msi Katana A15 AI 15.6” 144Hz FHD Gaming Laptop – Ryzen 7-8845HS, GeForce RTX 4060, 32GB DDR5, 1TB SSD, Cooler Boost 5, Windows 1, B8VF-448US

So far a great laptop. It's lighter and more powerful than my old Acer Predator and generates half the heat. The keyboard function keys are weird to get used to but you get used to it. The sleep function...this laptop does not like sleeping. It randomly wakes up for no reason lol Gaming, this laptop does what I bought it to do, and does it well. Again, with less heat than my previous laptops. The ports are all stiff and solid, which you want. USBs dont wiggle at all and dont randomly fall out. The buttons feel great to press, soothing for my autism. The wifi adapter on here is really strong, way stronger than my old laptop. The 4070 and Ryzen 9 combo are fantastic for pretty and intense games like Helldivers. NOTE: if you have trouble with the built in crosshair (which is usefull tbh), then go to the settings for it and disable the option allowing you to move it with cursor. Works wonders so your game stops switching to desktop.

After a whole lot of research, I came to the decision that this was the best bang for my buck in terms of gaming laptops. I know a 4080 or a 4090 would have been better, and it could’ve used a bit more VRAM. But those laptops were easily at least $500 more and up, and it just didn’t seem worth it imo. And man, does it still do a great job. I’ve played almost every game at Ultra and Maximum settings with little to no issues. If running natively on the laptop screen, it’s buttery smooth. I am using a 34’’ curved monitor, and projecting to two screens at once at 3500 resolution, which can cause some games to lag a little at Ultra settings, but after some minor tweaks I can still run everything great! Overall, this laptop is a piece of art. It’s form is sleek and sexy, it’s relatively lightweight, the screen is great, it’s RGB keyboard looks awesome, and it’s just a total powerhouse, not to mention extremely affordable for what you’re getting. Incredibly happy with my purchase, one month in and I have no regrets. The speakers are nothing special, but the sound quality it outputs is clear. Also, I haven’t really tested out the battery, I hear it’s got a short lifespan, but I keep it plugged in so I don’t really notice. It does get REALLY hot though, and quite easily, even when just using Chrome I’ve clocked it at about 104 degrees Fahrenheit. If you’re thinking about getting this laptop, I would **highly recommend** getting a laptop cooling fan to sit underneath. There are some great brands for reasonable prices on Amazon. I purchased the Kevin Gaming Laptop Cooling Fan (I think that’s its name),, it can go up to 2,800 rpm and keeps my laptop at a nice 90-94 degrees.

I felt like I did plenty of research going into this computer purchase, compared benchmarks and hardware to ensure I was making a choice in product that would last 3-5 years. Let me tell you, this laptop isn’t it for my application. I needed a laptop to be mobile and edit content, primarily graphic design and 1-5 minute video editing. This includes using the entire Adobe suite with either one or multiple programs (not all at once). I found my experience with this laptop to be subpar at best. Right away I was leery of the AMD processor, I much prefer Intel. I cannot prove that this CPU was the root cause of all my issues, but I have a feeling it was a contributor. I was very disappointed with the lack of reliability, and it seemed every time I needed to use the laptop, there was some issue. And then of course if I gave it a little time it would finally come around, just enough for me to question if I could “make it work” in the long run. It got to the point where I started documenting the issues 2 days in and noted weird things I was finding since this laptop just didn’t feel right. Below were several of the things I noticed in just over a week of owning and using daily. Keep in mind I came from a M3 Pro MacBook Pro prior to this. Delivered: 9/20/24 Issues with laptop: Google chrome opens first search with bold text every time, super annoying. Incognito mode does same thing so doesn’t seem to be an account setting/issue Initially opened using Yahoo as search engine with brand new Google Chrome download. Could have been an issue with previous extensions that I had, since I had logged into google first before searching anything 9/23 Laptop was at 10% and went into power saver, keyboard dimmed and brightness went down. Plugged it in for an hour, go to turn it on, black screen. Plugged into other outlet (neither outlet is switched) and it finally fired up 10 minutes later. 9/25 Got home and opened laptop, won’t connect to home WiFi, which it’s been connected to for almost a week and has remembered. Turned WiFi off and on again, and now says No Wi-Fi Networks found. Need external WiFi adapter to use internet now. 9/26 Plugged in hard drive (offline) to work on project, computer won’t read hard drive. Previously Norton wanted to run a scan every time I plugged in, so not sure if that’s why it’s not recognizing the drive but I wasn’t able to do work off the SSD until I had WiFi again 9/26 Was editing a project with computer, closed lid for 15 minutes, came back and screen is black. Won’t turn on or restart… 20 minutes later it turns on after deciding it wanted to be shut down, and tabs are now all closed and unsaved work lost… not cool. 9/28 Finally used Adobe Premiere Pro for the first time on this device, playback is CHOPPY, it will play forward when previewing, then chop back a few frames, then play forward, they chop back a few frames. Not a clean simple playback to review my timeline and see how my project looks… Trackpad pinch to zoom doesn’t zoom-in on timeline in Premiere… throws off typical workflow, VERY annoying 9/29 Perfectly on que… blue screen of death “Recovery” while turning on… time to get a MacBook. Another odd thing: EVERY time the computer restarts MSI Center and Xbox re-pin themselves to the taskbar I also added quite a few add-ons to “try” making the laptop feel more like a Mac. I added things like 3 finger drag, spacebar preview, phone link, changed photoshop and Illustrator settings to allow pinch to zoom… and even with all of this to help my workflow feel more like a Mac, the clunky computer workflow and unreliability kept me feeling disconnected from my work.

The Katana A15 AI B8VG is a capable gaming laptop once you get past the blue screens. On set-up just keep letting it fix itself while updating BIOS, downloading the Microsoft updates, and graphics drivers. You will have to let it restart several times. It took about 25 mins but became stable once everything was up to date. A mild inconvenience but still annoying. I caught it on Amazon Day which knocked off almost a few hundred bucks making it completely worth the price tag. I use mine for gaming and business without any issues. I love the way the keys feel. The 4070 does its job well enough for the time being. - 1 star: The main drawback to this laptop in my experience is the battery life. You will only get a few hours out of it tops unless you stay in power saving mode which gives me another 2 hours. I bought another charging cord to keep at work, but the whole point of a laptop is to be mobile. So, if you can't be tethered to an outlet a couple times day, it may not be for you. Overall, it's a good mid-range gaming laptop that puts you on a bit of a leash.

Got it cheaper than Newegg, does everything I want it to do. Kinda wish the keyboard was individually RBG instead of zone RBG. But it’s great otherwise. Minor negatives, can get a little warm, use a cooling pad if gaming. Battery life is okay when NOT gaming. HD video or gaming will kill the battery in an hour. Battery will drain faster than it charges when gaming. Take occasional little breaks if you plan on marathon gaming.

I had another laptop previously and it just wasn't sparking joy. I wanted this one but it was a bit heavier so I opted for the other. I regretted it. It was so buggy. So I sprung for this one. Beautiful, fast, no problems out of the box. Love it.

I wanted a new gaming laptop because I was using mine for work efforts. The one I had didn't have a 10-key number pad, and as a freelance bookkeeper it was driving me nuts not having one. I scoured for a laptop with a number pad, and found this one. While I appreciate that it has the number pad, it feels like it was added as an afterthought. The number pad itself is squished and has an awkward layout. Each of the buttons is smaller than the other buttons on the keyboard. On the flip side, people normally find a gaming laptop for its gaming capabilities. I have nothing to complain about here. I haven't had any issues playing the games I enjoy. The gameplay is great, nice visuals, and as an MSI you know you're getting good quality. It does run a little hot, but that is to be expected from any gaming laptop or computer. At the very least, it acts as a nice heating element when I'm cold and using it. I'll keep coming back to MSI's as my laptop of choice.

[Oct 2024] We had an old laptop that died recently and wouldn't be worth repairing, so while the October Prime Days event was on I looked for something that should be somewhat 'future proof' with good specs at a price less than $1000. I picked the MSI Katana A15 AI 15.6” 144Hz FHD Gaming Laptop with the Ryzen 7-9945HS and NVIDIA Geforce RTX 4060, 32Gb RAM, and 1TB SSD. It was on sale for $879 plus tax at the time, which was a really good price for the specs. It has all the ports we need for plugging in different devices, the keyboard feels good, and the screen is bright & crisp with a 144Hz refresh rate that keeps up with the busiest action scenes in games and movies. The screen is a bit more 'letter box' shape than I'd really like, but that's the only thing I can find to whine about. It's a bit heavy compared to some, but that isn't an issue for us. It runs all our small business office and accounting software silently, without the cooling system kicking in at all. The only time it cools itself is when playing graphic intensive games, and IMHO the fan noise isn't bad at all. Most of the time it sits on a multi fan cooling pad, but even without that turned on the laptop never gets particularly hot. All in all, it was a great deal, so if it's on sale for less than $900 again, snap it up. Even at around $1050 I think it's still a worthy contender.