The MSI Stealth 14 Studio (2023) is part of MSI’s line of ultra-portable gaming laptops, but don’t let its size fool you. It might disappear into a bag, but when it’s time to play, it stands ready to deliver. It’s also an example of a redesign done right, offering smaller, sleeker looks, and even better portability. It’s not exactly cheap, and battery life returns as the annual issue, but it balances performance and form factor with aplomb.
MSI Stealth 14 Studio – Design and Features
The MSI Stealth 14 Studio is the latest entry in MSI’s Stealth series. It’s a slimmed-down, beefed-up version of the Stealth 15M we looked at in 2021. There was another 15-inch model released last year that made a handful of tweaks, but this revision offers much bigger changes. It’s smaller, lighter, and more portable, offering a dramatically improved screen, a bigger battery, and a stylish new design.
The shift to a 14-inch display might seem like a downgrade at first but in truth is anything but. It now uses a 16:10 ratio, which gives you more vertical space to work with, and is much brighter and more vibrant. The base model features a Full HD (1200p) screen that runs at 165Hz or you can upgrade to a QHD display that bumps the resolution to 1600p at 240Hz. I tested the QHD version and measured it at 437 nits of peak brightness and 100% of DCI-P3 color coverage. According to our colleagues, the last generation struggled to hit 300 nits and didn’t cover half as much color.
The smaller screen also plays perfectly into the Stealth’s portable aspirations. Having reviewed two other 14-inch laptops for IGN (the Alienware x14 R2 and the Razer Blade 14), I’m always struck by what a good middle ground it is, balancing portability with screen size without ever really feeling like a downgrade. It also allowed MSI to shave off precious ounces, dropping the Studio to only 3.75 pounds, about a six percent decrease from the prior version. It now measures 12.4 x 9.69 x 0.75 inches, saving just shy of two inches of width, so it’s even easier to fit into a bag.
Despite its small size, the Stealth 14 Studio offers nimble performance for both gaming and content creation. Its Intel Core i7-13700H processor clocks all the way to 5GHz for higher in-game frame rates. It splits its 14 cores between six performance cores with eight efficiency cores to make sure games are never splitting processing power with background tasks and that side-activities like streaming to Twitch won’t bog your system down.
It comes with an Nvidia RTX 4050 or RTX 4060 mobile graphics card. Ours was sent with the RTX 4060, and I would suggest saving for that model if possible. Bumping to the more powerful graphics card nets you more video memory (8GB vs. 6GB), and the base model could realistically run short when playing newer games. Upgrading the graphics card also comes with a bigger, 1TB SSD, which is a borderline necessity when single video games often require more than 100GB.
The Stealth 14 Studio has creators in its sights, which makes its memory choices – or lack thereof – confusing. No matter which model you choose, you can only select 16GB of memory. That’s enough for gaming and some light background applications, but for actual content creation, it’s a bare minimum. Adobe Premiere Pro will burn through 16GB quickly if you’re not careful, especially if you use motion graphics or video effects. You can expand the memory yourself by popping off the back of the case, but it would have been nice to see a 32GB option from the start for those of us who don’t want to disassemble their expensive new laptop.
This year’s model brings major changes to the chassis. The last two Stealth 15M laptops were sturdy enough but their dark, matte finishes picked up fingerprints much too easily and quickly looked messy. This year, MSI has shifted to a magnesium-aluminum alloy, available in white or black, that’s solid, lightweight, and more smudge-resistant.
I was sent the white version and it simply looks fantastic. There’s a simple silver logo on the lid that accents the field of white and a black hinge for contrast. When it’s powered up, some subtle RGB lighting illuminates “stealth” inside the rear vent with two more tiny lights in each corner. Since you don’t actually see it in use, you can safely turn the lights off if you’d rather have a touch more battery.
The keyboard is also an RGB showcase. MSI partnered with SteelSeries to deliver its per-key lighting effects and programming options, and it’s better for it. The layout is a touch cramped with the Ctrl button and arrow keys sharing real estate with Fn and the navigation buttons, but it feels good to use and isn’t mushy. The touchpad is also very good, taking up a full third of the bottom deck, and offering reliable gesture controls, which isn’t always the case (the Stealth 15M from 2021 was much less reliable).
What isn’t so great are the speakers or webcam. Audio, while passable for the stray YouTube video, can only be described as sharp. Higher frequency sounds like cymbals have a harshness to them that’s just unpleasant, even at medium volume. There’s more bass than I expected, so the end result is an unimpressive wash. The webcam is similarly middling. It runs at 720p30 and is noticeably soft and grainy. For a laptop aimed at creators, it’s just a poor showing. It does have a physical shutter that can block your video and supports Windows Hello, however, so it’s not all bad.
Another area where the Stealth falls short is battery life, and it’s a more painful hit than middling speakers or a 720p webcam. At 72 watt hours, it’s nearly 34% larger than last year’s Stealth and yet still only managed to last four hours and 43 minutes in our PCMark battery rundown test at medium screen brightness. That’s disappointing given how very portable it otherwise is.
Suffice it to say, you’ll want to bring a charger with you if you plan to use it throughout the day. If you’re willing to spend just a little more, you can sidestep the bulky power brick and use your own charger instead. On the right edge is a USB Type-C port capable of supporting a 100W PD charging, which should save a lot of space (and weight) in your bag. Also on that side is a USB 3.2 Type-A port and a combo audio jack. Along the other side is a charging port for the included adapter, a Thunderbolt 4 port, and a full-size HDMI output.
MSI Stealth 14 Studio – Software
The MSI Stealth 14 Studio comes with a handful of software applications pre-installed, as well as the usual Microsoft bloatware that gets installed on most Windows 11 laptops. You can customize the audio using Nahimic, which has been a staple of MSI’s offerings for years, and Killer Intelligence Center, which allows you to monitor and prioritize your network traffic.
Programming the keyboard and controlling its lighting is done with SteelSeries GG. It’s the same software that comes with SteelSeries’ gaming keyboards and offers similar programming and remapping options. Lighting doesn’t offer very many animations (static, colorshifting, breathing, reactive typing, and a cooldown timer), but does allow you to program lighting effects down to individual keys, which is pretty cool.
The primary software you’ll engage with is MSI Center and it’s blessedly light. The first tab is a system monitor that helps you keep an eye on resources and temps. The other, which loads by default, lets you choose your performance profile and which graphics mode you’d prefer to use. Clicking the Features button on the top unlocks some more options to customize the viewing mode, per-game keyboard lighting, HDR, and a couple of gaming features. It’s all simple and straightforward.
MSI Stealth 14 Studio – Performance
The MSI Stealth 14 Studio offers solid bang for the buck and is overall a very nice PC to travel with. Compared to my usual 15-inch and 17-inch laptops, carrying it through the day was a literal weight off my shoulders and definitely made me want to take it over my more powerful alternatives. Though weight is the kind of thing you stop noticing after a while, it’s worth highlighting just how nice it is: at less than four pounds, it’s less than many textbooks.
If you’re looking for a laptop to take with you to work or between classes, it could be great but winds up more mixed than it should be. I adore the form factor and the new chassis MSI went with. The magnesium chassis feels strong and robust but keeps clean. I hated taking the MSI GS66 out of my bag – as some commenters pointed out, it looked like I had chicken wing fingers – because normal use would leave it looking like a mess. Between the new material and white color, the Stealth 14 Studio is the kind of laptop that makes you want to engage with it.
That same thing applies to the screen. 150 nits of increased brightness might not seem like a lot on paper, but in real life, it’s a joy to look at and play games on. Laptop screens are getting brighter, but for years, breaking 400 nits was a rarity. Coming to the Studio from a similarly priced laptop a year or two ago makes for a genuinely surprising experience. It’s bright, color-rich, and mostly color accurate. Unless you’re doing professional-level work, you could begin cutting together videos and editing photos right out of the box (though calibration does still help a touch).
Battery life adds stress to what is otherwise a great experience. Throughout the day, I always had to be conscious of how bright I was running the screen, turning on battery saver mode if I wanted to extend it, and nervously glancing at the battery meter. There were times when it seemed to drop faster, even though I was just typing away. It’s a laptop that forces you to be aware of where a power outlet is at all times, which is completely counter to the rest of its design.
When it comes to gaming, you’ll want to either enable DLSS or turn down the resolution to 1200p, the 16:10 equivalent of 1080p. At that resolution, its RTX 4060 is able to play modern games at high or ultra settings and generally hold steady above a smooth 60 fps. Our testing is all done with the highest possible settings but does take advantage of DLSS where possible (including ray tracing), and under these conditions, games looked fantastic and ran smoothly.
Turning the resolution up to 1600p provides a noticeable bump in crispness but at a significant fps penalty. In games that support DLSS3 Frame Generation, it’s less of an issue, but it’s pretty common to see demanding games dip below 60 fps. That’s to be expected with a lower to mid-tier graphics card, and isn’t impossible to work around. Disabling ray tracing or lowering settings to high or medium can open the door to much better performance at both resolutions.
The 240Hz screen is a bit of a waste though. Unless you’re playing esports, which are notoriously easy to run, or other very low-demand games, the RTX 4060 simply doesn’t have the horsepower to hit that kind of frame rate. The laptop doesn’t support any additional refresh rates either (including no variable refresh rate), so it’s 60Hz or 240Hz with nothing in between.
For content creation, the Stealth does an alright job. As expected, it does get bogged down in Adobe Premiere Pro if you throw too much at it, but for editing short 1080p videos with a few motion graphics and transitions, it works fine. Bumping to 4K expectedly slows things to a crawl, and if you’re opening up multiple applications to edit, save, and return to Premiere (a common workflow built into the program), it’s easy to get overtaxed. The biggest benefit is GPU-accelerated rendering, which offers much faster render times compared to systems using integrated graphics.
MSI has also done a good job of managing temperatures while working with less space. Its vapor chamber solution does a good job of shedding heat, allowing the components to run without thermal throttling. In my testing, the CPU peaked at 95C and the GPU at 83C. Warm, yes, but within safe limits that don’t impact performance. The new chassis does seem to absorb and spread out the heat more, however, as it becomes noticeably warm to the touch and on your lap. It’s not hot enough to be uncomfortable at any point, though, so it’s not what I would consider to be a problem.
