Design & Build
Most of the build is metal which does add some heft to the device. There is no flex to the device however the surface is a fingerprint magnet. The speakers are oddly placed under the laptop and cause the entire chassis to vibrate.
The Modern 15 is not too heavy at 1.6kgs and 16.9 mm high, it is no Ultrabook, but it comes quite close, the weight moves to 1.8kgs with its charger which does add more heft to it.
I do appreciate the thin bezels which we do not see with other machines. Another thing we noticed was that the edges are curved and not sharp so that is a huge plus.
Performance
There is plenty of performance to go around with an Nvidia GeForce MX450 to complement the 11th gen Tiger Lake Intel core i7 quad-core processor. There is also Intel’s XE graphics which are quite powerful so the MX450 does not make sense especially since there is a thunderbolt connection to add an EGPU.
The specific specs of the unit we had were:
- i7-1165G7 processor 2.8GHz quad-core with Turbo Boost (up to 4.7GHz)
- Nvidia GeForce® MX450 with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM
- 16GB RAM
- 512GB NVME SSD(400gb usable)
Now the machine is not a gaming notebook, but it can play esports titles on low to medium settings if you want to game between zoom meetings (don’t worry we won’t tell your boss).
One weird thing we noticed on our unit was that the fans randomly started spinning up during bootup and shutdown, but we could not replicate this behavior consistently.
The ram and storage are upgradeable with an extra m.2 slots and since the ram is not soldered it can be upgraded to 64Gb via the 2 SO-DIMM Slots. I must point out that I appreciate the ram being accessible and not being under the keyboard.
Screen & Battery
The Modern 15 feels a bit dated when it comes to resolution with a 1920×1080 IPS display, It is 2021 and we would like to see higher resolution displays or maybe even OLED.
The machine dropped 15% power overnight with the laptop’s lid closed and lasted a little more than 4 hours 30 minutes on the battery. It is not a laptop I would take on long trips but if you want to watch Netflix plugged in then it’s not too bad. Just get a pair of headphones.
Keyboard, Trackpad & Mouse
Next, the trackpad feels small. I say this as an avid Excel user, but I think most power users will want to couple a mouse and MSI has you covered as our unit came with an external mouse.
The keys feel fine, don’t fix what aint broke applies here.
The mouse is not so special, but it is a nice add on to the laptop. If you have larger hands, I recommend looking at some other options too.
Webcam and Speakers
The webcam is grainy, and I felt like this was 2003, so if you plan on taking a lot of zoom meetings, I recommend connecting an external webcam.
The speakers are not amazing either. At low audio levels, they are audible and clear but as you turn up the audio the chassis begins to vibrate and there is a lot of tearing so we would recommend keeping the audio below 80% volume. The audio experience would be a lot better if the speakers were front-facing and not under the laptop.
Ports & charger
The complete list of ports:
- Thunderbolt 3
- 2 USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A
- 1 USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A
- HDMI
- Audio combo jack
- MicroSD card reader
There is every port you will need as a home or office setting but it would have been nice to see or charging over USB-C. It was nice to see that chargers have become small, but it is still a bit bigger than modern GAN chargers, and since the USB-C supports PD charging It is super redundant to have a barrel plug.
The one thing I liked was the thunderbolt connection, I use an external USB 3.1 type-C SSD and got the full speed which is not the case in a few other machines as they only use the USB-C interface.
Final Thoughts
The Modern 15 has its has pros such as buttery smooth performance& build quality but at AED 4,829 It must go against ultraportable machines like the MacBook Air or the ASUS UX425J which we reviewed here. This puts it in a difficult price range for most users especially considering the cons tip the scale in the competition’s direction.
Should the price point come down and the cons solved, I am sure that the modern can be a solid contender in the mid-range space and handily beat out the competition.
