 has an
82 watt hour battery inside and it was
offering amazing battery life more than
11 and a half hours in the youtube
playback test one of the best results
i've ever recorded from a gaming laptop
i tested with the super battery mode
enabled and it doesn't look like this
automatically disables panel overdrive
or lowered the refresh rate down from
240 hertz so you could probably boost it
further if you change those yourself
let's check out thermals next we've got
some heat pipes shared between the cpu
and gpu as well as two fans for cooling
the msi center software can be used to
change performance modes which from
lowest to highest are silent balanced
and extreme performance you can also use
user mode with the fan set to cooler
boost for maximum fan speed or the
advanced option gives you some user
control over the cpu and gpu fans
independently the idle results down the
bottom were okay i've run stress tests
with both the cpu and gpu loaded up to
represent a worst case as well as
playing an actual game with the cpu
shown by the blue bars and gpu in the
green bars extreme performance mode was
the warmest the cpu was reaching thermal
throttling in the stress test even if we
set the fan to max speed or test with
the cooling pad i use which is linked
below the video that said this wasn't
happening when running this game it's
hard to compare the gpu temperatures to
the nvidia options i regularly test as
they'd be measured differently these are
the clock speeds measured during the
same tasks we can see that the cpu clock
speed increases with cooler boost aka
max fan enabled as this helps reduce the
cpu thermal throttle and then the
cooling pad boosts this a little further
for the same reason we're not limited in
the game though which is honestly more
realistic this was sitting between 3.9
and 4 gigahertz over all eight calls
with lower performance modes of course
giving less performance and this would
be due to lower power limits this is
basically max processor performance in
this test so not bad considering the
thinner size of the laptop which means
less space for calling inside normally
here i'd show the power limits of both
the cpu and gpu but unfortunately
hardware info reports smart shift
enabled laptops as one combined value
which is what i've got here as expected
higher modes use more power which is why
we get better performance but at the
expense of higher temperatures i found
that the 6700 m in a gpu only stress
test started briefly at 120 watts then
lowered to 115 watts though msi have
told me the delta 15 6700 m has a 105
watt limit so i'm not sure what to
believe i saw about 95 watts on the gpu
when the cpu was also under load amd
spec sheet notes up to 135 watts but
given the delta 15 is a thinner design
it makes sense for it to not have a full
powered 6700 m here's how a game
actually performs with the different
performance modes the lowest mode was
still above 60 fps at max settings in
this one but the higher modes offered
decent increases along the way here's
how cpu only performance looks in
cinebench r23 so the gpu is now idle the
single core scores hardly change
regardless of the performance mode while
the multi-core scores increase with the
higher modes it's a fairly middle of the
pack result when compared to other ryzen
7 5800h laptops that i've tested at
least in terms of multi-core the single
core result is about the same as the
others as that isn't really affected by
power or thermal limits like multi-cores
the delta 15 rises up the ranks out of
this same selection of laptops when
running the test on battery power it
seems to perform quite well compared to
others even when not plugged into wall
power it felt a little warm at idle due
to the metal finish which conducts heat
below 30 degrees celsius is normal stuff
it gets warmer with a stress test
running low 40s in the middle of the
keyboard and just warm feeling it's
similar in the higher balanced mode
though the fan speed increases to
compensate the highest extreme mode is
now warmer in the center and i'd say the
middle was a little uncomfortable
feeling now though wasd where you sit
while gaming was okay it was possible to
lower the temperatures a little by
maxing out the fan speed but the fans
are also much louder now let's have a
listen
the fans were extremely quiet basically
silent when idle it's still fairly quiet
in silent mode with a stress test going
and gets progressively louder in the
higher performance modes extreme
performance mode was actually not as
loud compared to many others tested but
then max fan with cooler boost was quite
loud i'd definitely be using headphones
for that now let's find out how this
configuration of msi's delta 15 compares
against other laptops in games cyberpunk
2077 was tested the same on all laptops
and i've got msi's delta 15 with rx
6700m highlighted in red it seems to be
in between laptops with rtx 3060
graphics so definitely not a bad result
as the 3060 is great but it's also not
quite the 370 tier i was expecting at
least in this one game we'll check more
i'm going to compare the 6700m against
the 3070 and 3060 in 17 games at 2
resolution soon so make sure you're
subscribed for those upcoming
comparisons red dead redemption 2 was
tested with the game's benchmark and
this time the delta 15 was more in line
with those 3070 results so it's clearly
going to depend on the specific game
what was strange though was that the
6700m was actually 3 fps ahead of the
higher tier 6800m i think this is
because the 6800m laptop had x16 memory
while the 6700m in the delta 15 was
paired with faster x8 memory i'll be
sure to use the same memory when doing
the dedicated comparisons low but this
is still valid as this is how both
laptops ship control was tested running
through the same part of the game on all
laptops and the 6700m was now back with
the 3060 laptops granted this is an
nvidia sponsored title so that's not
super surprising of course this game
also has dlss support so do the previous
two so that could be enabled on the 3060
laptops to significantly boost
performance too amd has fsr but it's not
present in as many games yet i've also
tested the delta 15 in 13 games at all
setting levels here if you want to get
an even better understanding of how well
it does in games here are the 3dmark
results for those that find them useful
now for some creator tests adobe
premiere was tested with the puget
systems benchmark and msi's delta 15 is
highlighted in red it's scoring
basically the same as the higher spec
strex g15 one point above it with 5900
hx and rx 6800m graphics both of which
are being beaten by a last gen 1660ti
laptop so it seems that this workload
isn't doing too well with radeon
graphics adobe photoshop depends more on
cpu performance so the delta 15 was a
bit better this time and near others
with similar cpus the strix g15 with
5900 hx and a higher tier gpu was 32
points lower but again that one also
shipped with slower x16 memory so that's
my guess as to why it's behind here
davinci resolve is more gpu heavy and
the 6800m was ahead of the 6700m now
despite the memory difference then again
the delta 15 is beaten by a last-gen
1660 ti laptop so although it was closer
to 3060 or 3070 performance in the games
it seems to be behind in creative
workloads i've also tested spec view
perf which tests out various
professional 3d workloads the one
terabyte nvme m.2 ssd that came in my
delta 15 wasn't amazing not bad at about
2 000 megabytes a second for reads and
writes it's just that many pcie 3 drives
can surpass 3 000. like with other msi
gaming laptops you can enter this epic
cheat code to access the advanced bios
where you get access to more options
than you could ever want i don't know
what 90 of this stuff is so make sure
you know what you're doing before
changing anything it's also got tpm 2.0
which you'll need for windows 11. i
booted an ubuntu 21 live cd to test
linux support the touchpad keyboard
speakers wifi and camera all worked the
keyboard shortcuts for screen brightness
and volume adjustment worked but the f8
key for keyboard lighting effects did
nothing it must be tied to the software
in windows just before we get into the
pricing i need to talk about some
software issues that i had with this
laptop now i never had any games
actually crash while running them the
radeon drivers seemed perfectly stable
in that regard and just for reference
this laptop is now being tested in 13
games at all setting levels 1080p and 17
games at 1080p and 1440p for some
upcoming comparisons so yeah quite a bit
of gaming the main problem i had was
with the msi center software most of the
time when you try and open it nothing
happens you have to go into apps and
features in windows and repair the app
just to get it to work and towards the
end of the testing this had to be done
multiple times a day maybe this has been
fixed in a recent update i'm not sure
because it hasn't actually happened for
a few days now so hopefully it was just
some early review unit issue let's
discuss pricing and availability next
this will of course change over time so
refer to those links in the description
below for updates at the time of
recording the delta 15 with exact same
specs that i've tested in this video is
sold for 1600 us dollars through best
buy in the us granted that's with a 100
sale at the moment again refer to the
links below for updates so is msi's
delta 15 worth considering let's recap
both the good and the bad to help you
decide if it's worth it things i didn't
like include the flipped motherboard it
just makes upgrading more annoying than
it needs to be i can only assume this is
required to keep it thin there's no type
c charging something i would want to see
from a laptop that seems to be
prioritizing portability there is some
screen wobble but it's not really
actually noticeable when just typing on
the laptop normally and the down arrow
key doesn't really work properly on mine
but that's probably something just
unique to my early review unit i doubt
they're all going to ship like that the
msi center software didn't open properly
more times than i can count but that
might be fixed or otherwise i'm sure it
would be patched in an update again
maybe just early review unit things
unfortunately there's no mock switch but
maybe this is just the case for rd and
a2 laptops so far i haven't heard of any
that actually have that which is
unfortunate because we can definitely
attach an external monitor to get a
speed boost in games now those are the
main downsides the delta 15 does also
have a lot of good to offer too the
battery life for instance was crazy one
of the best i've ever tested the screen
is decent and enthusiasts and tuners get
tons of customization through the
advanced bios msi is using faster x8
memory compared to most other laptops
though i'm not sure if this might vary
in different regions around the world if
you get the delta 15 then let me know
which memory you get in the comments and
this faster memory helps the 6700m sit
somewhere in between an nvidia rtx 3060
and 3070 but again i will be comparing
those three in upcoming dedicated
comparison videos so make sure you're
subscribed for all of that content check
out this video next to see how the delta
15 performs in 13 games at all setting
levels and come and join me in the
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