MSI Stealth 15 2023 - A13VF-012US Review

FPS in league of legends is 150-200 consistent.

Built in mic is great, cameras good enough, love the light up keyboard and its from MSI, so build looks nice.

Only thing and its not even a flaw because its a laptop is the battery lasts about hour and a half to 2 hours. But I always have mine plugged in because I game, if you just use it for school even on the battery itll still only last 1.5-2 hours tops. It's not a complaint but I hope this review helps someone.

The laptop looked and felt nice. Unfortunately, it just didn't power on. I called MSI and they had me try a battery reset using the pinhole on the back. That did nothing and the MSI rep suggested I start a return through Amazon rather than an RMA through them. Starting the return process with Amazon took a long time to get sorted out in my particular situation. I did get my refund in a much shorter time than the return policy and the reps on the phone made it seem I would. It took about one week for my return package to get back to them and my refund to be processed.

Did 3 fresh Windows 10 installs and each one had the same result.

Once you successfully connect to the internet, it starts updating, downloads a driver in the background, and when you reboot, the screen never comes back on. Tried manually installing the drivers from Nvidia and MSI with no such luck..

Returned it for another laptop that can handle a simple Windows 10 installation. Windows 11 has screwed up many things for VMWare technology, especially with their horrible hyper-v technology that comes installed and is well hidden with Windows 11. Not to mention their memory core isolation is also terrible and causes VMWare to slow to a crawl

…six months later it just shut down and won’t start. I’ve tried everything. I called Amazon: they won’t help. I then called MSI and they’re giving me the runaround. I paid a $1000 for a laptop that only worked for 6 months?! Obviously, I DON'T RECOMMEND IT!
I will continue to call, email and chat MSI until this matter is resolved. MSI has to stand by their products. This laptop is still under warranty so I will do everything I can until they repair or exchange it.
UPDATE (July 3, 2023): I contacted MSI after Amazon refused to help. They explained to me how to reset the computer. This solution worked and the computer is working perfectly now...hence, the updated review and change from 1 to 4 stars.
UPDATE: July 5, 2023. Down to 1 star. It stopped working again and the previous solution won’t work. It’s dead! Now to call customer service…again! I will update.

Lastimosamente, el teclado siempre está encendido gastando la batería demasiado rápido, el programa que trae para la gestión de control que se llama MSI Dragon Center me genera conflicto con la Red wifi, lastimosamente no tengo garantía para que respondan por esa falla, o la probabilidad de que me devuelvan el dinero.

This laptop is a solid machine for gaming, image editing, and for having hundreds of tabs open like the monster I am. What got me to write this review, though, is that this laptop is built to last.

I'll admit, I'm rough on my machines. I take my laptop into the woods on camping trips, throw that sucker into my backpack without thought for what else is in there, and chuck it into the backseat of my car without regard for where it lands. The MSI Stealth's metal body appealed to me, and it was doing great with my rough handling.

Then I managed to set my (black) laptop down on the hood of my (black) car, and drive away. The laptop impacted the ground going almost 45 miles an hour, which as you may imagine, isn't great for laptops. I expected a total loss. The right screen hinge was snapped off. The screen and keyboard were warped. The back right corner of the computer was bent at a 45-degree angle.

When I got home, I crossed my fingers, held my breath, and booted it up.

The laptop booted just fine. There were no damaged pixels on the screen, the keyboard worked flawlessly, and because the fans aren't all linked together, only the one bent fan failed to run. I lost no data, was able to prep for my conference, and the only annoyance was that the screen didn't stand up well with only one hinge. Honestly, I was amazed.

If you need a reliable laptop that can stand up to your active lifestyle, this is the machine for you. I already loved MSI - now they have a customer for life.

Apparently Anker thunderbolt 4 docks do not work with this lap top.

This laptop is amazingly fast and feels amazing to use, everything is so responsive and it's noticeably amazing when playing games on this! Everything is very smooth and i love the features this laptop has with the fingerprint unlock it's very handy :) Very happy with this purchase it's definitely worth every penny!

Good laptop, do not have any complaints with the cpu and gpu but for a gaming laptop I hope It came with a better camera and with biometric support, and colored arg keyboard.

If you like gaming, this is not an alternative to a desktop. My son had an older gaming desktop and I purchased this to replace it. From when he started using it, it was pretty much the same as his older desktop. However, we kept it because it was a laptop and had some mobility.

But it has been nothing but problems.
- Loud - First, it's loud. The fans just make more noise than we would like.
- Runs hot - While placed on a table, it actually warped the table.
- Comparatively slow - I mean, it's faster than a regular laptop, but not competition for a desktop. It's odd. The specs were better than my son's desktop, however, the games were just never as fast.

And lastly - today, it broke. It was purchased November 2021, and it's not working in May 2023. So, a little over a year. Definitely not worth the money.

I like the laptop because is fast of course I only test it one day. I bought it brcsuse my grandson has it gor gaming and I was getting frustrated with the slowness of mine. He likes it and he had it for 3 years now. I will use it for several things more than gaming

+ fast CPU; the 4080 is not "well known" but performs well for me.

Problems:

Power Supply
finding a second 240W power supply was difficult. the "USB"-like adapter is peculiar, and it is easy to not get it fully plugged in.

Screen
hinges: as noted in other 17" reviews - the hinges are inset 4" from the outside edge. you cannot pick this up like a traditional laptop; the screen flexes from the edge to the hinge. i had a minor panic when i discovered that. No rigidity was added to the bottom of the screen to compensate for this odd hinge placement. Stylistically, I can't see a reason to do it this way. ergonomics are definitely not there.

scale is something that is still in work/discovery. 150% is recommended but my old games don't know how to deal with that so i bounce back and forth a lot.

Dinky keyboard
I expected to get a full sized keyboard with a 17" laptop. bad expectation and poor research...
it's a 15" keyboard - after almost 20 years using a 17" full sized keyboard, the transition is frustrating at times. but I can't dump the expenditure at this point.

dinky keyboard includes a proprietary layout of the Number pad. my old games don't understand it.

keys were initially sticky - and other times take a double strike. getting better with use except the space bar. still frequent misses there.

by far, this is the biggest disappointment

Heat
240 watts... it gets hot.
i have a "platform" to keep it off my legs and allow airflow when i am sitting with it in my lap (50%+ of the time i use it...).

Review for MSI Stealth 15 2023 - A13VF-012US

The build quality is truly excellent on this laptop. It's heavy at just under 5lbs, but it's metal all around and feels like a tank. I have a RTX 4060 version with an i5 13420H. I primarily got this device to play Hogwarts Legacy and some eSports titles like League of Legends.

Any triple-A games give the expected performance from an 90W RTX 4060 mobile. I can hit 144fps easily on Ultra settings in Hogwarts Legacy (frame generation ON). A tip just based on personal experience is to keep the MSI power setting to 'Balanced' and the Windows power setting to 'High Performance' and it works very well without getting crazy high fan noise.

The laptop does get loud when gaming, but honestly just wear some headphones or turn up the (pretty good) speakers and you're good to go.

Biggest Con here is the screen, colors are not amazing and the max brightness is low but for the price and 144Hz I'm really not complaining. It's not usable for any color-grading work and isn't 4k, but get's the job done for any gaming or general work needs.

Second Con is lack of any thunderbolt connectivity, which sucks for a single wire connection to an external display and USB ports, but I knew that when I bought it so I can't really complain about this either. Especially since the port selection is solid otherwise.

One more Con is battery-life, but it's a gaming laptop so maybe temper your expectations. I haven't tested it but reviews say about 3 hours unplugged with day-to-day tasks, and 1.5 hrs gaming. But really this is a laptop that's meant to be used plugged in. On battery, you get around 70% of the gaming performance compared to when plugged in.

I have a separate 100W USB C charger as well which works great, but if gaming you should use the 180W brick they give you because playing at 100W the games play like you're on battery. (although it's a nice hack if you want to play games with quieter fans without underclocking).

I got what I expected. Performance is solid, the build is 10/10 awesome. It stays cool with its 3 internal fans, but it does get loud, has a dim screen, no thunderbolt and a mediocre battery.

For $1399 (as of April 2023) getting a 4060 laptop that can crush any AAA game is worth it, and I recommend this purchase.

Pros
-Relatively good performance
-Screen has really good fidelity
-A lot of customization through MSI's software

Cons(problem list)
-The keyboard feels okay at first - but begins feeling very mushy.
-The keyboard also will randomly lose backlight on some keys, I believe this is a software issue but still an annoyance.
-The most annoying this about the keyboard is that it will randomly just start sitting on the last key you type. I have no idea what causes this but it also shows as the laptop won't show what key you pressed until the next one is pressed. But this is very annoying as it will hang on what the last key you typed and it is a very small delay before your screen is covered in the last key you pressed.
-The screen will randomly shut off and will occasionally have some static as the picture like an old television screen. This is not the experience you should have with a 2500 dollar computer.
-make sure the laptop is propped up underneath as the laptop gets extremely hot and will burn your fingers on the wasd keys.

I use this while on the road for both productivity (CAD) and gaming. Great laptop for the price (paid 1K)

I bought this laptop a few weeks ago and have been enjoying it ever since. The rtx 4080 and i9-13900H deliver performance in games that's comparable to my desktop which is equipped with the same amount of ram, an rtx 3080 ti, and an i7 8700k. The processor is the real upgrade in that comparison though. It runs Star citizen well (as of 3.18 whenever the servers are having a good day), halo infinite runs maxed out at over 70+ fps most of the time. As of right now I think this laptop can run everything pretty well.
Downsides: Initially upon receiving the laptop the keys were sticking constantly. Example: "I would be typiiiiiiing a sentence and about every ten words or so a keeeeeeey would stick"
This is an issue that I have seen in other reviews. After a bit of troubleshooting I have discovered a solution to this consistent issue. You have to go into the windows updater and enable all of the optional updates. This laptop ships with factory firmware that leads to this "key stickiness" which is unbearable to deal with. All you have to do to fix this issue is update the firmware and ensure that your windows and drivers are up to date. That fixed the problem for me.
The screen is not G-sync or freesync compatible. This is a small issue but the fact that this screen can run at 240hz and has no adaptive or G-sync is just annoying. The constantly changing framerates mean that you're going to see all sorts of stuttering when going from 60 to 120 fps for example. Which happens a lot in most modern games when you have the settings turned up high or even at the reccomended settings. This has led me to just set the refresh rate to 60 which has eliminated the stuttering that's caused due to fps fluctuation. Which negates the purpose of even having a 240hz display.
Overall the issues I have encountered have all been minor and you can't beat this price for a laptop with this set of hardware. The only thing I wish that they had changed would be the screen. I would've taken a 165, 144 or even a 120hz display if it meant that there could be some gsync or adaptive sync.

Compre esta laptop en enero de este año, sin embargo la computadora tenía problemas con que se calentaba muy seguido. Como a finales de febrero la computadora no quiso volver a prender, resulta que se quemó la placa y parte del procesador. Y cuando intente reclamar la garantía me dijeron que me comuniqué con la empresa del dispositivo, en este caso MSI. Traté de comunicarme pero nunca contestaron.

To start things off with this laptop, I love the amount of games I can play on it. I was able to run cyberpunk at decent graphics, elder scrolls online, elite dangerous, and so on. But one thing that bothers me with this laptop is I will have had it for a year in April and I have to take it to a shop because one of the bearings have given out on Fan1. It makes a loud noise which is very unpleasant whenever the fans spin. After this happening, unless it’s a very easy fix and doesn’t happen again, then I will have to move to a different system

Laptop gets too hot even just web browsing, also battery life it's too short for a gaming laptop

They don’t openly advertise the 105w power on this 4090 GPU, which effectively throttles it to perform below a 4080 175w using 3DMark timespy benchmarks. Buy a top end 4080 for cheaper and with better auxiliary hardware.

Pretty good laptop but with a surprisingly too low sound level

I just bought the Stealth 17 Studio A13V from Bestbuy. Right out of the box the left front speaker is blown. It's also having long wait times clicking on icons. Davinci Resolve is having graphic issues. I'm returning it.

Like another person said the display WAS listed as 1000 nits DisplayHDR 1000 certified. They changed it once myself and others called them out on it. It's 300 nits. However, The display is still VERY good. I have more issue with trying to code and not being able to easily read the SHIFT+ symbols like @#$%. The keys are bright enough only in the center of the keys. They are VERY faint in the corner of the keys where the tiny symbols are located. It's hard to read F1-F12 as well. What's the point of all the fancy RGB colors if the keys SUCK? I'm also getting some crackle in the audio and a key seems to stick now and then for some reason ???

Previously, this website stated that the screen had 1000 nits brightness and was an AMLED panel. This was false. After I ordered it, the website was updated.

Im writing this review because I purchased this laptop on 03/22/2022. Today is March 1, 2023. I am two weeks away from having owned this pc for a year. The pros- super fast everything- awesome graphics- doesnt hurt the pocket as much as other gaming laptops. The cons? Battery life SUCKS- it is basically on an IV- you can adjust the settings but even on the optimal or silent condiotions, this CPU and GPU are so powerful they drain the battery in 2 hours or less- even when your not doing anything serios. Just using excel or word- battery drain. The only other con that i have that I ant pepl to be aware of- about 2 weeks ago I started having fan noise- bearings failing. I am now trying to find OEM replacements. This things spins fans at over 6000RPMs. . . yes, that is correct- 6000RPMs. I can not find fans that are rated for that high of RPMs and I need them before my PC melts down- I have always used a cooling pad as support and kept the guts clean and treated this ting like a newborn baby in terms of gentleness. It is just a parts issue- not a user/operator error. I am a MEchatronics Engineering Student and a programmer as well as a controls system specialost so my computer is my every day tool and with that said- my purposes demand quality and power as much as reliability and I take very good care of my equipment. This PC has not let me down- besides the fact that the fan bearings are barking now. I also want to mention that this little PC will support up to 4 extended displays wit hno issues, run multiple intense programs and take it all with a beating- has never went over 70 degrees celcius and i rin this littlpe puppy overclocked to the max- hence the fan issue- however that is what this PC is meant/designed/built for. If anyone knows were i can find cooling fans PLEASE let me know. I really want to replace them with high performance fans and not just run of the mill aftermarket general condition types fans. Thanks!!!!!! I deinately wisay that I do not think you will be dissapointed in your purchasse of this PC. Ii have only "gamed" on it once or twice- EVE Online and it performed flawlessly. Unbelievable graphics- a 12 hour binge with not a single issue.