Review Verdict: The 2022 version of the MSI Prestige 14 is a sleek business laptop offering in the Philippines that offers a good set of ports, powerful internals, and a complete set of security features. It falls short, however, when it comes to battery life.
Pros
- Better build vs previous MSI business laptops
- Powerful internals (as reviewed)
Cons
- Mediocre battery life
- Subpar speakers
While we know MSI for its gaming laptops, the Taiwanese brand also has its own line of business laptops with the Prestige series. We got to try out the smaller Prestige 14 2022 for this review, and see if MSI is also a brand worth considering if you are in the market for a powerful business laptop.
Design
Unlike MSI’s gaming laptops, the Prestige 14 2022 has a minimalist look that includes a tonal grey color for MSI’s new logo on the top lid. As a premium offering, the Prestige 14 is made from anodized aluminum, and the overall build feels solid to the core. Taking cues from ASUS’ ZenBooks, the keyboard lifts up when you open the lid for a more comfortable typing angle and better airflow. The display itself can be tilted to a full 180 degrees when needed with its design.
For the ports get a headphone jack, MicroSD card slot, and USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port on the right side, and two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports on the left side. The USB-C ports are also used for charging the laptop, and the Prestige 14 2022 supports 100w USB-PD charging and DisplayPort–which is good compromise for its lack of a full-sized HDMI port. Aside from having a fingerprint scanner on the trackpad, the Prestige 14 2022 also has an IR sensor on the top bezel (which sits beside the 720p webcam) for secure logins via Windows Hello.
Display and Speakers
The Prestige 14 2022 has a 14-inch IPS-level display that has a Full HD resolution, a conventional 60hz refresh rate, and 100% sRGB coverage. While it’s not an OLED panel and you don’t get a high refresh rate, the display is serviceable for most uses. The colors are decent enough for videos, though they are not as vibrant as what you’d expect on an OLED panel.
Based on the results we got from our Spyder colorimeter, the Prestige 14 2022 covers 92% of the sRGB gamut, along with 71% AdobeRGB, 71% DCI-P3, and 66% NTSC gamut coverages. This makes the Prestige 14 2022 suitable not just for general productivity, but for multimedia work that’s not too demanding with color accuracy. You can check the results here.
As for its stereo speakers, the one on the Prestige 14 2022 is not as loud–you’re better off setting the volume to around 70% to fully appreciate its sound quality. Overall sound fidelity is not great for a laptop that’s priced close to Php 100k; while vocals are clear, they lack depth as they strip off details in the music we’re listening to with it.
Keyboard and Trackpad
The Prestige 14 2022 has a backlit edge-to-edge keyboard, with the fingerprint scanner placed at one corner of the wide trackpad. Together with the tilted angle of the keyboard, the typing experience on the Prestige 14 is great, with decent key travel for a satisfying response and adequate tactile feel. It’s not as great as the keyboards ASUS uses on its current-generation Zenbooks, but the one used on the Prestige 14 2022 is definitely deserving of its price point.
The trackpad has a wide footprint and works smoothly when we were using the Prestige 14 2022 as our daily driver.
Internals and Battery Life
The Prestige 14 2022 comes with a variety of configuration options, and our review unit is the top-end variant that comes with a Core i7-1280P processor, RTX 3050 GPU, 16GB LPDDR4X RAM, and 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD storage. Since you’re getting a P-series processor and a discrete GPU, the Prestige 14 is adequately powerful as a business laptop that makes it suitable not just for serious productivity work, but also for a bit of gaming on the side.
The Core i7-1280P is the most powerful mobile Alder Lake processor you can get right now, and synthetic benchmarks prove its dominance in terms of raw performance.
Being a business laptop, the Prestige 14 2022 prioritizes security with features like a fingerprint scanner, IR webcam, and a TPM 2.0 chip to ensure that your data is safe. It comes with Windows 11 Home out of the box, though you can opt for one with Windows 11 Pro.
Intel’s 12th-gen Alder Lake processors do chug down battery life like crazy, and the same can be said with the Prestige 14 2022. We barely hit 3 hours (2 hours 54 minutes to specific) with our video loop test, and real-life use netted us around 5 hours of battery life. The battery life is underwhelming, though it’s possible that MSI may roll out software updates to further optimize it.
Topping up its 52wHr battery–which is rather small for a 14-inch laptop, is done via 100w USB-C charging, which should take you under two hours from 0 to 100%.
Wrap-up and Conclusions
The Prestige 14 2022 is a decent business laptop from MSI that can be used for both work and play, and its design makes it one of the sleeker offerings the brand has to offer. However, the high power consumption of the Prestige 14 2022’s processor, along with a rather undersized battery, leads to a short battery life.
MSI Prestige 14 2022 Review Philippines Price
The Prestige 14 2022 is priced at Php 99,995 as reviewed.