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The real unique aspect of Intel's 13th-generation mobile CPU lineup that you'll find in some of the new best laptops is the 45W H-series chips. This used to only come in some of the best gaming laptops that have the extra boost of discrete graphics cards. But, now, a business and enthusiast laptop like the MSI Prestige 14 Evo has these very H-series CPUs, minus the typical dedicated GPU.

This makes the MSI Prestige 14 Evo a new kind of business laptop. It's quite portable, packing in great power for tasks beyond simple productivity. The display on the laptop is also great since it's glossy and brings colors to life. Even port selection is nice since you get all the basics for avoiding using a dongle.

In nearly one month of use, other than some minor gripes with the trackpad and keyboard, I found more good than bad on this laptop, and it's really hard to not suggest buying if you want a solid-performing MSI laptop with a 45W Intel CPU.

About this review: The MSI Prestige 14 Evo A13M was sent to us on loan to us by MSI for review. MSI did not see the contents of this review before publishing.

MSI-removebg-preview
MSI Prestige 14 Evo A13M

The MSI Prestige 14 Evo is a new breed of business laptop. It features Intel's 13th generation H-series CPUs, giving it plenty of power for tasks like light video editing and beyond. It also has a great glossy display, and excellent port selection, helping avoid using a dongle. 

Brand
MSI
Storage
1x M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe Gen 4x4 SSD
CPU
13th-generation Intel Core i7-13700H
Operating System
Windows 11 Pro
Battery
72Wh battery
Ports
2x Thunderbbolt 4, 1x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2, 1x HDMI 2..0, 1x MicroSD card reader, 1x 3.5mm headphone jack
Camera
1080p Windows Hello
Display (Size, Resolution)
14-inch FHD+ 1920 x 1200, 16:10 aspect ratio, 400 nits
Weight
3.53 pounds
GPU
Integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics
Network
Intel Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) + Bluetooth 5.2
Speakers
2x 2W Speaker, Hi-Res Audio Certified, DTS Sound Effect
Price
$1,500
Power
100W USB-C PD Charging, supporting fast charging
Pros
  • Features Intel 13th-generation H-series CPUs
  • Has a lot of ports
  • Great display
Cons
  • Keyboard isn't quite as responsive
  • Trackpad feels cheap
  • Battery life could be better

MSI Prestige 14 Evo: Price and availability

  • The laptop is available at multiple retailers
  • Pricing on my review unit is $1,500

You can buy the MSI Prestige 14 Evo today from multiple retailers. The best place to find it is at Amazon and Newegg where you'll find it for $1,500. Other retailers like B&H don't seem to have it in stock just yet. Also, Amazon's supplies seem to be limited at the time of publication.

Design: Your typical productivity laptop on the outside

  • The MSI Prestige 14 Evo doesn't look all too fancy, but it is portable
  • It has a hinge that lifts the keyboard up to a comfortable typing angle
  • Vents are at the top of the keyboard deck under the screen

The MSI Prestige 14 Evo is as simple looking as you'll get with a laptop. It's your typical aluminum laptop right down to the brushed Urban Silver finish and shiny MSI logo on the lid. Heck, the laptop even has military-grade durability like all ThinkPads do, passing the MIL-STD-810G standards. The only distinguishing features I could find here related to the ventilation and keyboard.

MSI Prestige 14 Evo on a desk

First off, you'll find ventilation areas under the display and above the keyboard deck for enhanced thermals. Usually, business laptops and ThinkPads have these vents either under or to the side of the device, but not here. The sides instead have a clean and sloped look free of any vents. It helps ensure you don't have hot air blowing on your lap or hands when using the device.

The second is that the hinges and two small rubber feet on the rear of the lid elevate the keyboard up to a comfortable typing angle that helps with typing speeds and accuracy. Worth noting though that this is a feature other laptops already use, especially Asus with its ErgoLift hinge.

The MSI Prestige 14 Evolooks like your typical productivity laptop, but with some small tweaks for thermals and optional typing.

As for ports, there's a great selection to avoid using a dongle. You'll find two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, an HDMI 2.0 port, a microSD card reader, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. MicroSD card readers are becoming rarer on laptops, so it's great to see. HDMI 2.0 also means you don't need an adapter to connect to a display, and USB-A gives you a spot for your keyboard. I wish there was an extra USB-A, though, especially since there's room for it on the chassis.

Considering that this laptop packs 45W Intel H-series CPUs, which require lots of cooling and enhanced thermals, I'm also surprised to see that it's not too heavy at 3.53 pounds or thick at 0.7 inches. (A competing device like the HP EliteBook 840 G9 is about the same at 0.75 inches thick and 3 pounds.)

Do note that for added security, this laptop has a fingerprint reader at the left corner of the keyboard. This is in addition to the webcam lock on the left side that lets you disable the webcam when not in use. Both features are also common in many business laptops these days.

Display: 16:10 and super glossy

  • The display has a glossy finish to it
  • The display gets quite bright
  • It's a 16:10 aspect ratio display with a 1920 x 1200 resolution

The 16:10 aspect ratio on the Prestige 14 Evo is the new normal for most laptops over $1,000, so it's great to see here. The display comes with a 1920 x 1200 resolution, so the aspect ratio and pixel count combines to make things feel less cramped when working. ​​​

MSI Prestige 14 Evo display

Interestingly, the display has a glossy finish, which reminds me of the Framework Chromebook. Not everybody is a fan of glossy displays, but I love them over traditional matte displays because they help make the screen look brighter and more vibrant, especially when web browsing and looking at black text on a white background. It helps things look more saturated under bright office lights or make images pop when watching Netflix. The downside is, unfortunately, that you'll see your reflection on the screen at lower brightness. It never bothered me too much, but it is worth mentioning.

I noticed the benefits of this glossy screen best when watching a nature video about cats on YouTube. The face of an orange cat looked so real that I wanted to reach out and touch his adorable face.

MSI Prestige 14 Evo showing a cat on the screen

But I wanted my colorimeter to back up those claims. In most categories, the measurements came above the 70% standards we look for in a laptop when it comes to important areas like Adobe RGB and sRGB. However, the NTSC spectrum is lacking at 71% AdobeRGB, 94% sRGB, 65% NTSC, and 71% P3. The contrast ratio, meanwhile, is quite excellent at 1280:1, above the 1000:1 we look for.

These numbers are decent and mean this display is good enough for those who are into light content creation like editing photos, but it's probably not great for professional photographers or videographers. It's good color accuracy, but not the best. OLED laptops are where you'll see 90% numbers across the board.

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And the webcam atop the display? It's a 1080p webcam, which is what most other Windows laptops feature these days. If you want better, use an external webcam, or consider the 5MP webcams on laptops from HP.

The camera supports some advanced software features that can spice up your video calls, including noise reduction and noise cancelation thanks to the quadruple microphones. Tobii Aware is also pre-installed on the Prestige 14 Evo, which can detect and respond to your presence and focus so that the laptop locks when you're not present and only stays on when you're around it.

Performance: Intel's 13th-generation H-series chip is the highlight

  • The Intel H-series CPUs are quite speedy and efficient
  • Battery life could be better, though

This is all solid so far, but the top reason to even consider buying the MSI Prestige 14 Evo is the 45W Intel Core i7-13700H series CPU. I'm used to reviewing laptops that have similar class H-series CPUs, but they're typically much bigger, heavier, and primarily aimed at gamers and content creators since they come with GPUs.

MSI Prestige 14 Evo CPU

The MSI Prestige 14 Evo has a similar CPU as those gaming laptops, and it still performs well where more computing power is needed for tasks like casual gaming and photo editing. It's essentially better in general performance than the lower-wattage P-series and U-series CPUs you'll find in standard productivity laptops.

The MSI Prestige 14 Evo is one of the more powerful laptops you'll use that doesn't have a GPU.

​​​​​And this is all because of how this CPU is configured under the hood. It's a 14-core hybrid CPU with performance and efficiency cores. There are six performance cores and eight efficiency cores, and the CPU runs at 5.0GHz maximum. Compare to a 28W 13th-generation Intel Core i7-12360P CPU in the Lenovo Yoga 9i with 12 cores (four performance, eight efficiency, and 5.0 GHz), the difference in benchmarking numbers is significant. With a near 2,000-point lead in Geekbench and Cinebench over a laptop with a 13th-generation Intel P-series chip, the multi-core performance for more demanding computing tasks really shines. Again, it's those CPU-taxing tests where the MSI excels over all the other non-gaming laptop picks on our chart.

MSI Prestige 14 Evo Core i7-13700H

Lenovo Yoga 9i Core i7-1360P

HP EliteBook 840 G9 Core i7-1280P

Razer Blade 15 Core i9-12900H, RTX 3070 Ti

MacBook Pro 13 M2

PCMark 10

6,176

6,115

5,772

6,845

N/A

3DMark: Time Spy

2,073

1,748

2,002

9,258

N/A

Geekbench 5

1,857/12,928

N/A

1,727 / 10,014

1,834 / 9,548

1,902 / 8,964

Geekbench 6

2,515/12,570

2,464 / 10,859

N/A

N/A

N/A

Cinebench R23

1,906/13,093

2,464 / 10,859

1,689 / 9,565

1,799 / 10,153

1,573 / 8,704

But looking at the 3D Mark and PCMark10 numbers against a last-gen gaming laptop, the results show you'll still need a laptop with a dedicated GPU if you want to play AAA games or successfully edit videos without waiting hours for encoding to complete. Intel's Iris Xe graphics can only do so much, but it's still offering a slight performance boost with a 325-point gain in 3DMark: TimeSpy, a gaming test.

For those who aren't serious video editors or gamers, the new H-series CPU really shines.

Clearly, this isn't a gaming laptop, but perhaps thanks to the faster DDR5 RAM, I thoroughly enjoyed gaming at a solid 45 FPS in a light title like CS:GO with the settings tuned down. Even a more intense title like GTA: V ran smoothly with medium settings. I also used Photoshop for photo editing, and it didn't at all freeze up or lag behind when I opened about 20 images at once and switched between them to apply filters and effects. In productivity tasks like using Microsoft Edge with a mix of 20 tabs open, this laptop is a champion and didn't slow down.

Again, this isn't meant to be a MacBook killer by any means since it lacks a dedicated GPU, but for those who aren't serious video editors or gamers, the new H-series CPU really shines. It's great for using this MSI laptop for light gaming and video editing, or in the case of businesses, tasks like running virtual machines or dealing with comprehensive spreadsheets and files. Just keep the battery expectations in check. With the screen at 30% brightness, and the Super Battery mode enabled, I only got to seven and a half hours of use. I wasn't expecting more anyway, especially since the CPU pulls too much power.

Keyboard and trackpad: Clearly not up to snuff

  • The keyboard doesn't feel responsive when you type on it
  • The trackpad feels too hollow

MSI productivity and business laptops consistently have mediocre keyboards and trackpads. Both aren't up to my standards. And that's the case here. The keyboard doesn't quite feel tactile and responsive, and the trackpad is way too hollow.

To be fair to MSI, there were some changes to the keyboard this year. MSI told me that the keys have 1.5 mm travel, and the trackpad is larger than the previous generation. But when typing up this review, I often found myself pausing a lot. The keycaps might be large, but they felt way too light on my fingers and a little too shallow.

MSI Prestige 14 Evo keyboard

It's not all a loss, though, as I do like the dedicated keys on the top of the keyboard for extra functionality. The F12 key flips the screen around for sharing content when the screen is flat on the desk, and the F7 key is for the MSI center. This helps in switching the laptop into various user scenarios that tweak the CPU and fans for performance (long battery life, silent, balanced, and extreme performance). I switched between these modes for running benchmarks and my battery tests for more accurate results.

The trackpad, meanwhile, also isn't quite as good as I hoped. It suffers from the same problem as the MSI Summit E14 Flip I reviewed last year. Clicking on it produces an annoying noise, and it feels too loose and hollow. I ended up using a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard with this device for my own comfort.

Should you buy the MSI Prestige 14 Evo?

You should buy the MSI Prestige 14 Evo if:

  • You want a slim laptop with an Intel H-series CPU
  • You want a laptop with a glossy screen
  • You're casually editing photos or videos and don't want a laptop with a GPU
  • You're an enterprise user

You shouldn't buy the MSI Prestige 14 Evo if:

  • You don't have $1,500
  • You want a laptop that has a good keyboard and trackpad

In my month with the MSI Prestige 14 Evo, I found it hard to put down, and it's now one of the best new MSI laptops. I was pleasantly surprised with the performance of Intel's 13th generation H-series CPUs for casual tasks like light photo editing and playing my favorite older Steam games. It's a truly unique device thanks to that CPU, and you'll want to consider buying it. Just keep battery life in mind as the 45W CPUs are power-hungry.

MSI-removebg-preview
MSI Prestige 14 Evo A13M

The MSI Prestige 14 Evo is a new breed of business laptop. It features Intel's 13th generation H-series CPUs, giving it plenty of power for tasks like light video editing and beyond. It also has a great glossy display, and excellent port selection, helping avoid using a dongle.