Katana 15 B12VFK-237CA w/ GeForce RTX 4060, Core™ i7-12650H, 16GB, 1TB SSD, 15.6in FHD 144Hz, Wi-Fi 6, Win 11 Home
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Sunday, January 14, 2024
By: Lorans
From: Calgary
Strengths:
- This laptop works well and you can play games or run heavy software when it is plugged, no problems.
- The dual cooling fan system is good and it does great job at keeping the device cool
Weaknesses:
- This is more like a PC than a laptop. If it is not plugged, it lags even when you want to simply open This PC or god forbid you want to brows the internet.
- Steps taken, called MSI support within the first week, they told me that is normal because the laptop reduces consumption to maintain the battery live. The thing is, even at such poor performance, the battery won't last more than 1h and 20 min. Bare in mind that this was brand new laptop.
- MSI asked me to wait until the bios update webpage is active, then I should try to update the bios. Nothing happened after that.
- Contacted Memory Express, they told me I can't return or exchange because it has been more than 2 weeks.
- I think my first mistake was to buy it from Memory Express, had I bought it from BestBuy, I would have had one month of return or exchange period. Now I am stuck with this Portable PC.
Additional Comments:
Please stay away from this device. This is the second review complaining about the same issue, I am almost certain at this point that this a problem with the model not just my device.
Sunday, December 24, 2023
By: Aaron
From: Langley
Strengths:
Processing - snappy response to everything, even on battery after tweaking the stock power profile
Graphics - I haven't run any benchmarks, but I tried COD Cold War for a few minutes so far and saw around 175 fps
Weight - light enough for daily use, it's a fair bit heavier than my daily 15" ultrabook, but half the weight of the 17" MSI gaming laptop this replaces
Battery life - great for a gaming laptop. I've managed around 4+ hours at 40% brightness while downloading/uploading and installing software, browsing, running apps in the background, all while maintaining good response and no perceivable slowdowns
Weaknesses:
Touchpad - It's noisy when tapping like it's loosely connected to the chassis
Display - colour accuracy and viewing angles are poor, but more than tolerable at this price point for its intended use
Keyboard layout - tolerable for a 15" class laptop and includes a numpad but takes a bit of getting used to now that SHIFT+#s are required for Home, End, PGUP, PGDN. Numpad ENTER key is also clumsy to use. The power button is built in with the keyboard (not much of a negative, but a strange placement)
NVMe expansion requires a bracket that's not included
*Advertised as having a 240w power supply, I received a 200w PSU. After checking MSI's spec sheet again, I found it does only come offered with a 200w PSU. I actually chose this laptop partly based on the PSU spec because I wanted to avoid the 120w models and I only noticed this after the return period had expired
Additional Comments:
I picked this up on Black Friday week as an impulse buy with the intention of returning it at the slightest complaint as I already have a fairly capable gaming laptop for use on the go. This one, however, outclasses my old one more than I had expected.
Coming from a 17" MSI, I'm a returning customer based on a previous customer service experience and the fact I got so many years out of the old one and it's still going strong even though driver updates are no longer available. This laptop is so much lighter and the battery lasts roughly 3x longer than the old one. It also doesn't get hot on my lap while running light workloads.
Though I do have some minor complaints, after spending some time on updates, power options, etc, it's more than capable and I'm not sure what the review complaining about performance is all about.
*An NVMe bracket is required to install an additional drive and is not included. Unfortunate if you need to install one immediately, but I contacted MSI and they shipped one to me right away (arrived in 2 days) at no expense to me.
Saturday, March 18, 2023
By: Mike
From: Memory Express SE calgary
Strengths:
The Laptop is very light and it's good especially if you're traveling. It has a very good Processor and GPU, It can run AAA games on High-Ultra settings, the airflow and the fan of the product is pretty good .
Weaknesses:
The screen is decent and it's pretty dark even on max brightness settings. The lifespan of the battery is not that good it can only last for an hour or two if it's not plugged.
Additional Comments:
Overall, this gaming laptop is good and the price is not that high
Friday, March 17, 2023
By: Guntaj
From: Winnipeg
Weaknesses:
It has slow boot up time. Okay, lets say that is fine. But it is having terrible issues like its showing color full squares when I game even when browsing I have no idea what that is. Moreover, if you don’t use charger it will lag even while browsing.
Additional Comments:
Do not spend money just by seeing “Oh iT GoT the 4060” trust me! Its is terrible. I would recommend asus zephyrus g14.
Thursday, March 2, 2023
By: Yin Pan
From: Hamilton
Strengths:
Lightweight
Consumes less power
It comes with an i7-12650H CPU and a RTX 4060 graphic card. i7-12650H fits well with the RTX 4060 without a bottleneck.
Weaknesses:
Speakers are loud but lack bass
Battery is small
Display is the weakest point, it's a FHD 45% NTSC 144Hz Display. Since it's a gaming laptop, I think 45% NTSC is OK.
TX 4060 should perform better with FHD since it only has a 96-bit memory bus.
Additional Comments:
Overall, it's a good gaming laptop.
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