MSI made some important announcements during the IFA show this week. During the extravagant trade show, they announced new gaming and business computers.
MSI Prestige 14
The Tiger Lake refresh of Prestige 14 caught the attention of many. Intel’s Tiger Lake architecture is expected to bring a performance boost to the device. This is the new Intel 11th-generation core processor.
The Prestige 14 is a 319 x 215 x 15.9 mm device and weighs about 1.29kg. The device is powered by a 3-cell 52 Wh battery and can be charged up to 90 W. It also has a fast-charging option. This gives you 1.5 hours of back up after a 15-minute charge.
The 14-inch display on the laptop has two options Full HD or 4K. The 4K panel gives 100% RGB color space and the FullHD panel gives 72% of NTSC. Both panels have a refresh rate of 60Hz. It has two Thunderbolt 4 ports. The Thunderbolt 4 maintains the same maximum speed as its predecessor.
The Tiger Lake refresh gives you three options – Core i5-1135G7, Core i7-1165G7, and Core i7-1185G7. These processors come with Intel’s new Iris Xe Graphics. For GPU, they have the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q.
These processors offer 4 GB of GDDR6 VRAM and LPDDR4X-4267 dual-channel RAM. That leads to up to ~86 GBps of memory bandwidth. There is an M.2 2280 SSD. The device has an IR 720p webcam and has Wi-Fi 6 connectivity.
The upgraded Iris Xe Graphics offers a tough competition to AMD’s Ryzen 7 4800U and also to Nvidia’s discrete MX350. The Core i7-1185G7 offers a neat doubling of performance. The display engine is revamped too. Tiger Lake supports up to six 4K90 sensors and can process still images up to 42 megapixels.
Apart from Prestige 14, MSI also revealed the MSI Prestige 14 Evo. It is one of the first laptops to be officially certified by Intel’s EVO experience guidelines.
The device measures 12.56″ x 8.46″ x 0.63″ and has a 1920 x 1080 pixel 14.1 inch IPS display panel. It is a 60 Hz FHD display that covers 100% sRGB and draws 1 W of power.
The Evo platform on Intel is designed to provide “an exceptional experience”. Intel is planning to work on premium laptops with the Evo platform.
For a laptop to earn the EVO badge, it must meet certain criteria. And the Prestige 14 Evo meets them.
The first is the battery spec determined by Intel for Evo. Prestige 14 Evo has the same 3-cell 52 Wh battery with fast charging support as the Prestige 14. However, the 14 Evo uses a 60 Hz 100% sRGB panel that draws just 1 W of power. This means that it is highly power-efficient and offers longer run times. It offers 65W charging via USB-C and has 12 hours of battery life. A quick 15-minute charge would cover for 1.5 hours.
The laptop has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB 2.0 Type-A port. A USB-C power adapter handles fast charging. It has USB Power Delivery 3.0 technology.
The Prestige 14 Evo is also not reliant on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q and functions solely on the Iris Xe iGPU. This provides a boost in graphics performance to the device.
The MSI Prestige 14 Evo will be available with Intel Core i5-1135G7 Core i7-1165G7, or Core i7-1185G7 processor options. It will have LPDDR4x-4267 dual-channel memory, and up to 2TB of PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe storage.
The notebook supports WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1. It has stereo 2W speakers and a 720p webcam with IR support for face recognition.
More from MSI
Along with these devices, MSI also added to the Summit family. There are two new gaming and content creation focused laptops in the Summit series. And they also come with the new Intel 11th-generation Core processors. Apart from these, MSI is also ready to release Stealth 15M. The company claims that the device is the thinnest 15-inch gaming laptop “in its class”. This device also has Tiger Lake.
Conclusion
The MSI Prestige 14 and the Prestive 14 Evo have almost the same specifications. Apart from the specs that earn it the Evo badge, the latter is similar to the original. The release date is speculated to be some time in October. Pricing and availability info are yet to be announced.
