MSI Katana A15 AI: What Real Users Actually Think

Step one: Remove laptop from bed and place on a hard surface like a table. Uninstall any preinstalled antivirus software like McAfee or Norton, windows defender and common sense should suffice for your antivirus needs.

Good budget laptop. Years before is relatable dog shit, but this year they've made major improvements

Not worth it at all !!!! Be careful not to buy this laptop, it thermal throttle always due to poor thermal design, poor built quality and in real simple use battery just holt for less then hour screen is shit and it's just not worth it at all try going with lenovo instead they have better build quality best thermal solutions

Don't install any antivirus. Defender will do good. Update all drivers and bios, but create a system restore image before just in case. Don't overthink and don't listen to people's MSI hate — you'll probably be fine. Update ssd, game and enjoy.

Do not keep the laptop on your bed especially if you are going to game on it... The intake is at the bottom without any air you will fry your system in a year or two

MSI has some hinge problems especially on the cheaper side which the katana is. If it's a great deal take it but then take care

Best budget laptop for VR imho. For my use case, these are the only things that bothered me: The Katana's screen isn't bad, but you do get spoiled with OLED screens if you're coming from one. Moot if you're using it just for VR.

The only problem with that laptop is that the gpu only runs at like 45w (Edit: This was wrong. I had it mixed up with the GF63. It actually does 105w) if I recall correctly. So it will be significantly underpowered compared to other RTX 4060's and probably some rtx 4050's too that pull significantly more wattage. Otherwise, solid laptop. 4000 series means you get to benefit from good frame gen in titles that support it which will be a lot of newer titles so it really does add to the longevity

I bought this same laptop 2 days ago but Ryzen 9 8945h and RTX 4070 for £950, upgraded the RAM to 32GB for £77 and I'm very impressed with it. Its a little more plasticy than my previous Acer Predator which I sold when changing to a Mac Studio but it definitely does what I need it to (Photoshop and Lightroom etc on the go with a little bit of gaming)

I got one myself exact same model. Love it.

I have a katana 15 (rtx 4060) and the battery lasts under 2 hours. yes it's normal, gaming laptop batteries are absolute shit.

Really good, believe it or not. As long as it's plugged in it runs as smooth as butter, high graphics, 100+ fps, all that jazz. Highly recommend.

I recently purchased a Katana 15 myself... So far I've been very happy with its performance, easily coping with what I have thrown at it.

I got one few weeks ago it was a open box, yeah like it's brand new, has 32 gb in it, the guy upgraded the ram and turn back into the computer shop. i7 too. It runs very smooth.

I second this. Had it since october last year. Hinges are fine, but temps could be a little hot (nothing a repaste can't fix). Screen could be a little better but hey you can always upgrade to a better one (there is a screen replacement for around $100 to a 165hz 100%sRGB)

Build quality, its budget laptop. Fine for running what I use it for, mostly VR stuff.

Personally i love the Katana line, i have a Katana 17 gf76 11-ud with a 3050 ti and a Katana 15 B13vgk with a 4070, and 32gb of ram for gaming and it runs flawlessly. cooling is decent but still a problem. ALSO VERY IMPORTANT: if it came with norton 360 for gamers, delete it. it throttles gaming performance and also the keyboard lags with it

Mine is great, can upgrade the ram to 64gb. And I accidentally left it out in the rain for 20 mins when I thought it wasn't. It sit and dried a few months and now it's back in business 😎

The only issue is the display I guess. MSI FHD display are not that good compared to their QHD+ counterpart.

The idiot AI power management — pick any power management option that is not managed by AI. That fixed the sleep/wake issue.

How does Fortnite and Overwatch run on this? I'm looking into buying my first gaming laptop, I'm coming from PS5 but I want something portable that still gets me 120fps+

I've had one for a few weeks, no problemo at all, runs extremely fast, cooling is pretty great even on AAA games at high frame rates. I have no complaints apart from plastic shell.

Bro thank you for still replying, I think you've convinced me to get this laptop, won't be doing serious heavy gaming but I think it's good enough for what I need and always having the option if I want to do more.

Bro don't listen to these people talking bout cheap hinges. I've got this laptop for almost 5 months now. It's amazing

I have this laptop because I got a good deal on it and I really like it so far. I've only had it a couple weeks though so I can't speak to how long this newer line of theirs lasts.

Don't buy any nitro laptops starts with 'V'! The GPU power on it is only 85 watts which is way not enough for rtx 4060/4070 to run at full performance. My friend has a v15 which has 75w 4060 and it performs like a 8gb version of 4050... So go by katana that has 105w GPU that's enough to run the GPU at full performance. 4060/70 laptop GPUs needs at least 100w to run at full performance.

I have a katana 17 and the battery lasts over 4 hours (with optimization ofc, the amd software gives you like 2 extra hours if you put it on the battery preset) and it gets me through my university classes without worrying about charging it

I mean anything can last if you take good care of it. Make sure to open the laptop from the middle as it helps relive pressure off the hinges. The katana A13 and B13 I believe do have better redesigned hinges though as opposed to their older GF66 and 5 counterparts. As for CPU and GPU the GPU should have a wattage of around 90 to 100w and overall it isn't actually a bad laptop you just hear the horror stories more than the good ones :)

I love mine !

I got the same laptop for £750 here in the UK, I've been very happy with it. I use a high-end Lenovo Thinkpad laptop for work so was expecting the worse for screen and build quality, but the screen wasn't as bad as I thought and the build quality is OK. Games run at 1080p look better on the MSI, probably due to the native resolution. Running games on very high graphics at 1080p is the sweet spot.

I'm enjoying mine had it since December I got the 8845hs and 4060 with 32gb of ram! Might add a second nvme when I repaste with ptm7950

You can thank Microsoft for those power state fuckups from Windows 10 inception. Turn off sleep/hibernation/drive sleep/fast startup.

Mine's a B13V, i9 1300h going strong so far using it for work too. But never put your money on MSI's QC.

I downloaded games. I have Xbox on it, Fortnite, and Roblox. It was SO BAD AND SO SLOW! Didn't let me download shit! So I done a bunch of research and watched lots of YouTube videos how to fix that issue, and it runs fast now, everything works. It does get hot if you play for too long. The battery does die very fast on it.

Personal opinion. I have not been impressed with MSI. I had high expectations based on what people always told me. I have worked on a couple, and I have just not been impressed with the quality.

I bought just a while back (Ryzen 9 with 4070), some days it works fine and somedays it becomes dead even after power adaptor is connected for more than 3-4 hours. Last time I shut it down at 90% battery and now its not running.

I bought this msi katana a15 ai with ryzen 9 8945hs and rtx 4070 a month ago and it has performed perfectly, performance wise. The battery is downright horrendous. I literally browsed the web for 20 minutes and it's down by almost 10 percent. That's unusable.

They have some problems but it is a great laptop.

I bought it yesterday. Too early to know about any long-term issues. But in the 24 hours I've used it, I'm happy. I only buy new laptops every 7 or 8 years, so I'm always wowed by the jump in performance.

The laptop is almost entirely covered in black plastic with a few carbon-fiber stylings around the edges. Some of the plastic is made to look like metal sheets however. With that price range, I think it's expected.

It is alright, but I keep getting constant Wi-Fi driver crashes and hardware issues. I believe it's made not for autonomous mobility, but for a smaller PC version. Used it for animation, editing and gaming — mostly it was pretty smooth, however piracy made some of my experiences with it really bad.

For 87k it's a steal.