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00:00Have a look at this. It's the brand new MSI Stealth 14 Studio and it's one of a
00:05new wave, a new generation of laptops. 14-inch RTX 40 series, 13th gen Intel
00:11processors, really nice thin and light content creator workstations and also
00:15gaming laptops and I love the fact that really there isn't any compromise going
00:19with a smaller 14-inch form factor these days. This thing packs a punch. So a big
00:24thank you to MSI for sending this out for me to have a play with and also
00:26partnering with me on this video and having played with it for a couple of
00:30weeks now I have some thoughts. Let me give you the quick overview first. 14-inch
00:34QHD plus 240 Hertz IPS display 16 by 10 which is always good to see. Chassis 1.7
00:41kilograms which isn't the lightest 14-inch laptop you've ever used but it's
00:45not bad at all given the beefy cooling in here and also an RTX 4050. Now this
00:50can be specced with up to a 4070 but you may be thinking Tom I don't want a 4050
00:55in this, that's not very powerful. Well I think you'd be wrong because it's not
00:58just about the series name, crucially you have to look at the TGP, the power, the
01:03wattage of the card and this is a 90 watt TGP 4050 which is not too shabby
01:08we'll come to some benchmarks in a minute. We've also got a 45 watt 13th
01:12gen H series processor from Intel of course, 16 gigs of RAM, 512 storage. Up top
01:18we have their webcam as well as this little handy privacy shutter and also an
01:22IR webcam so you can use face unlocking. Now this is the star blue chassis color
01:27it also comes in a pure white which I imagine is a little bit less stealthy
01:31you definitely notice that but I think it's a pretty smart looking laptop
01:35although there are some gaming flourishes. We've got a per-key RGB
01:38keyboard, a little bit of RGB going on at the back here, underneath I quite like
01:42the look of that and also a pretty good sized trackpad it feels good. There's
01:47maybe a little bit more room it could have expanded into but not too bad at
01:50all. No room for a numpad but I think overall it's a really nicely built
01:53gaming and workstation laptop and there isn't really any major compromise like
01:57we've seen previously with smaller designs. We get top-notch graphics and
02:01performance, we'll come to some benchmarks in a second. As I say they've managed to
02:05improve the cooling as well they've got a huge vapor chamber cooler in here
02:08which actually covers half of the board as well as a couple of fans so we're
02:12really getting the best out of the hardware that they've put in here. The
02:16only downside is the price. This 4050 model will cost you about £2,000
02:22which is an awful lot of money but compared to the Galaxy Book 3 Ultra
02:26which I recently reviewed that actually costs about 500 more than this for the
02:294050 and you can get that with a 4070 as well but only with a 60 watt TGP and
02:34this is gonna be really important. The 90 watt total graphics power, the high
02:39wattage of this card I think is actually really important. A lot of people seem to
02:43forget about that and just look at the series. This actually performs really
02:47well whether you're gaming, whether you're doing some editing in Premiere
02:50Pro or Blender. So great screen, color accurate, solid performance, decent
02:55battery life for shimmy not playing games and all in a very nice thinner
02:59light chassis that weighs just 1.7 kilograms. And if you do enjoy the video
03:03a cheeky like and subscribe would be amazing. Of course a bit noisy isn't it?
03:08If you can hear me over that fan noise, rounding out the specs we have up to 64
03:13gigs of RAM, DDR5 although I've only got 16 in here. I think the sweet spot will
03:17be 32 especially if you're gonna use this for your content creation. Also a
03:211 terabyte PCIe 4 SSD, a 72 watt hour battery. We also get a MUX switch which
03:27is actually very important and it also supports Wi-Fi 6E. There you go. After
03:31like 20 seconds of lifting it up the fans do calm down so clearly it just
03:36doesn't like being on a flat surface. Perhaps use it on a laptop stand or with
03:41a cooling base. But particularly with this 14-inch form-factor MSI is really
03:46trying to balance the performance and the portability and of course with the
03:50new RTX 40 series cards we get all the power efficiency benefits of that new
03:54AIDA architecture and DLSS 3 which is magic. I say that every video I mention
04:00DLSS, particularly DLSS 3 which also now adds frame generation. Only a handful of
04:05games do support it but where they do, particularly the likes of Flight
04:09Simulator, it makes a world of difference. Also as I mentioned this is
04:13the 90 watt TGP of the 4050 which is definitely on the higher end of the
04:17wattage for that card and in some games and applications that will be faster
04:21than a lower wattage 4060 or even a 4070 so this is a pretty beefy card. Plus
04:27there's fast AV1 video codecs for better quality streams and faster video
04:31exports as well as Nvidia's own broadcast suite and super resolution for
04:35AI video upscaling. There's lots of nice-to-have bonus features beyond just
04:38the pure performance of the card. It's not gonna match the 125 watt RTX 4090
04:44in the ROG Zephyrus G14 which is also a 14-inch powerhouse but that does
04:48actually have a slower refresh rate and it's almost twice the price. The Stealth
04:5314 Studio also now gets a MUX switch so you can choose between using the
04:56integrated or dedicated GPU depending on your needs or just leave it in the
05:00auto switching hybrid mode. I love how sharp and smooth this QHD plus 240 Hertz
05:05screen is but the trouble is I could rarely take full advantage of that
05:09refresh rate even at 1080p with this 4050 but still any game hitting triple
05:14digits is a great experience on this and feels kind of uncanny on a laptop this
05:18small. No it's not OLED and at around 400 nits it's not all that bright and also
05:23there's no HDR to speak of which is a little bit disappointing but the IPS
05:26level panel is pretty good and it's surprisingly color accurate especially
05:29in MSI's true color P3 preset although I did notice the viewing angles aren't the
05:34best on this. However if you do prefer a bigger screen MSI are also launching a
05:3815, 16 and 17 inch version of the Stealth with the latter two also being part of
05:43their Studio family and as you would expect come with Nvidia's Studio
05:47certification so this can be a proper gaming laptop and also a productivity
05:51workstation. So this guy measures just 19 millimeters thick also we have dual 2
05:58watt Dyno audio speakers on the keyboard deck and a couple of subwoofers out the
06:02side and the speakers are pretty good actually we're playing some videos and
06:06movies earlier, solid bass, they get pretty loud, not too bad at all.
06:12As for ports we have a pretty good range including a USB 3.2 type-c which also
06:19supports DisplayPort and power delivery so you can charge it that way if you
06:22want but the fastest charging you'll want to use the bundle charger in this
06:26guy. We also have one Thunderbolt 4 and an audio combo jack and an HDMI 2.1
06:31because given the screen size you might want to output to a bigger screen. My
06:35only gripe is that as a gaming laptop you might have wanted an Ethernet port
06:39so you could have well not rely on Wi-Fi and also for creators the lack of an SD
06:43card slot is a bit disappointing. Popping the base off we can see the large vapor
06:48chamber and a couple of fans along with the RAM and the SSD although as you can
06:52see there's no second M.2 slot for an extra SSD. The precision touchpad is nice
06:56to use with a responsive feeling click and I do quite like this contrasting
07:00lighter shade of blue. The keyboard's decent as well although I'm not crazy
07:03about this font but it's well designed and easy to type on despite a slightly
07:07soft feel but we do get perky RGB. Okay enough waffling let's talk about
07:12performance. Well as you would expect with these specs it was smooth sailing
07:16with everyday tasks all benefiting from that buttery smooth 240Hz refresh.
07:20It's not just gamers who appreciate a high refresh. I even edited parts of this
07:24video on here no problem although if I'm honest longer or more complex 4k
07:29projects would definitely benefit from 32 gigs of RAM. But as you heard earlier
07:33whenever you're doing anything moderately intensive those fans do
07:36wear up and it gets loud, too loud if I'm honest. But what about gaming? That's
07:41pretty important right? Well my takeaway would be drop the resolution to full HD.
07:45With this spec the QHD native resolution is quite demanding and you're not
07:50really going to take advantage of that full 240Hz refresh rate so I've
07:53tested a bunch of games at both resolutions but I would encourage you if
07:56you do pick one of these up to play at full HD unless you're gaming with older
08:00titles or you're having to drop a few settings. In Fortnite with medium high
08:04settings and DLSS in DX12 mode I averaged around 100 FPS at 1080 and
08:09around 76 FPS at 1440. In Cyberpunk with ultra settings, ray tracing and DLSS
08:15with frame gen on at 1080p I averaged 69 FPS although that dropped to 50 when I
08:20bumped up the resolution to QHD. Jumping into a bit of Forza Horizon 5 and
08:25impressively at 1440p even without DLSS I was getting a 130 FPS which then
08:31jumped up to 153 with DLSS and frame gen enabled. I also tested F122 and
08:36actually achieved some pretty impressive frame rates and finally my old favorite
08:40Rainbow Six Siege and I was comfortably getting 240 FPS at ultra settings at 1080p
08:45and actually the same at 1440 if I drop the settings down to high.
08:48Interestingly though when I unplug the laptop but have the MUX switch still set
08:52to discrete graphics mode the performance dropped by around 30 to 40%
08:56which is significant but most games were still very playable even on battery.
09:01In terms of battery life it's not actually too bad in my YouTube playback test with
09:05the brightness set to 50% or about 200 nits on this guy I got around 5 hours and
09:10with everyday general non gaming use I think 5 to 6 hours is actually pretty
09:14doable so you could just about get through a full workday with this guy if
09:18you wanted to but it does all depend how you use it. As for the webcam not too
09:23bad it is 720p so the quality is not the best but we do get face unlocking with
09:28Windows Hello support so not too bad but perhaps could be better. 1080p would have been nice.
09:33If you do fancy checking this out for yourself I'll leave links in the
09:37description below and if you've got any questions let me know in the comments.
09:40This is the MSI Stealth 14 Studio, I'm Tom the Tech Chap and if you enjoyed the
09:44video a like and subscribe right down below would be lovely and I'll see you
09:47next time. That's gonna go for a chef's kiss there but I'm not sure you can
09:51really apply that to an upscaling technology. That's me, delightfully awkward.