MSI Prestige 15 A10SC Laptop Review: One of the Best Dell XPS 15 Alternatives

[Redaktion]

Low-power Intel with low-power Nvidia work great together for anyone interested in a high-performance ultra-thin laptop. If MSI can address the throttling, then the Prestige 15 can give other popular 15.6-inch Ultrabooks from Dell, HP, and Asus a run for the money.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-Prestige-15-A10SC-Laptop-Review-One-of-the-Best-Dell-XPS-15-Alternatives.441280.0.html

[Worldliner]

In my opinion its more like a multimedia rather than an office laptop. No one needs a 1650max-q and a 4k 100%adobergb screen for office.

[Lum Dermaku]

Not sure how you really do your wifi battery tests, but under the same "test", on my unit(1080p model) i'm also getting around 7.5 hours, which is not that good considering the resolution. I've had it for 3 weeks now and battery life kinda disappointed me because i expected 9+ hours on my usecase. Undervolting didn't help at all, only helped a bit of performance and temps.

Also, i asked MSI and they said that they intentionally blocked Sport mode while on battery to preserve battery life, that's why cpu PL1 won't boost to 45W or more while on stress tests like it does on power. -125mv undervolt resulted in +400Mhz on all 6 cores while on battery on CBR15 (from 2ghz to 2.4ghz on all 6 cores at 100% cpu unilization).

[Lum Dermaku]

Not sure how you really do your wifi battery tests, but under the same "test", on my unit(1080p model) i'm also getting around 7.5 hours, which is not that good considering the resolution. I've had it for 3 weeks now and battery life kinda disappointed me because i expected 9+ hours on my usecase. Undervolting didn't help at all, only helped a bit of performance and temps.

Also, i asked MSI and they said that they intentionally blocked Sport mode while on battery to preserve battery life, that's why cpu PL1 won't boost to 45W or more while on stress tests like it does on power. -125mv undervolt resulted in +400Mhz on all 6 cores while on battery on CBR15 (from 2ghz to 2.4ghz on all 6 cores at 100% cpu unilization).

Also, on a very quiet room fan nosie is very audible and annoying even on idle and light tasks where cpu doesn't go beyond 50C, the fans spin at 2800rpm (gpu fan which makes the most noise) and 3000-3100rpm (cpu fan) or 2700 fan1 and 2900 fan2 best case scenario for 35C idle temps.

I installed dragon center and made a custom fan profile which seemed to fix this fan noise issue and until the cpu reaches 60C, that stupid gpu fan doesn't spin at all and the laptop is very silent, that cpu fan isn't noticeable at all and you'll hear it only if you concentrate on it. At 60C cpu temp, it immediately starts to spin at 2800rpm. The temps seem to be not so different with or without that bigger gpu fan spinning - at idle with both fans spinning the temps are around 35-45C, with that gpu fan turned off: around 40-50C at most. Under light tasks it doesn't reach 60C but if i launch a heavier app like Android Studio, the temps pass 60, the second gpu fan turns on and starts spinning at 2800rpm, and when cpu temps go lower, gpu turns off.
Installing Dragon Center means that you will have to uninstall Creator Center and you lose some functionality like: caps lock,mute&mic button light doesn't turn on/off when either key is enabled, you lose that 180degree flip screen option.

I know it is a personal preference, but why did you rate keyboard typing so low? It is actually very pleasing to type on and easy to get used to and it has quite some key travel. Also touchpad is pretty great.

[william blake]

love this cpu-gpu combo

[MarcusT]

Can you please do a full review on the Prestige 14?  It's the more interesting one imho with the same performance in a smaller package. Would love to see if the cooling solution works..

[jk]

What is the key travel distance of the keyboard? Does the hardware of the screen incorporate a blue light filter? Are their any laptops that have a blue light filter that is hardware based? Does anyone know of a fan control program to silence the laptop that does not require the uninstalling of MSI Creator Center? To Lum Dermaku, why is it necessary to uninstall Creator Center to install Dragon Center?

[Lum Dërmaku]

What is the key travel distance of the keyboard? Does the hardware of the screen incorporate a blue light filter? Are their any laptops that have a blue light filter that is hardware based? Does anyone know of a fan control program to silence the laptop that does not require the uninstalling of MSI Creator Center? To Lum Dermaku, why is it necessary to uninstall Creator Center to install Dragon Center?

It has 1.5mm key travel.

When i tried to install it for the first time when Creator Center was already installed, it recognozed Dragon Center as some form of update for Creator Center ( and vice versa: when installing CC when DC is already installed...), because it conflicts performance profiles and fan profiles. Also, the dragon center i installed was Gs65's, so that's why i lost some keyboard shortcuts functionalities.

I wrote a thread on reddit 2 weeks ago and explained a lot of other stuff there including these fanprofiles: redd[insert dot here]it/dnfeu4

As of blue light filter hardware wise, i don't think it actally has that but the display's color temp is rated to be at right at around 6500K so it is very neutral. There is an Msi app that changes color profiles including a blue light filter but i use windows's night light when i want to.

[waaaaaaaa]

Hopefully you will get to review the version with 1080p screen in the future. Looking forward to the prestige 14 review next. However the preview already shows slower cpu speeds, probably due to lighter cooling system. I prefer the smaller battery capacity of the prestige 14 for the lighter weight. The extra battery weight is not necessary in the prestige 15. I would have liked to see double m.2 slots on the prestige 14 and there seems to be enough space in the motherboard if they wanted to do it.

[Nam]

My experience is better than what this review or the reviewer does.
It is considered a perfect laptop to nowaday standard, and no other laptop will do better than it performance wise. The better build XPS 15 is trashed compared to Prestige 15 new design.

no Kensington Lock or integrated full-size SD reader
high CPU and GPU temperatures when under load
CPU throttling when under 100 percent utilization
servicing requires tearing a factory seal sticker
base and lid could be more rigid
key feedback could be stronger
fans will never idle
spongy clickpad

This laptop is among one of the smallest 15.6" laptop today, 357x234x17. 1st to ASUS UX534. That is why they can't fit a full size SD card onto this, but they do let you add another m.2 8022 SSD inside, which is much better considered this will target multimedia audience.
Come on man, which laptop doesn't get high on tempature underload? It is what matter when they let it crank up to that 95*C Temp or not. Which laptop this slim and portable let you crank up to >3.0GHz on 6-core under full load? After UV -125mV it can run 3.6GHz no more than 85*C.
Get your common-sense together really.
Factory seal means nothing when it comes to the law of the desinated country.
Keyboard and touchpad feedback is absolutely fine, if not one of the best for it form. Whatever you take into this review, you don't seem to consider the form factor of this device don't ya.
Fan does go to idle if you activate Super Battery or Silent mode. Eventhough the fan is barely noticable to be fair.

Given a score of 83% is unacceptable to me, when the XPS 15 9570/9590 has a better score despite so many problems and patches since its release.

The reviewer doesn't seem to be exactly knowledgable about the product he is reviewing, consider this is not the first take among its 15" form.

[jk]

To Lum Dërmaku, Thanks for the reply. I have another question for you. Do you know if it is possible to run VMetal on this laptop? It is a virtualization software program for Nitrux a Linux distribution. Below are comments and steps to test VMetal. Thanks ahead of time.

nxos dot org/en/faq/#what-is-vmetal (cannot use exact link, low post count)
To use VMetal you must be able to select one of the two GPUs in your system as a primary display output or as an initial display output in the UEFI of the laptop. If you're on Linux run the following script in a terminal window. Copy the code, paste it on a blank document, and give executable permissions to the file.

#!/bin/bash

# Find IOMMU Groups
for d in /sys/kernel/iommu_groups/*/devices/*; do
  n=${d#*/iommu_groups/*}; n=${n%%/*}
  printf 'IOMMU Group %s ' "$n"
  lspci -nns "${d##*/}"
done

# Did this PC boot in UEFI or BIOS?
[ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo UEFI || echo BIOS

# Find if CPU is 64-bit
grep -w -o lm /proc/cpuinfo | uniq

# Find if CPU uses SVM or VMX extensions
egrep -o '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo | sort | uniq

[just a suggestion]

The review is wrong about one statement - the Zenbook 15 (be it UX534 or UX533) is not 100-200 grams heavier - it is the same (sometimes lower) weight! Give or take a negligible amount of grams.

[Kirill]

How can i install dragon center? Uninstalling creator center dosnt work, in DC there is a massage "Please download CC from Microsoft store" , What i have done wrong?

[Lum Dermaku]

How can i install dragon center? Uninstalling creator center dosnt work, in DC there is a massage "Please download CC from Microsoft store" , What i have done wrong?

Uninstalled in from Control Panel, i downloaded GS65's Dragon Center from MSI support website for that laptop and installed in from one of three setups inside the Extras folder, not the setup in the main folder.

[For Science!]

I have been having this issue that resting my palms (or any object for that matter) on either side of the touchpad is registered as a click. This is super annoying when I am moving the mouse as occasionally it goes into click&drag mode because it recognized my palm as a click (note that my palms are completely off the touchpad).

Has anybody had this issue? have you been able to resolve it in anyway?