Knowledgeable’s Ranking
Execs
- Glossy, compact design
- Loads of ports
- Spectacular typing expertise
- Lengthy-lasting battery
Cons
- Noisy followers
- Arrow and nav keys are bunched up
Our Verdict
Regardless of a few snags, the Status 14 Evo is a robust no-nonsense workhorse with a premium design and enticing worth. For enterprise use, there aren’t many higher.
Worth When Reviewed
From $1,499
Finest Costs At present: MSI Status 14 Evo (2023)
$1,499.99
The Status 14 Evo (B13M) is the 2023 refresh of MSI’s line of work-centric Home windows laptops aimed primarily at enterprise customers.
With costs beginning at across the £1,000 mark within the UK, US$1,500 in the USA and AU$2200 in Australia, they’re fairly priced, contemplating you’re getting a machine with thirteenth gen Intel processors, as much as 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and a 512GB SSD.
Different key promoting factors embody Thunderbolt 4 ports and Wi-Fi 6E, the most recent requirements for wi-fi web and knowledge switch. MSI’s lofty battery life claims additionally arise effectively to scrutiny.
However there’s stiff competitors within the enterprise laptop computer house, with with the likes of Huawei, Microsoft and Apple all providing nice alternate options. The MSI Status 14 Evo isn’t a simple suggestion, however it’s a powerful machine that’s nonetheless price contemplating.
Thomas Newton / Foundry
Design & construct
- Metallic exterior, black plastic bezel
- Thunderbolt 4 and HDMI 2.0 ports
- Dropped hinge makes for extra snug typing
The MSI Status 14 Evo won’t win prizes for originality – it’s a reasonably standard-looking silver machine – however that doesn’t imply it’s not a properly designed laptop computer.
Apart from the skinny black plastic bezel, each edge and floor is roofed in aluminium. The steel chassis feels cool to the contact, and provides the Status 14 Evo an air of, effectively, status. It’s slim and light-weight sufficient to be simply slipped right into a bag and carried round, however a lot of the weigh is concentrated ultimately of the deck, so holding it in a single hand isn’t the better.
The Status 14 Evo encompasses a dropped hinge, that means that when its opened in your desk, the hinge lifts the deck up off the floor of the desk. This enables for higher air move and a extra snug typing angle than conventional laptops.
On the left-hand aspect, there’s an HDMI 2.0 port and two Thunderbolt 4 ports. On the suitable, you’ll discover a single Sort-A USB 3.2 (Gen2) port, microSD card reader, 3.5mm audio jack and bodily shutter toggle for the webcam. Not unhealthy in any respect.
The webcam sensor is tiny, and also you’ll seemingly overlook that it’s there more often than not. It’s able to recording 1080p @30fps video and high quality is definitely not unhealthy, and it could unlock the Status 14 Evo through Home windows Good day. However it’s not good at choosing out your face in low mild.
Thomas Newton / Foundry
Keyboard & trackpad
- Large chunky keycaps with good motion on most keys
- Arrow and nav keys are far too small
- Trackpad is properly sized, however depresses erratically
The MSI Status 14 Evo’s keyboard is without doubt one of the higher ones I’ve used on a 14in laptop computer. The format is usually well-spaced, with most issues simply inside attain, and the fingerprint scanner cleverly positioned due south of the arrow keys.
Every backlit keycaps is properly sized, and reveals a pleasing, springy motion, which gives the look of extra journey than the keys even have. MSI hasn’t mentioned precisely what sort of switches are used or how a lot journey you get, however the firm has hit on a profitable method right here.
The one grievance I’ve in regards to the keyboard are the arrow and nav keys, that are shoehorned into an extremely small space of the deck. The keys themselves are tiny.
Even after utilizing the Status 14 Evo for every week, I might nonetheless every now and then discover my little finger unintentionally hitting ‘Web page Down’ once I’d both tried to hit the ‘Enter’ or ‘proper’ arrow key. It’s fairly annoying, particularly while you’re engaged on lengthy 1,500-word opinions, to have an enormous abruptly seem in the course of a sentence.
Thomas Newton / Foundry
Small arrow keys are a standard bugbear for laptops of this dimension, however I might have most popular bigger arrow keys (which double as nav keys when mixed with the perform key) or removing of the nav keys altogether. It’s a disgrace, as a result of other than a number of cramped keys, the typing expertise is great.
There’s some noticeable flex within the space instantly just under the keyboard, which sadly extends to the trackpad. The latter requires extra drive to motion clicks on the high than backside, which raises questions on the way it’ll fare long run.
MSI says that the Status 14 Evo is MIL-STD-810G-certified for sturdiness, however it makes you surprise. Other than this, the trackpad is nice – properly sized at 5.6in and responsive, permitting you to glide by means of menus and internet pages with ease.
Thomas Newton / Foundry
Show & audio system
- 14in 1920 x 1200 60Hz LCD show
- 16:10 facet ratio
- Close to-full sRGB color house protection
- Downward firing audio system are loud, however tinny
The Status 14 Evo’s 14in Full HD+ show’s brightness and distinction ranges make it greater than satisfactory for on a regular basis use, because of punchy brightness and good viewing angles. However the reflective coating picks up overhead glare, and low color accuracy make it much less viable for critical photograph work.
Utilizing a SpyderX colorimeter, I recorded 99% of the sRGB color house. That’s strong, and means web sites, video games, and digital artwork nonetheless look correct, Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 areas have been low at 77% and 78% respectively. In case your photograph enhancing necessities don’t prolong past cropping and resizing, then you definately’ll be capable of get away with this. But when your line of labor or examine requires a really colour-accurate show, this isn’t the laptop computer for you.
Likewise, a refresh charge of 60Hz signifies that, together with the low DCI-P3 rating and no discrete GPU, this isn’t a laptop computer you can purchase for gaming or video enhancing.
Most recorded brightness utilizing the identical colorimeter was 429.7 nits, tallied with a black level of 0.23 nits, including as much as a distinction ratio of 1880:1, which is respectable. Ideally, you’ll need a show that may give you most brightness above 500 nits to ensure which you could work in all lighting situations, and a black level as near zero as potential, indicating that darkish areas of a picture look deep and wealthy, and never washed out.
That is broadly according to what you get on the Huawei MateBook 16s, however it’s not fairly pretty much as good because the Floor Professional 9’s show.
The facet ratio of 16:10 is a welcome replace from final 12 months’s MSI Status 15 A12UC. It provides you a bit extra peak to work in, one thing you’ll recognize if you happen to’re engaged on a very lengthy report.
Thomas Newton / Foundry
Two downward-firing audio system sit beneath the deck. The spec sheet may say that they’re ‘DTS Audio Prepared’, however in actuality, they’re fairly common laptop computer audio system.
Dialogue from streamed video sounds good, as do vocals from songs, however something with a lot of excessive finish trebly noise sounds weak and tinny. The cymbals on Grasp of Puppets may as effectively have been a load of KitKat wrappers caught collectively, they sound that unhealthy by means of the Status 14 Evo’s audio system. In the event you’re listening to music on this, seize some headphones.
Specs & efficiency
- thirteenth gen Intel Core i5 or i7 H-series CPU choices
- No devoted graphics
- Battery will simply final you a working day
- Good general efficiency, however followers can get noisy
The 2023 sequence of Status 14 Evo laptops function thirteenth gen ‘Raptor Lake’ Intel CPUs. You will have the choice of a 12-core i5-13500H processor which boosts to 4.7GHz, or a extra highly effective 14-core Core i7-13700H chip, with a lift clock pace of 5.0GHz. Relying on the place you’re primarily based, choices for 8-, 16- or 32GB of RAM can be found, plus 512GB or 1TB of storage.
The mannequin examined right here options the Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.
For fundamental workplace duties, the machine runs very effectively certainly. In case your main concern is having a lot of apps working without delay (together with the likes of Zoom, Slack, Google Drive and Microsoft Phrase), the Status 14 Evo handles all on a regular basis duties with out breaking a sweat.
That is mirrored within the excessive PC Mark 10 scores for Necessities (11593), the place the benchmarking software simulates quite a lot of PC workplace duties. Elsewhere, PC Mark 10 scored the Status 14 Evo fairly extremely for Productiveness (7767) and Digital Content material Creation (7733).
The Status Evo 14 racked up an general PC Mark 10 rating of 6353, beating the Floor Professional 9 and 2022 model of Huawei MateBook 16s. Nonetheless, it is available in barely behind final 12 months’s Status 15 A12UC.
The Geekbench 6 CPU benchmark equally yielded good outcomes for single-core (2515) and multi-core (12909) stress exams. It is a newer model of the Geekbench benchmark, and so it’s not a straight comparability, however you’ll be able to see roughly the place these scores place the Status 14 Evo alongside the competitors.
Surprisingly, the standard OpenGL Aztec Ruins benchmark wouldn’t run, with this system both crashing earlier than any rating could possibly be recorded, or just not beginning in any respect.
Fortunately, the 3DMark graphics benchmark did, with the Night time Raid benchmark returning a rating of 21731, a outcome that’s roughly on par with different laptops in the identical class.
Examine it with even a low-cost gaming laptop computer, just like the Asus TUF Gaming A15 (2022), which scored 49215 in the identical take a look at, although, and you may see the distinction that having a devoted graphics card makes. Maybe unsurprisingly, whereas the Status 14 Evo did an OK job of working Civ 6, it did so at a lowly charge of 20fps.
Battery life is a type of issues that’s overestimated on spec sheets, however fortunately, the MSI Status 14 Evo lived as much as claims of having the ability to provide you with 16 hours of energy – not less than in testing. Operating a looped movie with brightness locked at 120 nits, the battery lasted 16 hours and 23 minutes earlier than giving up the ghost.
In real-world utilization, it doesn’t final fairly as lengthy. However you’ll be able to nonetheless get a full working day and have cost to spare.
It’s fast to cost again up, too. Utilizing the equipped adapter ought to see you fill an empty tank to 48% after half an hour, and 85% after an hour, taking simply over two hours to utterly recharge.
Thomas Newton / Foundry
As there’s no devoted port for the mains adapter, because of this a type of Thunderbolt ports will likely be pulling double obligation for at any time when it’s worthwhile to recharge. Fortunately, there are many Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 hubs and docks out there, so that you not less than have some choices.
Lastly, whereas at no level in testing did the Status 14 Evo run particularly sizzling, these followers could be loud. Even when doing one thing comparatively mild, like opening photographs in GIMP, or watching one thing on YouTube, the followers would roar into life. It’s sufficient to be barely distracting whereas streaming a present in mattress or on the sofa, and it might doubtlessly annoy any noise-sensitive colleagues.
Worth & availability
The MSI Status 14 Evo (B13M) is in the stores now. Whereas it’s listed on MSI’s web site, it’s not at present in the stores instantly. The precise RAM and storage configurations seem to vary throughout nations.
Within the UK, Laptop computer Outlet has the Status 14 Evo fashions with Core i5 and Core i7 processors and 8GB of RAM for £1,099.99 and £1,299.99, respectively. Scan additionally has Core i5 and Core i7 Status 14 Evo’s with 16GB of RAM going for comparable costs, £1,198.99 and £1,298.99 (pre-order solely on the time of writing). Very additionally has inventory of the Status 14 Evo, at present solely Core i5 16GB variations for £1199.
In the USA, you will get a Status 14 Evo with a Core i7 CPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB exhausting drive from Amazon for US$1,499.99. Ava Direct has the identical mannequin on for US$1499, as does B&H, additionally for US$1499.
In Australia, you’ll be able to choose up a Status 14 Evo with a Core i5 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for AU$2199 from JB HiFi. PC Byte has Status 14 Evos with a Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD going AU$2499. Msy had an inventory for a Core i5 Status 14 Evo with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB with for AU$2299, however was out of inventory on the time of writing.
Thomas Newton / Foundry
Verdict
The Status 14 Evo is an effective selection for anybody out there for a Home windows laptop computer that’ll comfortably ship the fundamentals in a piece surroundings.
It’s highly effective, and fairly priced, boasts good connectivity choices, and the fast-charging battery will final all day.
Folks with bigger arms might wrestle with the cramped arrow keys, however noisy followers are the one different actual grievance right here. Competitors is robust, however the Status 14 Evo is price contemplating.
Specs
- Show: 14in, 16:10 IPS 1920 x 1200, 60Hz
- Processor: Intel Core i5-13500H / Core i7-13700H processor
- Graphics: Intel Iris Xe
- Reminiscence: 8 / 16 / 32GB
- Storage: 512 / 1TB SSD
- Ports: 2 x Sort-C USB with Thunderbolt, 1 x Sort-A USB 3.2 (Gen 2), HDMI 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack
- Digital camera: 1080p webcam
- Wi-fi: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5
- Battery: 72Whr
- Working system: Home windows 11 Dwelling
- Dimensions: 314 x 227.5 x 17.9mm
- Weight: 1.6kg