msi Katana 15 HX 15.6” 165Hz QHD+ Gaming Laptop: Intel Core i9-14900HX, NVIDIA Geforce RTX 5070, 32GB DDR5, 1TB NVMe SSD, RGB Keyboard, Win 11 Home: Black B14WGK-016US

I wanted a new laptop for personal use as well as mostly moderate gaming, and this laptop is great for all my purposes (i9, 32GB RAM, 1TB storage). I consider the price I paid ($1746) reasonable compared with similar laptops, but it does go on sale sometimes. The laptop is a little on the heavy and slightly bulky side for casual use, but I wouldn’t have minded if it was even bigger than it is if that meant better cooling, less cost, etc. It really not too bulky for a gaming laptop. Size aside, it looks great. Stylish and sleek, and the customizable and dimmable keyboard backlighting is a nice touch. I like the keyboard layout for typing as well as gaming, I find it to be very functional. The number pad is small but usable. The function keys are well thought out (function keys for screen brightness, keyboard backlighting brightness, enable/disable touchpad, mute mic, etc.), which I find to be rare with laptops. There’s a light for function lock and mic muting. WASD are a different color for gaming. The laptop runs Windows 11 well and seems very fast and powerful (although I haven’t done anything yet to truly push its limits). The BIOS is pretty reasonable, based on my experience (IT professional). The MSI app with designated function key lets you quickly change the power mode for your purposes, although my limited experience with the AI mode has not been great so far (it throttled the power down when I needed it, reasons unknown, and it turned off the keyboard backlighting at night). I’ve only played a few games on it so far, but it handles Fortnite like a champ without needing its full capabilities (power setting on “balanced” works perfectly). I haven’t run into any major issues with other programs or OS yet. Worth noting, the laptop does not always shut down properly. I’ve had to disable sleep and hibernation in Windows, as the laptop frequently does not resume from those states gracefully. Sometimes the laptop does not shut down completely at all, and the Embedded Controller keeps the fans running indefinitely, until I hold down the power button to manually power it off. That’s not ideal, but for me it’s not too big a deal either. The laptop also runs hot when in performance power mode or when gaming. I would never use a gaming laptop without a cooling pad, but if you’re new to gaming laptops, take note. The laptop seems to manage its built in fans well (and there’s a keyboard function key to let you immediately turn all the fans on to max speed), but again, I advise a cooling pad with fans to ensure you don’t overheat it during any use more intensive than watching videos. Definitely don’t ever put this down on a soft surface (like a bed or couch) without a hard flat surface under it or you’ll probably melt it. The power supply is bulky, as you would expect for a laptop that needs extra power for gaming, and the power supply also gets hot. Best to keep it where it can easily cool when in use. The power cord has a third prong/ground. All around, a great gaming laptop for a reasonable price.

MSI is hit or miss for me. This Katana 15HX is a 100% a hit! A beast of a machine at a very affordable price. The i914900 is super fast, the RTX 5070 is very strong! Every game I tested runs at max settings, with very high FPS. Resident Evil 9, Cyberpunk, Final Fantasy VII parts 1 & 2, and several other games tested all work with no stutter. 1440p resolution on all games I tested. It’s awesome. You get 32GB DDR5 ram. It’s efficient and quick. Of course you can upgrade to faster memory speed and size. 64GB is maximum. The laptop fan will get loud during heavy use, but the CPU and GPU temps are well within safe temps. The built in MSI software works good at monitoring, and making changes. There are several obnoxious apps installed as bloatware. I uninstalled all of them and it’s been great. This comes with 1TB Gen 4 NVME SSD. It’s very quick at 7000mb/s. You could upgrade the SSD to Gen 5 with extra space. It’s costly, but worth it if you play a lot of modern games. Many of them take 100GB and more. I bought an upgrade to make Windows 11 the Pro version. Windows 11 Pro offers more options for your choosing but for some, Windows 11 Home is ok. You can buy a legit, genuine Windows 11 Pro key for less than $20 online. Do not use those Pro activation hacks. Some are malware and you could have serious issues. Besides, Microsoft does updates that verify the authenticity of your Windows key. Buy the legit key and change it in Windows settings. It’s very fast and simple. The screen is smooth at 165hz. I wish it were OLED but the quality is still very high. The screen gets nice and bright plus antiglare. Battery life is about 2-3 hours when playing games. I keep mine plugged in and the battery does not drain during gameplay like some claim. I keep the max battery charge at 80% to extend the life. It’s a bit heavy but that’s to be expected for a gaming laptop. The speakers are pretty good, but like any setup, I use headphones. Overall I am very happy with this gaming laptop from MSI, and I should get 5-6 years of use before upgrading again.

I am a gamer that likes to play both modern and older games. The computer has no compatibility issues with older games so far, and runs all the modern games with no issues. I have it attached to an external 32" gaming monitor and play games like 7D2D on the highest settings. The screen is bright and the laptop hinges for the lid to the body seem well made. The battery life when playing heavy games last about 45 minutes, but lasts about an hour and a half when playing only music. I take the laptop with me everywhere I go. The sound quality is impressive and can get pretty loud, however it needs to be loud for my next point. The only negative feedback that I have is part of a double-edge sword. When doing normal activities, the laptop runs cool to warm. There is enough air speed in the fans to keep the laptop from getting real hot when heavily gaming, however you would need to use the Fan Boost to do that. The trade off is the sound from the fan sounds like a mattress air pump. It does push a LOT of air, so I guess there has to be a trade off. Would I buy this laptop again? Absolutely!

Boyfriend and I needed new laptops after our old ones were dying, so I bought two. At first it ran great. Screen was adjustable. The battery life lasted like a good couple hours if you're not doing gaming. Dies fast within hour if you are doing anything intensive. It does run a bit hot, but I got one of those USB fans for underneath for my bf and it ran fine. I haven't gamed lately since I purchased it, and so mine didn't run hot at all. Battery box though - watch out for that since that does get burning. I like the RGB colors on it. Having a numpad was bonus. Touchpad is a bit hypersensitive. I seem to keep triggering it when I type but that can probably be adjusted/turned off. Didn't have issues with Wifi connection. But after 4 months, my background started flickering on and off. Again, I wasn't doing anything intensive. Updated drivers and everything. But that didn't solve the issue. Things started lagging. But mine wasn't as bad as my boyfriend's. His games started lagging, constant disconnects. Whole computer freezes every now and then and just shuts off. I suspect it's a GPU problem. But two laptops having issues is not a good sign.

Good Laptop

This one takes the cake. During the fourth of July sales going around from every major tech market, I did about two weeks of research only to come to terms that this was not only one of the cheapest options, but best priced options for everything that's attached to the motherboard. I was pleasantly surprised when I fired everything up and ran a few benchmarks to see just how well it did right out of the gate. Note, this is all without anything overclocked here. I mainly wanted to do some benchmarks without any tampering just to see how it ran. Here is my results; Superposition benchmark - average 80 frames (Could of been higher if frame gen was included but not too bad) Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark - average 124 frames (Ultra settings maxed, excluding a few ray tracing options) Path of Exile 2 End Game maps - average 80 frames (High settings, Frame gen hasn't been optimized in path yet, but runs amazingly well) Hogwarts Legacy benchmark - average 100 frames (Ultra settings, frame gen has slight stutter frames but runs exceptionally well) Pros: - Runs games exceptionally well - Price is possibly the best for what you're getting - Though not OLED, the picture quality is very good - MSI and it's features are nice if you haven't tried them yet - Sleek and incredibly design Cons: - Is quite noisy - Does run a little hot, might consider a cooling pad for better heal levels in peak moments - 1TB might not be enough if you're a serious gamer All in all, its an incredible laptop for what you're getting. I'm thoroughly enjoying everything that it has offered thus far. All that's left is to focus overclocking and pushing it to the limit.

I bought this to replace a 6 year old Eluktronics laptop. Worked perfect until it kept crashing multiple times per day for no reason. After doing a lot of research, this seemed like a solid choice for a gaming laptop. Not high end super-duper intensive gaming, but it works for my gaming needs. Obviously, like most new computers, set-up can be tedious, and some people may try to rush the process. My suggestion is to let Windows do ALL of their updates before you start installing your apps. Let your other onboard hardware do the same. Then, after everyone is all happy and up-to-date, you can install your stuff. It went error-free for me. After a few days of additional tweaking, I got this new laptop to "feel" like the workhorse it replaced. Plus, I have the reassurance that I should get several years of dependable service. Now, the unhappy discoveries that I made: 1. The built in webcam is not "Windows Hello" compatible. I hadn't really thought about this ahead of time. My OLD laptop's built-in camera worked just fine with Hello. I got used to using this login feature. I miss this feature. 2. There really aren't enough USB ports. I am now using 3 of 4 ports. One is for a fingerprint device (see above complaint). It would be a cool feature if a corner of the built-in mouse pad had fingerprint technology... Another port is being used for a laptop cooling riser. Yes, this laptop has pretty good cooling, but adding more comes in handy with heavy usage. The 3rd port in use is for a portable hard drive. This leaves 1 port for available use. All in all, it's a really affordable laptop for better-than-just-basic gaming as well as general duty use for everything else.

Overall I am very happy with the purchase. This laptop is pretty GPU heavy so as long as you game while it's plugged into the block it runs fantastic. I played games like Crimson Desert at near max settings and it runs great. It also lets you tweak the performance through the MSI platform, which for people like me who are not super technically savvy when it comes to tweaking PC performance settings is very nice. I mostly game using HDMI through my TV and have not had any issues with the display or view. It's great. One thing I will say, if you adjust the setting to be high performance, prepare for the fans to sound like jet engines. Don't get me wrong, it does a fantastic job keeping the CPU cool during heavy load, it's just loud and I am okay with that trade off. Overall I would give this a 10/10. Nothing to complain about. Best part about it is I got it when it was super discounted but even at full price it would have 100% been worth it.

Great quality. Good value for money. It’s completely worth it

It came in time, and it is exactly as expected. My nephew is very happy with it.

Hasta el momento que llevo ocupando la laptop, ha sido un gran uso y una gran compra, eh jugado varios títulos la máximo en 4k, y la verdad no me ha dado problemas como tal, una recomendación es que manténgala actualizada, además, viene con una suscripción gamepass pc de base no la ultimate, además si tienen dudas por el precio si viene con windows 11, viene con un sistema rgb de teclado de 4 zonas y sobre todo el acabo es plástico, tampoco se puede esperar otro material por el precio, pero aun así el material se siente de calidad, el sistema cooler boost 5 se siente muy bien, casi no esta tan caliente, a diferencia de la serie G de dell, gestiona muchisimo mejor el calor, para todo lo demás que vayas a ocupar si no es para gaming o productividad, saca todo el trabajo, un señalamiento si vás a utilizar la laptop para edición etc., te recomiento un monitor externo, ya que por el precio el mayor sacrificio es pantalla, wifi 6e (no 7), y que el teclado si eres hispano no trae ñ pero para escribirla por defecto en el teclado, recomiendo configurarla en español, para que la teclado a lado de L funcione como ñ.

Es una bestia de máquina, juegos AAA a excelente rendimiento, ciencia de datos por lo menos en modelos clásicos excelente, tendré que probar con LLM compactos para ver su desempeño. El envío llegó antes de los esperado y en excelentes condiciones. La verdad estoy muy feliz con la compra !

Amazing