MSI Prestige 14 AI review: A creator's dream for those on the go

It seems that every other laptop that comes across my desk at the moment has AI in the name. At times this makes sense, as is the case with the Acer Swift 14 AI but at other times it appears to be no more than just a marketing gimmick.

I was keen to see which side of the fence the MSI Prestige 14 AI landed. Would it be one of the best AI laptops or just a poor attempt to grab market share? It's fair to say that creatives are increasingly making use of AI in their workflows and so there is definitely a market for hardware that drives it.

The Prestige 14 AI is compact, portable, affordable, and from one of the most well-loved laptop brands around. We'll dive into more detail below, covering the design, build, features, and performance.

While you're here, you might want to check out our best laptops for graphic design and photo-editing to see what we believe are tried and tested models for creatives.

MSI Prestige 14 AI: Key specifications

Design & Build

The MSI Prestige 14 AI is a beautifully compact laptop that is well designed and boasts great portability. Time has shown that 14-inch displays are pretty much the perfect size for providing enough screen real-estate while being small enough to carry around.

At 1.7kg, it's not the lightest laptop that you'll ever see. For comparison, the Acer Swift 14 AI weighs only 1.36kg. Despite being a little heavier, you'll have absolutely no problems carrying this device around either to and from work or into lectures at university or college.

The display is perfectly housed by slim bezels that fade into the background and let the content of the screen take centre stage. At 2.8K resolution you're pushing beyond full HD but not quite making it to 4K. This resolution is ideal for making most things look sharper and more defined but not enough when working with 4K video footage.

The 16:10 aspect ratio, compared to 16:9, gives even more display to work with, an essential criterion when dealing with 14-inch displays. It also helps when scrolling through documents and websites because you can see more of the content at once.

The display itself is pretty lightweight and thin so you'll need to be careful not to damage it. I know you shouldn't do this on any laptop but definitely don't close the lid by gripping the display, you'll absolutely regret it.

The main laptop is solid, robust, and made of a matte grey metal that clearly puts it in the range of middle-of-the-road laptops for creatives, business users, and students. The design isn't going to light up anyone's world but at the same time, it looks okay.

The keyboard is slightly recessed into the laptop, which I'm not personally a fan of. I think it hampers ergonomic typing, especially when working on the go. The trackpad is reasonably sized and responsive enough to use when out and about although I wouldn't want to use it for a whole day's work, so you'll benefit from a secondary mouse.

The laptop also comes with a webcam, fingerprint login, and an abundance of ports. It covers all the bases that modern users expect. There are also rubber strips on the base which adequately hold the laptop in place on the desk.

Features & Performance

At the heart of the MSI Prestige 14 AI is, you would not believe it, a set of AI tools designed for artists and creatives. The first is called MSI AI Artist, which enables users to generate images with minimal prompts. This not only speeds up workflows but simplifies a content creation process that can oftentimes be overly complex.

The other AI feature is less artist-driven and more related to overall performance. The essence of it centres around the machine's ability to detect what you're working on and automatically adjust hardware settings to get the most out of it. This dynamic operation targets resources where they need to go so you always get the best out of the machine.

It's difficult to test the validity of this AI feature but we did run a range of benchmarking tests to see what the overall performance of the laptop was.

Beginning with Geekbench tests for the Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, we discovered that the single-core result was 1,650 and the multi-core result was 7,621. The former puts it in the same camp as the Acer Swift 3, whereas the latter is closer to the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2. Neither of these are powerhouses that are suited to intensive gaming or intense 3D rendering but they do show the laptop's ability to perform adequately in the mid-range.

Continuing with CPU tests, I moved onto Cinebench, which scored 73 for single-core and 535 for multi-core. This puts it in the same league as the highly-rated ASUS Zenbook S 16. This is further proof that the MSI Prestige 14 AI is a decent-performing laptop but not to the degree that high-end professionals will require.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 is a much-loved and revered GPU and it's great to see it popping up in a laptop at this price. The Geekbench GPU OpenCL score was 22,092, which is very serviceable, but shows it's not ideal for heavy 3D workloads.

Rendering tests through Blender gave scores of 48.29, 33.60, and 24.06 for Monster, Junkshop, and Classroom scenes, respectively.

The Handbrake video-encoding test came in at a very impressive 5 minutes and 47 seconds, thanks for the 32GB of memory. This shows its acumen for being a laptop for creatives, including video editors. It might struggle with 4K and a lot of effects but on the whole, it's a laptop most users can rely on.

The laptop battery will last for 16 hours as evidenced in a 1080p video playback test. You won't get this when pushing it hard for work but it'll be more than enough if you've travelled to the office for a day's work at the office but forgot your charger.

Price

For this review, I tested the Prestige 14 AI Evo C1MG-003UK, which retails at £799, although there are regularly discounts around. The closest model to this one in the US is the Prestige 14 AI Evo C1MG-048US, which costs $1,649. That has an intel Ultra i9-185H CPU.

Other Prestige models include 14 AI Studio C1VFG and the 14 AI Studio C1VEG. The former is available in the US and costs $1,949. The latter is available in the UK and would set you back £1,599.

Who is it for?

The MSI Prestige 14 AI has been built to be an affordable laptop for a wide range of users, including creatives, business users, and students. It covers all the bases really well without excelling in any particular area at the cost of others.

It's portability makes it ideal for students or hybrid workers although depending on what field you're in, you might need a higher spec laptop. The reality is that it doesn't pack enough performance to be usable for high-end creative professionals or serious gamers but, at this price, that's no surprise.

Should I buy the MSI Prestige 14 AI?

Buy it if:

• You're a hybrid worker who needs portability
• You're increasingly using AI tools
• You want to buy from a household name

Don’t buy it if:

• You need the highest performing hardware available
• You want a large display

Also consider

ASUS Zenbook S 13

Super lightweight, super good-looking and a super-performer, this is a hybrid worker's dream and a fantastic student laptop too.

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Macbook Air M2 (2022)

The lightweight MacBook is still a great laptop, and will handle slightly heavier workloads than the MSI if the visual performance of the latter doesn't cut it for you.

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HP Omen Transcend 14

This is for the all-out gamers who want better battery life than in previous-gen gaming laptops. Mind you, it works real nice for creative pursuits too.

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