I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: gone are the days when I crave a gaming laptop. I’ve had them before, and after carrying them around on my back for years (certainly a factor into what’s giving me old-man-back syndrome and definitely not my age) and I much prefer a lightweight, little beast that I can whip out and get the job done.
Sure, I can’t exactly play the best games on the thing, but that’s what I have my desktop at home for, and for me, that’s perfect.
This is where the Prestige range from MSI fits in just right. The laptops are powerful, lightweight and just stunning to look at.
However, just recently, I had the opportunity to play around with one of the best-looking laptops MSI has created to date. Not because it was packed with RGB lighting or racing-car aesthetics, but because MSI combined their cutting-edge technology with Japan’s century-old lacquer and maki-e craftsmanship, paying tribute to the world-famous Ukiyo-e painting: The Great Wave.
Yes, the lid of this tiny beast has undergone Japanese lacquerware craftsmanship, giving it a stunning look featuring the famous painting. With real gold-leaf and ink printed right onto the magnesium-aluminium alloy chassis.
It’s truly a sight to behold, and even better, I got to use this laptop while taking a sneak trip down to the Western Cape, where waves met waves.
The chiclit keyboard comes with matching golden text, and the RGB lighting shines through in the same colour, really finishing off the piece.
Of course, the laptop isn’t just something to look at.
Under the hood, we have an Intel Core Ultra 7 268V, which comes standard with the Intel Arc 140C 16GB GPU. There are 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and it has a 1TB SSD. The 13-inch OLED display is also a dream to work on, with colour-rich imagery and decent brightness, whether working during the day or late at night.
Port-wise wise we have a 3.5mm dual audio jack, 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports with DP and Power Delivery 3.0, 1x USB-A 3.2 port, and 1x HDMI 2.1 port. I really appreciated that MSI managed to squeeze a USB-A port and an HDMI port into the laptop’s slim build, as my current workhorse lacks these ports, and it really can be a pain in the butt sometimes.
MSI says the 75WHr battery will get you 24 hours of work time, but, as I was on a sneaky “working-holiday,” I never fully tested this. I did, however, manage to get one of the family members to spend hours playing Minecraft, and after around 4 hours, they came asking for the charger.
Of course, this is NAG, so I did put the laptop through a couple of 3D Mark tests. In Steel Nomad Light, the laptop scored 3174, putting it just above average for other machines with a similar build. You won’t be getting any serious game time out of this machine, but for easier games, like Minecraft, you’ll be perfectly fine.
In terms of dimensions, you’re looking at 299mm x 210mm x 16.9mm, and the laptop comes in at just under 1KG, making it the ideal travel companion.
And, even though I was taken aback by the visual masterpiece that was this laptop, I still managed to find a few things that I wasn’t too much a fan of.
For one, the 2x 2W speakers are just ok. Sure, they get the job done for some background music or a bit of YouTube, but they won’t be taking over from your headphones. Also, the glossy keys on the keyboard did feel a little too slippery for my taste. Personally, I like a little bit of a matte finish for the grip.
Besides those couple of things, though, the laptop was a great work buddy for my holiday by the waves.
With only 2000 of these laptops made, you’d certainly be making a statement whipping one of these out of your laptop bag, and onto the boardroom table, plus with its beefy components built in, you won’t struggle to show off those presentations you worked so hard on. Just make sure you have an extra R33,000 lying around after all that Christmas spending you did.
