MSI Summit E15 Review: A premium business laptop that can go the distance

With its new wave of Summit laptops, MSI is looking to attract elite businessmen by delivering premium notebooks. The new MSI Summit E15 brings 11th Gen Intel processing hardware coupled with discrete Nvidia graphics. MSI claims that the new Summit E15 is designed to deliver high standards of performance and productivity, and the spec sheet certainly seems to be the case. So without any further delays, let us see if the MSI Summit E5 can live up to expectations.

Design and Build

The MSI Summit E15 certainly looks the part with its all-black finish and aluminium body. The notebook looks sleek and feels premium, better so than most business laptops. The Summit E15 weighs 1.79 kg and measures just 16.9mm thick. It is certainly heavier than most premium laptops I’ve used, but that’s down to its larger size.

However, despite its premium build, I noticed quite a bit of screen and keyboard flex. The Summit is also MIL-STD-810G certified, ensuring higher standards of durability. Apart from the slight flex, there’s not a lot to complain about here, it doesn’t feel like you are compromising on anything with the build and the Summit E15’s finish gives it that classy aesthetic that we’ve come to see on most premium laptops.

Ports

When it comes to ports, size is a major advantage. The Summit E15 features two USB Type-C ports (both of which support Thunderbolt 4), an HDMI output, and an audio jack on the left. On the right, you get two Type-A USB 3.0 ports and a microSD card reader. Other connectivity options include Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi 6. The Summit E15’s port selection is almost equivalent to that of a gaming laptop, which is quite impressive.

Keyboard & Trackpad

The Summit E15 has a nice keyboard with well-spaced-out keys, although the key travel distance is not up to the mark, thus lacking the tactile feel. The chiclet-style keyboard features white backlighting that features three levels of adjustment. The keyboard has minimal flex and I found typing over it to be quite comfortable, although the gaming experience wasn’t as pleasing.

The Summit E15 has a large trackpad with bronze accents on the edges that add a bit of flair. It worked well with gestures and felt quite responsive for the most part. The left and right buttons didn’t take much effort to click down on and navigation was seamless without any scrolling hindrances. If you use the Summit E15 for productivity or creativity work, then I doubt you’ll be disappointed with the keyboard/trackpad combo here.

Display

For the display, the Summit E15 opts for a 15.6-inch Full HD (1080p) IPS touch display. The display has an anti-glare coating, so direct sunlight isn’t going to make it completely useless. You also get 100 percent sRGB and 72 percent NTSC coverage, making it viable for creative workloads. The display offers average colour reproduction and good viewing angles. I did notice that it wasn’t easy to read text on low brightness.

Performance

Powering the Summit E15 is an 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1185G7 Tiger Lake CPU. You also get integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics or a dedicated Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q graphics card with 4GB of GDDR6 VRAM. Our model featured 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD. But how does it fare in the real world?

The Summit E15 is an absolute beast at multi-tasking. I used the laptop on battery with 10 tabs on Google Chrome, MS Word, and Raid: Shadow Legends opened simultaneously without any delays or lag. In Cinebench R23, the Summit E15 managed a single-core score of 1,501 points and a multi-core score of 5,501 points. The laptop can also handle tasks like photo and video editing without any hiccups.

We also ran a Geekbench test, with the Summit E15 scoring 1,374 points in the single-core test and 4,700 points in the multi-core test. In Geekbench’s Open CL test, the GTX 1650 managed a score of 41,623 points, which is a major step up from the 16,876 points of the integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics. And while the Summit E15 is primarily a business laptop meant for professional use, it can still be utilised for casual gaming.

The #MSI Summit E15 can run games on low/medium settings pic.twitter.com/ZRIP6bDkzx

— Carlsen Martin (@Carlsen0491) February 5, 2022

I ran Valorant, Overwatch, and DOTA 2 on high graphics while receiving playable frame rates. However, I would recommend switching to medium graphics to get over 60fps consistently. I even got manageable frame rates (50fps on average) in Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer mode, although the game was tested on low settings. While gaming, the Summit E5’s CPU got pretty toasty averaging above 90 degrees, although the GPU temperature ran cooler at 65 degrees on average. However, I didn’t notice any heat leaking into the keyboard area.

Battery Life

The MSI Summit E15 packs an 82Whr battery that is touted to deliver up to 12 hours of battery life. However, in our testing, the battery didn’t quite live up to the 12-hour mark, although it certainly exceeded our expectations. I got over nine hours of battery life during a regular workday while using Google Chrome and MS Word. I estimate that the laptop will deliver an hour or so more if you are just using it for video playback. For a laptop with a discrete GPU, the Summit E15 can easily go the distance.

Audio & Webcam

The Summit’s dual-speaker setup produces clear audio with good quality. However, as good as the sound was, it lacked bass and the promise of hi-res audio don’t quite live up to the hype. For a 15-inch laptop, the speakers were underwhelming. The Summit E5 features an HD IR webcam with support for Windows Hello face recognition login. I found the webcam to be quite reliable for video conferencing.

Verdict

The MSI Summit E15 is no slouch when it comes to performance. Additionally, the Summit E15 ticks all the right boxes, offering a premium design, comfortable keyboard, reliable display, and superb battery life. This is definitely one of the better 15-inch professional laptops around.  However, our unit demanded a hefty Rs 1,54,990 (Flipkart) price tag, although this shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the Summit is meant to take on the best-of-the-best, including the MacBook Pro and Dell XPS.

Don’t get me wrong, everything about this laptop is great, but it isn’t up to the mark when compared with Dell’s XPS lineup. It was also disappointing to see that the Summit E5 didn't meet Intel's Evo standards. So would I recommend the Summit E15; well, that depends on the task at hand. Sure, the Summit E15 may not have the best battery, display, or keyboard, but performance, design, and build are all top-notch here. So if you are looking for a premium business laptop that offers good levels of performance and productivity, then the Summit E15 is certainly worth considering.