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MSI’s Bravo 15 is one of the few all AMD gaming laptops available,
with both 6 core Ryzen processor and Radeon RX 5500M graphics,
but there are some important issues you need to know about before considering it.
It’s got a black brushed metallic finish both on the lid and interior. It’s a little cheap feeling,
but no sharp corners or edges and it’s solid enough.
MSI lists the weight as 1.96kg, though mine was under this at around 4.2lb,
then with the 180w power brick and cables we’re looking at under 2.7kg or 5.9lb total.
The size is decent for a 15” gaming laptop,
it’s a bit thinner than the lower specced Nitro 5 I recently tested.
It’s got a 15.6” 1080p 120Hz display with a 48Hz to 120Hz FreeSync range,
but that’s the only good news for the screen.
I measured the screen’s average grey-to-grey response time at 22.3ms,
not great when a 120Hz panel needs an 8.33ms response time for all transitions to occur
within the refresh window. It’s one of the slower results when we compare it against other laptops,
but similar to a number of other more budget friendly gaming laptops
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 not great for content creation.
My panel was 300 nits at 100% brightness which is reasonable,
and the contrast ratio was over 1000:1 which is good.
Backlight bleed wasn’t too bad in my unit, I didn’t notice the small imperfections down the
bottom when viewing darker content, but this will vary between panels.
MSI also offers the Bravo 15 with a 144Hz panel, so expect different results with that.
There’s a 720p camera above the display, no Windows Hello support.
This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like on the MSI Bravo 15.
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 red backlighting which illuminates all keys
and secondary key functions. There are 3 levels of key brightness or you can turn
it off with the function and page up and down keys. I didn’t personally like typing on it,
but that will probably be subjective. It just felt like there was no key travel and the key
presses don’t push down far, here’s how it sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
The power button is at least separate from the keyboard to avoid accidental mispresses.
The precision touchpad has a smooth plastic finish and clicks down anywhere,
but the front has a sort of wobble to it and can be pushed down a bit prior
to actually triggering a click which was annoying at times.
Fingerprints and dirt show up extremely easily on the shiny black finish,
but as a smooth surface it’s easy enough to clean with a microfiber cloth.
The weight distribution felt good, allowing for one finger opening,
and the screen goes a fair bit back. There’s a fair bit of keyboard flex when pushing down hard,
but it felt fine during normal use, and there was less lid flex than say the Omen 15 or Legion 5.
On the left we’ve got an air exhaust vent, the power input, and HDMI 2.0 output.
The right has the rest of the I/O, including 3.5mm audio combo jack,
two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports, two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C ports, gigabit ethernet,
and kensington lock, so a fair bit to get in the way of your mouse if you’re right handed.
The Type-C ports cannot be used to charge the machine,
and they don’t provide DisplayPort out, but the HDMI port connects directly to the 5500M graphics.
The back has air exhaust vents towards the corners,
while the front is just some black grooved plastic.
Underneath has air ventilation holes above the M.2 slots and in the center towards the back,
but there aren’t any intakes directly above the fans,
still though, more intakes compared to the ASUS TUF A15.
Getting inside involves removing 12 Phillips head screws,
then once inside we’ve got the battery down the front,
along with two M.2 storage slots and one for the WiFi 6 card. There are two memory slots,
but mine only shipped with single channel which is unfortunate as it leaves performance on the
table. I did all my testing with dual channel for best results and I definitely suggest upgrading.
The two speakers are on the left and right sides towards the front,
they didn’t sound as bad compared to other budget friendly MSI laptops I’ve tested in the past,
I’d say they’re above average with a little bass, and the latencymon results were looking decent.
The Bravo 15 is powered by a 3-cell 51Wh battery. I’ve tested it with
keyboard lighting off, background apps disabled and screen at 50% brightness.
Interestingly the battery life was actually more than half an hour longer than the Legion
5 with larger battery in the YouTube playback test. The game was only able
to run at 24 FPS on battery and it dipped to unusable levels with 9% charge left.
You can also set the charge threshold in software.
Let’s check out thermals next.
The MSI Dragon Center software lets you pick between three performance modes,
which from lowest to highest are silent, balanced and extreme performance. You’ve got
to select user mode if you want to enable cooler boost to max out the fan speed,
otherwise you can also pick advanced and get some customization.
The idle temperatures were good with a 21 degree Celsius room,
stress tests were done with the Aida64 CPU stress test with stress CPU only checked and
the Heaven GPU benchmark run at the same time, while gaming was tested playing Watch Dogs 2.
Temperatures were on the hotter side with the stress test going,
thermal throttling in balanced and extreme modes at around 94 degrees Celsius.
Maxing the fan out with cooler boost lowered the gaming temps a bit,
but made no difference to the CPU in the stress test, then using a cooling pad helped a bit more.
These are the clock speeds for the same tests, the GPU speeds in silent mode were super low,
and this made playing games unusable, so I don’t suggest using it if you need to use the
5500M graphics. The speeds were otherwise not too different in balanced and extreme modes,
the CPU performance rose a bit as cooling improved as thermals were the limit in balanced mode.
Despite the throttling though, we’re not too far behind the 4.0GHz boost clock of the 4600H.
The power level from the 5500M in green seemed to vary,
interestingly it was lower when actually running the game,
and it seemed to drop with the stress tests running as the processor power increased.
Here’s how CPU only performance looks in Cinebench with the GPU now idle,
so not really a noteworthy difference to single core performance, but multicore
performance was affected, and Ryzen controller only gave less than a 1% boost.
It's not doing great when compared to other 4600H laptops,
the single core result is about the same, but the multicore score is below the other options,
but hey it is still beating more expensive Intel laptops.
When idling the keyboard was around the low 30 degree Celsius point which is pretty
normal. With the stress tests running in the lowest silent mode it’s only a little warmer,
but if you recall GPU performance is very low. Balanced mode gets to the mid 40s in the center,
it was warm but not hot. Extreme mode was similar, the left side feels hotter than the
right as the left has the side air exhaust. Coolerboost lowered the temps a little, the
hottest point is up the back but you don’t need to touch there. Let’s have a listen to fan noise.
I wasn’t able to hear the fans when idling in silent mode, and it’s still quiet in silent mode
with the stress tests running, but again not usable in GPU heavy tasks due to power limits.
Balanced and extreme modes were about the same and similar to many other gaming laptops,
then you might want some headphones for coolerboost.
Now let’s check out how well the Bravo 15 performs in games
and see how it compares with other laptops.
I’ve tested Battlefield 5 in campaign mode at ultra settings,
and the Bravo 15 is highlighted in red. This is only the second 5500M laptop I’ve ever tested,
and despite the GPU reporting as running at a lower power limit compared to MSI’s Alpha 15,
the Bravo is a fair bit ahead of the Alpha, probably due to the CPU difference,
as we know the newer Zen2 options obliterate the older 3750H. Either way,
the 5500M still seems to sit in between the 1650 and 1660 Ti options on the Nvidia side.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark.
This test depends more on the processor, which probably explains why the Alpha 15 with
the same 5500M graphics is further below now. Interestingly the 5600M in the Dell G5 SE was
just above it with the same processor, I suppose due to the GPU mattering a bit less in this test.
Again though, the Bravo 15’s 5500M is in between the Nvidia 1650 and 1660 Ti options.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested with the games benchmark tool with the
highest setting preset. The 5600M in the G5 is now 27% ahead of the 5500M as this is a heavier
GPU test - let me know if you’d be interested in a video comparing those two graphics options.
The Bravo was just three frames ahead of the Alpha with the same GPU, so that CPU difference
matters a bit less here compared to Far Cry 5, at least at these higher setting levels.
I’ve also tested the Bravo 15 in 20 games at all setting levels,
check the card in the top right or link in the description if you want more benchmarks.
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 Adobe Premiere to export one of my laptop review videos at 4K. This is one of
the slowest results out of all laptops tested, only a little faster than MSI’s alpha 15 with
the same 5500M GPU but weaker processor. Based on the 5600M in the G5 being the next in line,
it seems that Premiere isn’t well optimized for Radeon graphics.
I’ve also tested Premiere but with the Puget systems benchmark.
In these tests a higher score is better, and again the Bravo is on the lower side,
though it was interesting that it’s ahead of the G5 SE with the same CPU but higher GPU.
The results were similar in Adobe Photoshop, this tends to be more of a CPU focussed test, though
compared to many Nvidia options with the same 4600H, the Bravo 15 is still on the lower side.
DaVinci Resolve is more GPU heavy, and was again on the lower side,
and below the Nvidia GTX 1650 options despite the 5500M doing better in gaming,
so yeah for content creator workloads the Radeon graphics don’t appear to do as well at the moment.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
I’ve used Crystal disk mark to test the 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD, and the speeds were fair but not amazing.
For updated prices, check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording, in the US it’s available for around $950 USD,
let’s summarise the good and the bad parts of the Bravo 15 to help you decide if this is worth it.
The 5500M in the Bravo performs in between Nvidia GTX 1650 and 1660 Ti graphics in games,
so medium to high settings in AAA games is needed for 60 FPS at 1080p. The 5500M
wasn’t great outside of gaming in content creator workloads though,
and the screen was also subpar in that regard with low colour gamut.
Screen response time was also low which results in some ghosting, though brightness was average,
contrast was good and it does have FreeSync to remove tearing between 48Hz and 120Hz.
CPU only performance was also a little weaker compared to other 4600H laptops out there,
and this was all while running on the hotter side with some thermal throttling under worst
case stress test, but at least the clock speeds being reached were still decent,
so in my case the workloads tested weren’t throttling lots.
The touchpad has the issue noted with the clicks, the keyboard didn’t have enough travel for me
but wasn’t that bad, and the battery life was quite good considering the size of the battery.
Honestly, if it was my money, I’d save up an extra $50 and get the Lenovo Legion 5 with 4800H
and 1660 Ti, it blows the Bravo 15 away in pretty much every regard except for battery life for just
5% more money, but let me know what models you want to see me compare the Bravo with in future.
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