MSI seems to be pivoting from its gaming-centric brand identity to become a more premium brand where you can find creative and enterprise devices as well. The company has announced a partnership with Mercedes AMG of all companies and the direct result of that partnership is the MSI Stealth 16 Mercedes AMG Motorsport.
That’s not to say that the company is leaving its gamer customers behind. In addition to launching the Creator 17 HX, Prestige 16 Studio and the Commercial 14 lineups, the last of which is intended as a direct rival to Lenovo’s Thinkpads, the Taiwanese dragon also announced the Alpha 17, a gaming laptop packed up to the brim with power.
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MSI Stealth 16 Mercedes AMG Motorsport
The new MSI Stealth 16 comes with a healthy dose of Mercedes AMG Motorsport branding with a co-branded logo on the lid and the power adapter while also adopting design elements from Mercedes AMG racecars. The intakes for the laptops are shaped like car vents, the power button reads “Start Engine” and there are special patterns on different parts, including the spacebar and the hinge.
As for the internals, you can expect up to an Intel Core i9-13900H with 14 cores and 20 threads with clock speeds of up to 5.4 GHz. It can also be outfitted with up to an RTX 4070 and while MSI hasn’t announced the card’s TGP, based on the standard Stealth 16, we expect it to be 105W, in other words, plenty for just about any game. Other than that, you can expect an OLED display, 32 GB of RAM and 2TB SSD storage.
The laptop is expected to be available in the second half of 2023 but MSI hasn’t revealed any pricing information yet, but rumours suggest it can be around €3,299 (US$3,521 at the time of writing). You’ll get plenty for your money though, as the laptop comes in a special edition package containing a colour box, mouse, mouse pad, postcards, a USB drive, a pouch and cable ties, all featuring Mercedes AMG branding.
MSI takes on the Thinkpad with the Commercial 14 series
If a racecar-like gaming laptop isn’t your thing, MSI has also announced the Commercial 14 lineup. As the name suggests, this is a proper business lineup with features like NFC and smart card readers in addition to Microsoft’s Secured-Core PC and optional Intel vPro tech. You get even more security features in the form of Windows Hello both as a fingerprint reader and facial recognition.
There are plenty of ports as well. You get Thunderbolt 4, three USB-A ports, HDMI, an SD card reader, a headphone jack and RJ45, a Smart Card reader and NFC support comes optional. MSI hasn’t said anything about pricing, availability or even the laptop’s specs, but its press release did mention that “laptop configuration can be customised as needed”, so we’re hoping it comes with powerful enough hardware to take on the competition.
Prestige 16 Studio Evo
Yet another non-gamer laptop unveiled at Computex is the MSI Prestige 16 Studio Evo. As the Studio moniker suggests, the laptop is meant for creative professionals and packs a fair bit of power. Once again, while MSI hasn’t disclosed much information about the specs, we do know that it can come with an Intel Core i7 13th Gen processor and Nvidia RTX Studio graphics.
The 16-inch display has a 16:10 aspect ratio which should help with packing more content on the screen and there’s even support for facial recognition via Windows Hello. As you’d expect from a creator laptop, there’s good I/O, including a Thunderbolt 4, USB-A, RJ45 and a full-size SD card reader. Like the Commercial series, most of this I/O is on the back so it won’t get in your way when you’re busy raging at Premiere Pro crashes.
Last but not least, the laptop also supports Tobii Aware, a presence-sensing technology that detects when you’re in front of your laptop and locks or unlocks or machine accordingly to protect your data. Tobii is known for its eye-tracking tech previously found in Alienware laptops but it has since trickled down into other consumer offerings as well.
There’s no word on the pricing or availability of the Prestige 16 Studio Evo yet, but it’s expected to launch in the second of 2023.
MSI Alpha 17
Finally, as mentioned above, the company did have something to offer its gamer customer base as well in the form of the MSI Alpha 17. This is one of the first laptops to feature the AMD 7045HX series processors or the Ryzen 9 7945HX specifically. You get up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, 32GB of RAM and 2TB SSD storage.
In a lot of ways, the Alpha 17 is the AMD equivalent of the aforementioned Stealth 16, without the Mercedes-AMG branding of course. You also get a bigger, 17.3-inch display with quad HD resolution and 240Hz refresh rate. This is also one of the first-ever laptops with WiFi 7 support courtesy of Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7800 platform, paired with Bluetooth 5.3.
Thankfully, we do have information on Alpha 17’s pricing and release date. The laptop will be available starting mid-July in three configurations ranging from $1,849 to $2,299.
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