Review of MSI Prestige 14 Evo in 2023. The Prestige 14 Evo (B13M) is the 2023 update to MSI’s series of Windows laptops with a focus on productivity and is largely marketed toward business users.
Given that you’re receiving a computer with 13th generation Intel processors, up to 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and a 512GB SSD, its beginning prices of roughly £1000 in the UK, $1500 in the US, and AU$2200 in Australia are reasonable.
Review of MSI Prestige 14 Evo in 2023:
The most recent wireless internet and data transfer standards, Wi-Fi 6E, and Thunderbolt 4 connectors are additional major selling factors. The lofty battery life claims made by MSI also hold up under inspection.
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However, there is fierce competition in the market for business laptops, with companies like Huawei, Microsoft, and Apple all providing excellent alternatives. Although it’s difficult to recommend the MSI Prestige 14 Evo, it is a capable laptop that is still worth taking into account.
Design & build:
- Metal exterior, black plastic bezel
- Thunderbolt 4 and HDMI 2.0 ports
- Dropped hinge makes for more comfortable typing
The msi prestige 14 evo is a silver computer that doesn’t exactly stand out for originality, but that doesn’t make it a bad-looking laptop.
Every edge and surface is clad in aluminum, with the thin black plastic bezel being the sole exception. The Prestige 14 Evo has a prestigious air about it because of the metal chassis, which is nice to the touch. The majority of the weight is concentrated in the end of the deck, making it difficult to handle in one hand even though it is thin and light enough to fit into a bag and be carried around.
The Prestige 14 Evo has a dropped hinge, which raises the deck of the workstation’s surface when it is opened on your desk. Compared to conventional computers, this enables greater airflow and a more comfortable typing angle.
There are two Thunderbolt 4 connections and an HDMI 2.0 port on the left. A single Type-A USB 3.2 (Gen2) port, a microSD card reader, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a physical webcam shutter toggle are all located on the right. Not at all awful.
Because the webcam sensor is so small, you’ll probably overlook its presence most of the time. It can unlock the Prestige 14 Evo via Windows, and the quality of the 1080p at 30fps video it can record is actually quite good.
Keyboard & trackpad:
- Big chunky keycaps with good action on most keys
- Arrow and nav keys are far too small
- Trackpad is nicely sized but depresses unevenly
The keyboard on the MSI Prestige 14 Evo is among the best ones I’ve used on a 14-inch laptop. The fingerprint scanner is sensibly placed due south of the arrow keys, and the layout is generally well-spaced with most things comfortably within reach.
Each lighted keycap is a good size and has a satisfying, springy motion that gives the appearance that the keys have more travel than they actually do. Although MSI hasn’t specified the precise switches used or the amount of travel provided, the business has found a winning formula.
The arrow and navigation keys on the keyboard are crammed into a ridiculously small space on the deck, which is my main gripe with it. The actual keys are really few.
Even after using the Prestige 14 Evo for a week, I occasionally found that my little finger would accidentally press “Page Down” when I was trying to press the “Enter” or “Right” arrow key. It can be rather unpleasant to have a large gap emerge in the middle of a sentence, especially when you’re working on lengthy 1,500-word reviews.
I would have preferred larger arrow keys (which double as nav keys when combined with the function key) or the elimination of the nav keys entirely. Small arrow keys are a regular annoyance for laptops of this size. It’s a shame because, other than a few crowded keys, typing is a pleasure.
Unfortunately, this noticeable flex also affects the trackpad, which is located directly beneath the keyboard. The latter raises concerns about its long-term viability because it requires greater force to activate clicks at the top than at the bottom.
Although it begs the question, MSI claims that the Prestige 14 Evo is MIL-STD-810G-certified for durability. Aside from this, the trackpad is good; it’s 5.6 inches in size, responsive, and allows you to easily navigate menus and web pages.
Display & speakers:
- 14in 1920 x 1200 60Hz LCD display
- 16:10 aspect ratio
- Near-full sRGB color space coverage
- Downward firing speakers are loud, but tinny
Due to punchy brightness and favorable viewing angles, the 14-inch Full HD+ display on the Prestige 14 Evo is more than enough for daily use. However, the low color accuracy and reflective coating make it less suitable for serious photo work.
99% of the sRGB color space was captured using a SpyderX colorimeter. Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 spaces were low at 77% and 78%, respectively. This is good news since it means websites, games, and digital art continue to appear accurately. You can get away with this if your needs for image editing don’t go beyond cropping and resizing. This laptop isn’t for you, though, if your area of work or study necessitates a particularly color-accurate display.
Similar to the 60Hz refresh rate, the poor DCI-P3 score and lack of a separate GPU make this a bad choice for a gaming or video editing laptop.
Maximum brightness measured with the same colorimeter was 429.7 nits, with a black point of 0.23 nits, for a good contrast ratio of 1880:1. The ideal display will have a black point as close to zero as feasible, indicating that dark regions of an image look deep and rich rather than washed out, and a maximum brightness above 500 nits, ensuring that you can operate in any lighting circumstances.
This is comparable to what you get with the Huawei MateBook 16s, but the Surface Pro 9’s display is superior.
A welcome improvement over the MSI Prestige 15 A12UC from last year is the aspect ratio of 16:10. If you’re working on a really long report, you’ll appreciate having a little more height to work in.
Under the deck, two downward-firing speakers are placed. Even though the specification sheet claims that they are “DTS Audio Ready,” the speakers are quite standard for laptop speakers.
Vocals from songs and streamed video dialog both sound nice, however anything with a lot of high-end trebly noise comes off as weak and tinny. Through the speakers of the Prestige 14 Evo, the cymbals on Master of Puppets sound as bad as a bunch of KitKat wrappers stuck together. Grab some headphones if you’re using this to listen to music.
Specs & performance:
- 13th gen Intel Core i5 or i7 H-series CPU options
- No dedicated graphics
- The battery will easily last you a working day
- Good overall performance, but fans can get noisy
The 13th generation ‘Raptor Lake Intel CPUs are included in the Prestige 14 Evo 2023 line of laptops. You can choose between a more potent 14-core Core i7-13700H chip and a 12-core i5-13500H CPU, both of which surge to 4.7GHz. There are options for 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of RAM, as well as 512GB or 1TB of storage, depending on where you are based.
The model under evaluation here has a 512GB SSD, 16GB of RAM, and a Core i7 processor.
The tablet performs excellently for routine office duties. The Prestige 14 Evo tackles all daily chores without breaking a sweat if your main worry is having many apps running at once (including apps like Zoom, Slack, Google Drive, and Microsoft Word).
The high Essentials ratings for PC Mark 10 (11593), where the testing tool simulates a variety of PC office operations, reflect this. PC Mark 10 gave the Prestige 14 Evo quite high scores for productivity (7767) and digital content creation (7733) in other categories.
The Surface Pro 9 and the 2022 Huawei MateBook 16s were defeated by the Prestige Evo 14’s overall PC Mark 10 score of 6353. However, it trails the Prestige 15 A12UC from the previous year by a small margin.
Similar good results were obtained for the single-core (2515) and multi-core (12909) stress tests using the Geekbench 6 CPU benchmark. It’s not a direct comparison because this is a newer version of the Geekbench benchmark, but you can approximately tell where the Prestige 14 Evo stands in relation to the opposition based on these numbers.
Strangely, the standard OpenGL Aztec Ruins benchmark wouldn’t execute, either completely ceasing to operate or crashing before any results could be captured.
Fortunately, the 3DMark graphics test succeeded, and the Night Raid benchmark produced a score of 21731, which is roughly comparable to that of other laptops in the same class.
However, when compared to even a low-cost gaming laptop like the Asus TUF Gaming A15 (2022), which received a score of 49216 in the same test, it is clear how much of a difference a dedicated graphics card makes. Unsurprisingly, the Prestige 14 Evo only managed to run Civ 6 at a low frame rate of 20fps, although doing an adequate job of it.
The MSI Prestige 14 Evo lived up to claims that it could provide you with 16 hours of power, at least during testing. Battery life is one of those things that is overstated on spec sheets, but thankfully, it did so. The battery lasted 16 hours and 23 minutes while the brightness was set to 120 nits while playing a looped movie.
It doesn’t last quite as long in practice. However, you can still get a full workday and still have power left over.
It also charges back up quickly. It should take slightly over two hours to fully recharge using the included adaptor to fill an empty tank to 48% after 30 minutes and 85% after an hour.
Due to the lack of a dedicated port for the mains adaptor, you will always need to recharge using one of those Thunderbolt ports. The good news is that there are many Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 hubs and docks available, giving you at least some choices.
Finally, even though the Prestige 14 Evo never got particularly hot during testing, those fans can be noisy. The fans would roar into life even when doing something pretty simple, like viewing photographs in GIMP or watching something on YouTube. While watching a show in bed or on the couch while streaming it, it’s just distracting enough to annoy any noise-sensitive coworkers.
Price & availability:
You may buy the MSI Prestige 14 Evo (B13M) right now. Despite being listed on MSI’s website, it cannot be purchased right now. There appear to be regional variations in the precise RAM and storage combinations.
The Prestige 14 Evo variants with Core i5 and Core i7 processors and 8GB of RAM are available at Laptop Outlet in the UK for £1,099.99 and £1,299.99, respectively. Core i5 and Core i7 Prestige 14 Evo models from Scan are also available with 16GB of RAM for the same prices, at £1,198.99 and £1,298.99, respectively (pre-order only at the time of writing). There are also Core i5 16GB versions of the Prestige 14 Evo available at Very for £1199.
For US$1,499.99 on Amazon, you can purchase a Prestige 14 Evo with a Core i7 processor, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB hard drive. The identical model is available through Ava Direct for $1499 and from B&H for the same price.
For AU$2199 from JB HiFi in Australia, you can purchase a Prestige 14 Evo with a Core i5 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. The Prestige 14 Evos from PC Byte costs AU$ 2499 and comes with a Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. A Core i5 Prestige 14 Evo with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive listed on Msy for AU$ 2299 was out of stock at the time of writing.
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Specs:
- Display: 14in, 16:10 IPS 1920 x 1200, 60Hz
- Processor: Intel Core i5-13500H / Core i7-13700H processor
- Graphics: Intel Iris Xe
- Memory: 8 / 16 / 32GB
- Storage: 512 / 1TB SSD
- Ports: 2 x Type-C USB with Thunderbolt, 1 x Type-A USB 3.2 (Gen 2), HDMI 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack
- Camera: 1080p webcam
- Wireless: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5
- Battery: 72Whr
- Operating system: Windows 11 Home
- Dimensions: 314 x 227.5 x 17.9mm
- Weight: 1.6kg