I used to be in a position to max out at 120 frames per second whereas enjoying Doom Everlasting on Extremely settings, and even obtained round 70 fps in Starfield on Medium. Starfield dropped right down to a still-playable 50 fps on Extremely, although I obtained it as much as 80 fps on Extremely by enabling body era. I’m not a fan of this characteristic as it will possibly generally result in some bizarre smoothing results—to my thoughts, it hits the identical nerve as movement smoothing on TVs—however your mileage could differ.
By way of battery life, your greatest guess is to maintain your charger close by for gaming classes. The almost 100-watt-hour battery is huge, however so is the ability draw. It lasted round three hours of heavy gaming, and nearer to 6 to seven hours with extra typical use.
These limitations make the MSI Stealth 18 greatest suited to being a workhorse laptop computer you possibly can play video games on on the finish of the day. Operating media modifying apps like DaVinci Resolve and Blender was easy, and I not often seen efficiency issues whereas engaged on it. Most gaming laptops would run equally with comparable GPUs, however the brand new Meteor Lake CPU offers you a little bit of future-proofing. Corporations like Blackmagic are engaged on including assist for NPUs typically, so if there’s an space the place Intel’s NPU is probably going for use sooner or later, it is seemingly media creation first.
There could be higher laptops purely for gaming—the Razer Blade 18, for instance, trades a lower-resolution display for a whopping 300-Hz refresh fee. However if you happen to’d quite have one highly effective laptop computer for work and play, the Stealth 18 is a stable funding.
All of the Proper Extras
The design of the Stealth 18 feels somewhat bit extra gam3r than I like, however I can dwell with it for all the additional little touches MSI has put on this factor. For starters, it comes with a NumPad. I don’t care what anybody else says, NumPads are nice, and I recognize that there’s a robust gaming laptop computer with one. It’s most useful whereas doing varied video modifying duties, much less for gaming, however if you happen to’re like me, you’ll recognize its presence.
The remainder of the keyboard is equally pleasant. The font on the keys seems strikingly much like the font Sony inexplicably used for each PlayStation and Spider-Man branding again within the aughts. The chiclet-style keys are flat, with no dimples, however they’re raised sufficient to really feel straightforward to differentiate whereas typing, although my most typical mistake was hitting the brand new and largely pointless Copilot key, which takes up room close to the area bar. The trackpad is tremendous easy. It might be a bit greater, however I solely wished this whereas linked to a second monitor.
{Photograph}: Eric Ravenscraft
There’s an Ethernet port, HDMI port, and the proprietary charging port on the rear of the system, which is an extremely handy location for plugging the laptop computer right into a desk workstation. It’s not fairly as handy as a laptop computer docking station, however it’s much less cluttered than cables protruding the edges. I’m additionally a fan of the devoted fingerprint sensor, which makes it simpler to register to Home windows and unlock password managers.
Total, the MSI Stealth 18 is a powerhouse, even with out the NPU. At $3,300 for the RTX 4080 mannequin, it can save you just a few hundred {dollars} in comparison with comparably-specced (minus the refresh fee) laptops just like the Razer Blade 18. Simply ensure that to maintain your wall charger useful.
