Katana 15 15.6" 144Hz FHD Gaming Laptop: 13th Gen Intel Core i7, RTX 4070, 16GB DDR5, 1TB NVMe SSD, USB-Type C, Cooler Boost 5, Win11 Home: Black B13VGK-484US

I bought the Katana 15 B13V with 16 GB of DDR5 Ram, RTX 4070 gpu, and i7-13620H cpu on Prime Day marked down to $1349 from $1599. I primarily bought this because my desktop's motherboard uses DDR4 and is becoming dated and I wanted to play Baldur's Gate 3 at max settings. I'd like to build another desktop, but want to drop that kind of money until DDR6 is a thing instead of building it in the middle of the DDR5 Lifecycle. That's still a few years out. So this was a great purchase for my needs. It is literally desktop performance in a laptop at a mid-range price. Let's start with the cons and why I don't care The display isn't the best. Don't get me wrong, its great, but not anything special. That doesn't bother me, because its connected to my 4k monitor. Who cares about laptop screens anyway. 4k resolution doesn't make much of a functional difference on a small screen. Costs were cut there for sure. Costs were probably also cut on the battery. It doesn't last long not plugged in on normal loads, and its probably not even feasible to use it unplugged while gaming. This would suck if I planned to use it unplugged, but again, this matters not to me. There is also a technology implemented called CoolerBoost 5. Its pretty necessary to run when gaming newer games at max settings. It gets PlayStation loud. If you're an audiophile, then you're going to need some good noise-canceling headphones to really enjoy anything on this machine. This doesn't bother me, because I'm not an audiophile, and even if I was, I have a couple great sets of noise-canceling headphones. It also doesn't bother me because without it, all of the great things about this thing wouldn't mean squat.... let me explain... Now for the Pro's This thing runs great without load on balanced power settings (No CoolerBoost). Without CoolerBoost, its about as quiet as it comes. I only use it for browsing and playing music outside of gaming. It does great. I haven't tried watching any 4k videos on it yet, but I imagine it would handle that well on balanced power settings as well. Remember when I mentioned the noise level from the CoolerBoost 5 as a con. Well, Coolerboost is probably just as important of a feature as any of the hardware this machine packs. Gaming laptops get a bad rep, mostly because they literally burn up a lot faster than a desktop and are difficult and expensive to fix when they do. The reason being is inadequate cooling. This is a tiny box to fit all of those extreme heat producing components in. Getting desktop-like cpu temps and gpu temps in a laptop should be a pipedream. Seeing temps in the 85-90 degree Celsius range or higher is just part of the territory. With CoolerBoost on, this thing hangs in the 60-75 degree range with BG3 running max settings. That's as good or better than my desktop. Have you heard of temp-throttling? Yeah, that's only a thing if you let it be a thing with this machine. That said, without CoolerBoost active while running BG3 at max settings, I watch those temps move to the Upper 80s and low 90s, like one would expect with this kind of hardware in such a small box. It is well worth the noise to have a machine packing an i7 13th gen chip and RTX 4070 gpu that can sport desktop temps while actually using the hardware at its potential. Final Thoughts This machine is fantastic if you're looking to replace a desktop with a laptop that will likely last. All of the right corners have been cut. Due to the temps sitting at desktop level, I anticipate the hardware components to potentially last indefinitely. This will still be a very serviceable and more portable machine when I do get my desktop built. The potential issues I see are needing to replace fans at some point due to the CoolerBoost. They could also last too, its just a possible logical consequence of running the fans at high RPMS. I imagine the most important fix that I'll run across is replacing the battery. Those things will always go bad eventually, but more quickly if there are periods of high humidity in your gaming area. Think about spring or fall days where the AC isn't running. Years of that will kill a battery.

I purchased this laptop to replace my 2021 ASUS ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop, and I am not disappointed. Pros: - Not too heavy. Definitely lighter than the ASUS! - Not as loud as my ASUS when the fan kicks on - For the price, it is pretty snappy! I got 1TB of SSD space, and 16GB RAM, and so far, I've played games like Starfield at high or higher settings. - The Gaming Mode is intelligent enough to clock down when the laptop is under light load, and clock up when a game starts, which is nice Cons: - The battery life sucks. I expected that, so I'm not upset about it. Kinda par for the course for gaming laptops - The screen is 1080p. It looks fine, not the nicest I've seen, but it is decent and has a good refresh rate, so it isn't a *big* deal. - The fan does get loud when playing game. Once again, I kind of expected that. - When playing a game, and the fan spins up, the left side of the laptop gets pretty warm, so watch your hand! Overall I am very pleased with this purchase!

I have only had this a short time but this has really been a nice machine. I have even used it for VR games and it doesn't bog it down a bit. I haven't decided yet if the problems I'm seeing with it are garbage installed by MSI or garbage from Windows. I don't care for the pop up adds for the junk I don't want or need. Oh I will get it all weeded out eventually, I just miss the days when you all the crap was offered elsewhere and didn't come force installed at new. The laptop itself looks great the display is clean and amazing to look at and use. I'm very pleased with the small weight of this machine, I think its predecessor is 3x heavier. I'm not pleased by the lack of USB ports found on this machine, but I did find a reasonably priced hub that turns one Type C port into 4 USB3 ports so I can get all the dongles plugged in and still have room for the important things. The laptop does seem to put out a lot of heat, but once I got it elevated on my laptop stand it doesn't seem as bad. (Perhaps the vents aren't large enough to allow the heat to escape properly when it's close to the desk) I would even suggest a laptop cooling pad. But I think that would be good in any situation.

Really good value laptop with RTX 4070 GPU !!

Me encanta que tenga una 4070 en su interior... vamos puedo jugar a juegos no tan exigentes a 4k sin problema conectandola a una tv simplemente hermoso Elegi esta lap y esta marca porque siempre he sabido que MSI tiene productos de calidad y no me defraudo la vdd Con esta laptop puedo jugar sin dudas hasta a cyberpunk a muy buena calidad y frames sin problema... la vdd me sorprendio porque no pensaba que una laptop pudiera correr cyberpunk simplemente supero mis espectativas. Lo que mas me gusto fue que es una computadora relativamente compacta y no se calienta tanto como otras marcas tiene buena disipacion... lo que pudiera mejorar quiza seria el cuerpo de construccion osease sus materiales y la pantalla quiza seria mejor una 2k pero la vdd asi estamos muy bien por el precio Excelente producto

ممتاز ذات مواصفات رهيبة مقارنة بالسعر

جهاز قوي لكن لا ادري ليه تحسه بطيء بعض الشيء مع ان التخزين m.2 غريب عندي pc ب SSD عادي سرعة 540Mb بحجم 240gb اسرع منه في التشغيل

La mejor computadora que he tenido en muchisimo tiempo. Viene perfecta para todo lo que uno necesite