MSI Katana A15 AI 15.6” 165Hz QHD Gaming Laptop: Ryzen 9-8945HS, NVIDIA Geforce RTX 4070, 32GB DDR5, 1TB NVMe SSD, Cooler Boost 5, Win 11: Black B8VG-450US

[Oct 2024]We had an old laptop that died recently and wouldn't be worth repairing, so while the October Prime Days event was on I looked for something that should be somewhat 'future proof' with good specs at a price less than $1000. I picked the MSI Katana A15 AI 15.6” 144Hz FHD Gaming Laptop with the Ryzen 7-9945HS and NVIDIA Geforce RTX 4060, 32Gb RAM, and 1TB SSD.It was on sale for $879 plus tax at the time, which was a really good price for the specs.It has all the ports we need for plugging in different devices, the keyboard feels good, and the screen is bright & crisp with a 144Hz refresh rate that keeps up with the busiest action scenes in games and movies. The screen is a bit more 'letter box' shape than I'd really like, but that's the only thing I can find to whine about. It's a bit heavy compared to some, but that isn't an issue for us.It runs all our small business office and accounting software silently, without the cooling system kicking in at all. The only time it cools itself is when playing graphic intensive games, and IMHO the fan noise isn't bad at all. Most of the time it sits on a multi fan cooling pad, but even without that turned on the laptop never gets particularly hot.All in all, it was a great deal, so if it's on sale for less than $900 again, snap it up. Even at around $1050 I think it's still a worthy contender.

I bought this laptop a little over a month ago, and I use it every day, and it works wonderfully. I bought it for a little over $1000 at the end of January 2025. I'm a student who mostly plays modded minecraft.It's heavy and thick, but I enjoy that about it, and it's not the heaviest laptop among my friends. People really enjoy the light-up keyboard and I get lots of compliments. The choice of function keys is wonderful and I use them a lot.A lot of reviews claim that the battery life maxes at two hours, and I have no idea where that number is coming from- I regularly use my laptop for 5 or 6 hours unplugged before it dies. The charging cable is very heavy itself, but it's not too much of a pain to take along for longer work days or when I know I'll be doing something power-intensive.A lot of the pre-installed apps are annoying or useless, but I overall appreciate them.The fans have never gotten so loud that it was jarring to people around me, though I've certainly noticed them whirring while playing games in private.Ultimately, it's a great laptop that was very much worth the money for me. It's a gaming laptop with great memory, great graphics, and great storage. The battery lasts as long as I need it to, and it has a lovely shape and appearance. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a gaming laptop.

The media could not be loaded. Before reading this review, keep in mind that the sample size is 1(ONE) laptop.I cannot say for certain that all laptops of these series are bad, but i can say that 100% of this series of laptops that i have purchased (1 btw) is complete dog poo.tl;dr-delivery is nightmare for working class stiff (unless WFH)-all this bloatware that comes pre-attached with windows 11, and nvidia drivers, as well as norton anti-virus (LOL) which you CANNOT shut off-frame rate in this copy was dog poo, (extremely unstable hitting lows of 30, highs of 200, average about 40fps)-absolutely chugging when it comes to, say, 100 tabs (don't look at me like that, there are people like me out there)=was unable to test durability because it was returned in the first week=did not test battery life, as was plugged in from the start and being sent back=did not test speakers or keyboard or touchpad because i like my physical addons+1tb ssd seems cool i guess. people pay good money for this component alone+physically, structure is flat and airflow seems pretty decent without any addons+screen seems pretty huge for a laptopOverall 3/10mediocre for gamingterrible for workbad for multitaskingIf you want a computer that can do what this one does, buy an actual computer with parts you can change out.you're paying a huge premium to have this amount of tech be portable.Unnecessary Rant:Why on earth does a 1,300$ laptop "made" "FOR GAMING" hit 30 fps in ye-olden games such as-dota 2-league of legends (literally made with potato pc's in mind)-Team fortress 2Admittedly ran Battlefield 2042 pretty well with minor hiccups, but i run every game at min settings??sure, it hits 200 fps (ON OCCASION), but the monitor's refresh rate is 144??? so what's the point of going all the way up to 200 and then shooting down to 30????The fps simply isn't stable, and jumps from 30 to 200, averaging maybe 40 from what i can tell?Last 7 year old msi laptop that was literally coming apart at the seams was performing better in these games, and it was gtx 1060. I bought this laptop to replace it, thinking i was buying cutting edge.the only thing it cut was my wallet.Also prone to freezing when simply alt tabbing from games to work, and freezing when loading too many tabs on browser of your choice (admittedly, this was a limit test of hardware capabilities)Delivery was a nightmare, though it was the better of two evils.Amazon delivery gave prediction from 0800-2200 of certain day, so I had to call out of work.I did not respond in the 5 minute window in which they told me delivery man was present (partially my fault i guess, but a 5 minute window from a 14 hour window???)next day, i took another day off from work to sit outside 40 mins in advance (when notification said delivery driver was 9 stops away).Amazon driver required my passcode to be entered into his device before he could give me the item.The other option was to leave it on doorstep and pray a porch pirate does not find it, which would be worse.Recommended to buy this stuff directly from a store, or utilize a third party drop off.

The only bad thing from this laptop is Windows 11, besides of it, it's really great and it has a good performance, now I can get addicted to games with no problem.

Recently bought MSI KATANA A15 (R7 8845HS / RTX 4060) and it's performing very well in anything, Cooler Boost is working super well and when in use laptop is managing to catch 60-65C* in games like, COD MW3 (Max), Plague Tale: Requiem (Max). Keyboard is beautiful and works and feels good, plastic itself feels very smooth on touch, MSI Support is next level answering anytime in minutes, this product is upgradable as you can add second M2. SSD which is also Gen4x4 PCI 1.4, only thing i don't like is built in speakers, they are 2W and sound good but very low, also if you want to install WIN10, you will have to download literally every driver even LAN ones manually or it won't work, it will load and after restart it will just brick