The MSI Katana 15 was listed on Amazon a few months ago for about $1,599.99, for the same specifications that you will read about in a short while. Back then, it did not make such sense due to the unattractive price-to-performance ratio. Fortunately, with that price slashed by $400 and with the gaming laptop now available for only $1,199.99, we can strongly claim that this is by far the best price-to-performance machine on the market, with a few quirks, but we will fill you in with the details.
The 15.6-inch IPS LCS display has a 1080p resolution and supports a 144Hz refresh rate, which will be plentiful for the RTX 4070 GPU, which features an 8GB GDDR6 frame buffer. To bring the cost down, MSI had to resort to an all-plastic build for the Katana 15, so you will have to be careful not to bump it around things when it is being carried in your backpack. Now that all of that is out of the way, let us get into the specifications, and they are impressive for the price.
You get an Intel Core i7-13620H CPU, which offers 10 cores (six performance and four power-efficiency) and it is paired with an RTX 4070 GPU with a maximum power limit of 105W. Supplementing the CPU and GPU is 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB M.2 PCI NVMe SSD. There is a second M.2 slot available when you get around to opening the back panel, but according to various reviews, there is no screw mount present to help secure the second SSD in place. Fortunately, the workaround is giving MSI a call, and they will send over a mounting bracket to your address.
Given the price, it is not surprising to see the Katana 15 ships with a rather small 53.5WHr battery, so you will have to keep your expectations realistic when the gaming laptop is away from wall power. With web browsing and a few optimizations, you can get around 4 hours of runtime, and when you focus on productivity, you can perhaps squeeze 5 hours of battery life. Also, keep in mind that when getting inside to upgrade the internals, you will have to do a little fidgeting as plastic clips hold the back panel together.
As for the ports selection, it is stacked on the Katana 15, but unfortunately, the lack of a Thunderbolt 4 port means there is no way to connect an external GPU exclosure down the road. Overall, MSI hit a home run with this gaming laptop, and though its launch price did not favor it at the time, things are looking so much better now for consumers who do not wish to invest a ton in a portable machine.
Get the MSI Katana 15 from Amazon
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