MSI's Prestige 16 AI Evo and 13 AI Evo are its first Intel Meteor Lake laptops

MSI is among the first to announce a new laptop with Intel's Core Ultra (codename "Meteor Lake") processors. Intel is really pushing its neural processing units for AI, and MSI is going so far with it as to name its flagship laptops after the fledgling technology.

The Prestige 16 AI Evo, Prestige 16 AI Studio Evo, and Prestige 13 AI Evo are the first laptops we're seeing with the Core Ultra chips. Those new processors are built on the Intel 4 process node and should offer about 10% performance improvement over Raptor Lake-H.

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All three of the devices are using the Intel Core Ultra 7 H-series chips. The 13-inch laptop will use the Core Ultra 5 125H or Ultra 7 155H, while the 16-inchers will use the Ultra 7 155H and Ultra 9 185H. All of them will include a dedicated NPU, for sustained AI performance and offloading AI use cases from the GPU. The chips all come with a next-gen Intel Arc integrated GPU for graphics.

The MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo and 13 AI Evo will use that new Arc iGPU for video as well, while the Prestige 16 AI Studio Evo will rely on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 or RTX 4070.

In our brief hands-on time with the AI laptops, which were largely basic production samples that I couldn't test with actual AI functionality, I was most surprised by how light the 16-inch models felt in my hands. MSI suggests it's their special magnesium-aluminum chassis that keeps the base version down to 3.3 pounds (1.5 kg)

Both versions of the 16-inch Prestige will have a 99.9 WHr battery, but while the regular models with Arc graphics will have a 100W power adapter, the Studio version will have a heftier 140W adapter that can also handle the discrete GPU. MSI has suggested you can get up to 14 hours on a charge, but we'll have to see how that goes in our testing.

The 16-incher has plenty of ports, largely along the back: an HDMI 2.1 port, USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2, and two USB Type-C ports. On the Prestige 16 AI Evo, they're both Thunderbolt 4; on the AI Studio Evo, one is Thunderbolt 4, and the other is USB Type-C 3.2. Additionally, you get an Ethernet jack, a full-sized SD card slot, a lock slot, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

There are two screen options: a 2560 x 1600 standard screen, or a 3840 x 2400 OLED panel. RAM, which is soldered,  comes in at 16GB or 32GB on the regular Prestige 16 AI Evo, and only comes in the larger capacity on the Studio.

Meanwhile, the 13-inch AI Evo has a smaller footprint and weighs just 2.1 pounds. The ports on this smaller model are on the sides: a micro SD card slot, lock slot, USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, HDMI 2.1, a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a headphone jack. In the US, all of the 13-inch models will come with a 2880 x 1800 OLED panel, though MSI's specs suggest a 1920 x 1200 non-OLED option may be available in some markets.   

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All three of the laptops include proximity sensors, 3D noise reduction cameras, and a spatial array microphone, some of which may be used for AI meeting features, but also for existing features like detecting when someone walks away from their laptop.

Beyond the hardware, MSI plans on putting its own AI software on these three laptops. This will include AI noise cancellation software and the MSI AI Engine, which promises to sense what you're doing on the device (for instance, gaming, working, meeting, streaming shows) and adjust system settings accordingly. (Funnily enough, the AI Engine software doesn't actually utilize the NPU, but instead has the most common apps pre-sorted into categories.) Those include toggling performance, audio and visual settings, and more.

Lastly, there's an "AI artist," an image generator along the lines of DALL-E. It remains to be seen if this tool will be able to compete with existing cloud-based offerings.

All three of the laptops are set to launch this month, though possibly in limited quantities. The 13-inch Prestige will start at $1,049, with the Prestige 16 AI Evo and Prestige 16 AI Studio Evo beginning at $1,399 and $1,899, respectively.