MSI Prestige 13 EVO (2023) Review

About the MSI Prestige 13 EVO

Here are the specs of the laptop we tested:

• Price: $1,500
• Processor: Intel Core i7-1360P
• Graphics: Intel Iris Xe (integrated)
• RAM: 32GB DDR5 4800MHz
• Storage: 1TB
• Display: 13.3-inch, 1920 x 1200, 60Hz, IPS
• Ports: 2 x USB-C (Thunderbolt 4 support for DisplayPort 2.0 and PD charging), 1 x USB-A 3.2, 1 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x microSD, 1 x mic-in/headphone-out combo jack
• Wireless connectivity: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3
• Camera: 1080p at 30 fps IR webcam
• Battery: 4-cell 75WHr lithium-ion polymer battery
• Weight: 2.18 pounds
• Size: 11.77 x 8.28 x 0.67 inches
• Warranty: 1-year limited warranty

The MSI Prestige 13 EVO model we tested retails for $1,500. There is also a model with an Intel Core i5-1340P processor and 16GB of memory for about $1,300.

What we like

Its incredible trackpad

If I were blindfolded and told to tell the difference between the Prestige 13’s trackpad and the MacBook Air’s trackpad on touch alone, I’m not sure I’d be able to identify them properly.

The Prestige 13’s trackpad is extremely smooth and consistent, with each swipe and gesture having the perfect acceleration and pressure sensitivity to navigate the screen. The left and right clicks are manual (unlike the MacBooks’ force clicks), striking a good balance between using too much pressure to navigate smoothly and too little pressure to prevent misclicks.

It weighs nothing

If your back is constantly sore from lugging around a heavy laptop in your bag, you’ll be ecstatic about the Prestige 13’s mere 2.18 pound weight. Despite its air-light body, the magnesium-aluminum chassis is incredibly rigid and feels like it could take a few tumbles before showing dents or scratches. The laptop’s stellar and suave gray finish gives a sophisticated aesthetic to its design.

The port selection and features are also a standout on the laptop, especially for its size. It’s not uncommon for 13-inch laptops to have only two USB-C ports and a headphone jack (or no headphone jack if you’re looking at Apple’s MacBook Air M2), but the Prestige 13 also has a USB-A port, an HDMI port, and a microSD card reader.

On the top of the bezel, there’s a manual shutter to block the webcam in case you want that extra layer of security. The infrared webcam and fingerprint scanner on the power button gives an alternate way to sign in to the device.

Good performance and specs

Compared to some of the other best laptops we’ve reviewed as of mid-May 2023, it generally falls in the middle of the pack in CPU performance (single-core and multi-core). Comparing our synthetic benchmarks to our practical software tests confirmed this.

The Prestige 13 EVO completed our Excel benchmark, which sorts a large file of formulas and complex data, in 37 seconds. That puts it side-by-side with Lenovo’s Yoga 9i Gen 8 and LG’s Gram 17, which also have an Intel Core i7-1360P processor. Acer’s Swift 3 OLED and Dell’s Inspiron 14 Plus were runners up at 42 seconds with an Intel Core i7-12700H.

It fell behind all of those, including all the M2 MacBooks we’ve tested, in our Blender 3D render test. It still made the overall top ten, but took a little under 4.5 minutes to complete the image render. Some of its competitors took as little as two minutes and 50 seconds. This in no way means you can’t use MSI’s Prestige 13 EVO for light to moderate tasks that involve image or video editing, though. It just means some tasks will take a little bit longer.

Unfortunately for this laptop the chassis gets uncomfortably hot to touch when you push its components like that. (The processor’s temperature peaked at about 89 degrees Celsius.) Try to keep your fingers away from the part of the chassis above the keyboard, as that’s where the laptop gets the hottest, topping out at 48 C. You also probably don’t want to put the Prestige 13 on your lap, but if you are doing simple computing tasks you don’t have to worry about it getting too hot.

Also, the Prestige 13 EVO’s fans stay impressively quiet even when running tasks like 3D image rendering.

What we don’t Like

The display could be better

The Prestige 13 EVO’s display is underwhelming for a $1,500 laptop. It has a solid max-brightness of 480 nits (higher than MSI’s listed spec), but it only covers 100% the standard RGB color gamut and 77% of the P3 color gamut (most laptops have displays with 100% P3 coverage at this price). Worse yet, the 19200 x 1200 IPS display lacks the sharpness that’s quickly becoming the standard among the sea of 2K and 4K premium laptops.

The Prestige 13’s display isn’t offensive, but it’s not the same quality as those on the Apple MacBook Air M2, or even the Acer Swift 3 OLED, which starts at under $1,000. i. The Prestige 13’s display won’t cut it for media-focused workloads, and the not-as-sharp resolution might give you eye strain faster than a 2K display (at least for my eyeballs).

The keyboard feels cramped

In order to make a laptop keyboard comfortable to type on, most laptop manufacturers shrink the keyboard size or layer keys with modifier buttons. But the Prestige 13 Evo takes a different approach—it crams as many keys as it can into the space by shrinking the key size. The leftmost keys are what you would expect (between 1u and 2u length), but the rightmost keys are squished into keys as small as a quarter-inch wide and a half-inch long.

The bottom right is the most egregious zone, with four arrow keys, page up and page down keys, a control key, and a backslash key crammed into what would normally be four letter keys’ worth of space. The backslash key is an especially odd inclusion, considering that there’s already a standard-size backslash key next to the right bracket key on the upper right side of the keyboard.

I felt restricted on this laptop’s keyboard, and I have small hands! I can’t imagine what someone with large hands might feel like trying to use this laptop keyboard. But I’ve had worse typing experiences.

Once my fingers adjusted to the new key sizes, I enjoyed the springiness of the keys and the small range of motion necessary to type. Even if my finger landed on the wrong key initially, mistypes were rare due to the keys’ high actuation force that made each of my keystrokes more deliberate, but that might be tiring after a while for some users.

Battery life is shorter than expected

Between the basic display specs and the feather-light chassis, I would have expected this laptop to have monumental battery life. Good battery life for thin and light productivity laptops should be around eight hours or more, but MSI’s Prestige 13 EVO clocked in at about five and a half hours when we ran our battery test. This pales in comparison to laptops like the MacBook Air and Dell XPS 13, which have about 15 hours of battery life, although also have larger watt-hour batteries and processors that don’t need as much power.

However, LG’s Gram 17 has the same processor as the Prestige 13 EVO (and a discrete graphics card, no less!), but a 90Whr battery that gets the laptop more than 14 hours of power.

This discrepancy made us wonder if there was something wrong with the battery in the review unit we received, as other publications that have reviewed Prestige 13 EVO averaged 12 hours of battery life or more. We have reached out to MSI to troubleshoot; we will update this part of our review if/when we hear back and are able to diagnose the issue.

Should you buy the MSI Prestige 13 EVO?

Maybe, if you want a thin and light laptop above all else

The MSI Prestige 13 EVO is by no means a bad laptop—in fact, its phenomenal trackpad, well-built body, and snappy processor made it a joy to use. Also, this thing weighs about two pounds, making it an excellent device for those who desperately need to get the smallest and lightest gear possible. It’s not at the top of its class, but it’s still a great experience and worth considering if you find it on sale.

Its $1,500 price tag is mainly what bumps this laptop from a solid recommendation down to a maybe. Its chassis has the build quality to back up the price, but the 1080p display doesn’t cut it when most laptops over $1,000 have 2K or 4K displays (even OLED). The short battery life also hurts it, considering how much MSI marketed this laptop for travel and portability.

However, if portability is your main priority, there are many great alternatives that have higher-resolution displays and much better battery life without weighing over three pounds, like the Dell XPS 13 (2.6 pounds), MacBook Air M2 (2.7 lb), and HP Spectre 14 (3.0 lb).

The MSI Prestige 13 Evo would have been a steal at half its price. Being a ‘good’ laptop isn’t good enough days, and for $1,500 the MSI Prestige 13 Evo needs to step up and provide a better display and better battery life to compete with its peers.