MSI Prestige Evo 14 Review: An ultraportable powerhouse that makes a few compromises in other areas

MSI recently updated its Prestige series with new 11^th Gen Intel hardware. The new MSI Prestige 14 brings with it Intel’s latest Evo branding. Laptops that carry Intel’s Evo branding are tailor-made to deliver optimal performance and productivity while maintaining a slim and light design. The MSI Prestige 14 Evo must surpass several parameters to pass Intel’s stringent Evo tests. But Intel’s testing aside, let’s find out how the MSI Prestige 14 Evo does in real-world scenarios.

Design and Build

The Prestige 14 Evo features a slim and light build, measuring 15.9mm thick and weighing 1.29kg. The notebook comes in three finishes – Pure White, Carbon Grey, and Rose Pink. Ours arrived in the Carbon Grey colour. The lid features a matte sandblasted finish with the MSI logo on the top. It is worth noting that the lid is not prone to fingerprints and smudges. The lid also has a blue chamfered border and can be pushed back almost 180 degrees, although I didn’t find it particularly useful.

The hinge design of the new Prestige Evo lifts the bottom half of the laptop above the surface offering slightly better ventilation and a more comfortable typing experience. The screen itself has slim borders on either side while leaving just enough room for a webcam and an infrared sensor on top. Not much has changed from the previous edition of the Prestige 14, you have the same minimalist design, and that’s definitely not a bad thing.

Connectivity 

In terms of connectivity, the notebook has two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left, one of which is used for charging. On the right side, you get a 3.5mm headphone jack, a microSD card slot, and a full-fledged USB Type-A port that operates at USB 2.0 speed. The top bezel on the screen has a 720p webcam that works well for video calls and supports Windows Hello.

The notebook also supports Wi-Fi 6 (802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax WLAN) standards and Bluetooth 5.1. Overall, the notebook can do with an extra USB Type-A port, but you give up some liberties when working with such a portable form factor. Even for a 14-inch notebook, the MSI Prestige 14 Evo is quite portable.

Keyboard & Trackpad

Not much has changed on the keyboard front from its predecessor. The keys on the laptop are quite large as compared to its competitors, and that’s something I really liked. Additionally, the key travel is pleasing, while the spacing between the keys is good. The keyboard deck offers some flex while typing or gaming and features white backlighting.

The notebook boasts an oversized trackpad with a biometric fingerprint reader on the corner and Windows Precision drivers. The trackpad was quite smooth, and my fingers seamlessly glided across the surface ensuring effortless navigation. Both the keyboard and trackpad on the Prestige offer a nice balance of comfort and utility.

Display

For the display, the Prestige 14 Evo has opted for a 14-inch Full HD IPS panel. The screen has a maximum brightness of around 300 nits and covers 100 percent of the sRGB colour gamut. There’s no reflective coating on the screen, while MSI has managed to cramp a 16:9 aspect ratio. The display is decent for indoor use but gets dim when used outdoor. The screen is decent for a Full HD display, but could definitely be brighter.

Performance

When it comes to performance, the MSI Prestige 14 Evo packs an 11^th Gen Intel Tiger Lake CPU – Core i7-1185G7. The processor runs between 1.2GHz and 4.8GHz and is rated to have a TDP of up to 28W. The CPU leverages Intel’s 10nm SuperFin process and supports PCIe 4.0 and Hyper-Threading. The Core i7 is accompanied by Intel’s Iris Xe graphics, up to 16GB of RAM and super-fast PCIe 4.0 SSD storage.

The Prestige 14 Evo is excellent for productivity, delivering quick and fluent multitasking performance. The laptop had no issues with lag no matter how many tabs I had opened on Google or how many Office software were running simultaneously. In Geekbench, the Prestige 14 Evo managed a single-core score of 1536 points and a multi-core score of 5848 points. In Geekbench’s OpenCL test, the notebook scored 18063 points. In Cinebench R23, the Intel chip on the Evo managed a single-core of 1468 points and a multi-core score of 5854 points.

The Prestige 14 Evo seems to be pretty capable and is quite powerful, in line with or at times faster, than most of the competition. The 11^th Gen 10nm Intel Core i7 chip comes with Iris Xe graphics that go beyond fluent multi-tasking and also delivers decent casual gaming performance. I saw around 40 to 60fps on average while playing Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Overwatch, and Heroes of the Storm. Even Shadow of the Tomb Raider ran on low settings.

The Intel Core i7-1185G7 is definitely a big improvement over its predecessor. However, one gripe I’d have with performance is the fact that cooling is still not up to the mark and this was a persistent problem with the previous version of the Prestige 14. It is worth noting that the heat didn’t leak into the keyboard or trackpad area, which was one good aspect of the laptop, although the fans did get a bit noisy on full blast. Overall, I feel the Prestige 14 Evo did quite well on the performance and productivity fronts but ran hot doing so.

Battery Life

The MSI Prestige 14 Evo delivers around 8 to 11 hours of battery life on average. It is more than enough to get you through a full workday with additional time for some entertainment. My usage involved running the laptop for regular work, i.e., browsing the web and using MS Word at around 60 percent of brightness, which saw the Evo run through the entire eight-hour workday with some power left over. The 52Wh battery on the Prestige 14 Evo is accompanied by a 65W USB Type-C adapter, which supports fast charging.

Verdict

The MSI Prestige 14 Evo is an excellent laptop on balance, offering great performance, a colour accurate display, lasting battery life, and a solid design. The Intel chip does a pretty good job of handling games and multi-tasking, although the fans can get inconveniently loud for an ultrabook while performing intensive tasks. However, in terms of the overall offering, I feel that the Evo is a cut under its competitors, both in terms of its dim display and not-so solid build quality. The upside here being, it's not as expensive as some of its competitors (Dell XPS and Asus ZenBook Flip S). With a starting price of Rs 95,990, the MSI Prestige is a pretty solid laptop, but I would say it falls somewhere between a regular and premium laptop, falling more on the side of the latter.