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.
