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Volume wasn’t the Prestige 14 Evo’s only problem, though. Even for personal use, you’ll probably want to keep it at close to 80% of its max volume. Even at 100%, the Prestige 14 Evo was quiet, just barely able to fill my small office with music. The most immediate issue with the Prestige 14 Evo’s audio is its volume - or lack thereof. I tested their audio by listening to Mood by 24kgoldn, and I had a subpar listening experience. The MSI Prestige 14 Evo features a bottom-firing speaker on either side. However, the touchpad’s larger overall size means this isn’t much of an issue in practice. So, essentially, it acts as a dead zone that you could accidentally run into during use. My only complaint is that the laptop’s fingerprint reader sits in the touchpad’s upper-left corner, and running your finger over it doesn’t register as moving the cursor. The Prestige’s precision touchpad is generous, and multitouch gestures register well. That’s just a few points below my 80 wpm standard. Still, I was able to maintain a high words per minute count on, where I scored 76 wpm on most tests. They’re sturdy enough, but the top of each keycap can start to feel slippery during quick typing, which can get disorienting when touch-typing and is likely to cause the occasional typo. The issue comes with the construction of the keycaps themselves.
Keypresses are cushiony but still feel tactile, and there’s enough key travel for you to get an idea of when your press is registered. The keyboard on the MSI Prestige 14 Evo makes a strong first impression thanks to some snazzy decoration and the laptop’s hinge lifting it five degrees off the desk, but it starts to show some minor weaknesses with further use. The Razer Book 13 and Dell XPS 13, meanwhile, far exceeded these two laptops at 436 and 469 nits, respectively. That would be the ZenBook 13, which had a 370 nit average brightness. Our luminance testing found that the average brightness across the Prestige 14 Evo’s screen was 284 nits, which is much lower than even its closest competitors. Colors also weren’t vivid or striking, though blacks were impressively deep. While I could follow the action well, the Prestige 14 Evo is more than just dim. The difficulty was in the actual image on screen. The panel also wasn’t reflective, and I was able to clearly see the image in both normal and low light.
To the screen’s credit, I found that the viewing angles on this screen were almost complete, with the image never washing out regardless of how far away I got from the display, whether horizontally or vertically. I tested the display on the MSI Prestige 14 Evo by watching the Wonder Woman 1984 trailer on it.
That last inclusion is a rare but helpful addition, although it’s unfortunate that the Type-A port is just USB 2.0 as opposed to belonging to a more recent connection standard like USB 3.2.Īt 14 inch screen on the MSI Prestige 14 Evo is IPS-level, but my viewing experience found that it was almost uncomfortably dim. The laptop has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and the right side has a single USB Type-A port, a 3.5mm combination headphone/microphone jack and a microSD card reader. There’s a wide variety of ports for such a small laptop. Opening the laptop lid also lifts the keyboard off the desk at a five degree angle, to make for easier typing and better cooling. The keyboard is also home to a nice visual touch, as its keycaps are decorated with a slightly lighter version of the case’s color scheme. If you flip the laptop over, you’ll notice that the laptop’s vent hole placement resembles a city skyline, though this isn’t something you’ll see during typical use. The rest of the laptop is more plain aesthetically, with the majority of the case being taken up by a uniform, somewhat glittery gray surface that’s unfortunately prone to collecting fingerprints. On our gray model, a metallic blue strip accentuated the edges of the laptop’s lid and its touchpad, and in the right light, almost looked like it was an LED strip. There’s some extra styling on the MSI Prestige 14 Evo that gives it a premium look. Instead, you’ll have a choice between white and black here, though each comes with snazzy metallic lining on the edges of the lid and the touchpad.
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The Evo-certified update to the MSI Prestige 14 keeps the same basic look as previous releases, but unfortunately lacks the bright pink option from the Ice Lake model we reviewed earlier this year.