MSI has been around for a long time It has always been a low-key PC and laptop maker with a mix of successes and failures. As we enter the age of “AI laptops,” MSI’s first foray into the new category lands squarely in its wake, with its Prestige 13 AI Evo that strikes an effective balance between price, performance, and portability.
As the name suggests, the Prestige 13 is an ultra-portable 13.3-inch laptop with a 2,880 X 1,800 pixel OLED display (no touch screen). Inside, it features an entry-level Intel Core Ultra 5 125H CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and a 512 GB SSD. Nothing fancy, but enough to get the job done. There’s also a Core Ultra 7-equipped version with double the RAM and storage, but that’s about it.
For those who haven’t followed the microchip world closely, Intel’s Core Ultra series features (among other innovations) a new neural processing unit designed specifically to improve artificial intelligence operations. The “Evo” designation is awarded by Intel to devices designed for laptops that “pass rigorous testing for performance, battery life, connectivity, audio and visual quality, size, weight and more.”
Photo: MSI
In this preface, I’ll start with the laptop’s top priority: performance. Prestige certainly lives up to its name in general applications and AI-related tests. MSI’s ultralight Windows machine performs on par with the more refined Lenovo X1 Carbon, which has a faster Core Ultra processor. The MSI outperformed it in general application benchmarks by 3% to 47% (depending on the test), and the difference was noticeable in day-to-day use, as the Prestige felt incredibly fast at loading apps, recalculating spreadsheets, and more. Graphics performance for Pictures isn’t quite as promising, as the low-end CPU and lack of memory significantly suppressed frame rates for video tasks, although the Prestige did perform surprisingly well in the photo rendering test.
Weighing 2.1 pounds and 18 mm thick, the laptop is just as portable as the 13.3-inch laptop, though the smaller 13.0-inch laptop might be a few ounces lighter. The magnesium-aluminum chassis, available in white or black, isn’t the strongest I’ve felt lately, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel flimsy either.
Photo: MSI