The MSI Alpha 15 gaming laptop features AMD’s
new Radeon RX 5500M graphics combined with
an AMD CPU. In this detailed review, you’ll
find out the good and bad sides of this combination,
and there are definitely some important things
you’ll want to know before buying.
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| Source: MSI |
Overview:
I'll review A3DDK version of the Alpha
15, so there’s an AMD Ryzen 7 3750H quad
core CPU, the new Radeon RX 5500M graphics,
16gb of memory in dual channel, a 1080p 144Hz
screen with FreeSync, and 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD.
For network connectivity, it’s got gigabit
Ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi, and Bluetooth 5.
The Alpha 15 is also available in a cheaper
A3DD model with some small changes, you can
find updated prices to both linked in the
description.
MSI Alpha 15 Weight and Dimensions:
The weight is listed at 2.3kg on the MSI website
and mine was exactly on this. With the 180
watt power brick and cable for charging included
the total rises to just over 3kg.
The dimensions are similar to many other 15”
laptops in terms of width and depth however
it’s not exactly thin, hopefully, that extra
space gives us some good thermal performance.
This thinner footprint gives it 8mm thin screen
bezels on the sides.
The 15.6” 1080p 144Hz IPS-Level screen has
a matte finish, viewing angles looked fine,
and it’s got FreeSync with a 48 to 144 range.
It’s also available with a 240Hz or 120Hz
option too, so these results are only valid
for the 144Hz panel.
MSI Alpha 15 Screen:
I’ve tested the screen with the Spyder 5,
and got 98% of sRGB, 68% of NTSC, and 73%
of AdobeRGB. At 100% brightness, I measured
the panel at 320 nits in the center with a
500:1 contrast ratio, so overall it’s pretty
decent, a bit lower on the contrast but otherwise
not bad.
MSI Alpha 15 Keyboard:
The Steelseries keyboard has per-key RGB backlighting,
and in my opinion, it looks better than most
other RGB keyboards as the sides are clear
to allow light to shine through. There are
plenty of effects and changes that can be
made through the software, and the product
page on the MSI website gives us some examples
of what it can do. The brightness can be adjusted
between 4 levels by holding the function key
and pressing the plus or minus keys on the
Numpad, or turned off completely if you prefer.
I liked typing with the keyboard, here’s
how it sounds to give you an idea of what
to expect.
There are some extra buttons above the keyboard
next to the power button, these let you enable
cooler boost for max fan speed, or cycle through
keyboard lighting effects.
There was some keyboard flex when pushing
down hard due to the plastic interior, but
I thought it felt solid enough, and I found
the letter keys needed 62g of force to actuate.
MSI Alpha 15 TouchPad:
The precision touchpad doesn’t actually
click down when pressed as it’s instead
got physical left and right-click buttons
which makes fairly loud audible presses. I
thought the size was ok and didn’t have
any problems using it.
Fingerprints and dirt show up on the matte
black lid and were a little harder to clean
off, however the smooth silver plastic interior
did a good job of hiding them, and it was
much easier to clean in comparison.
MSI Alpha 15 Body:
There is some flex to the metal lid as it’s on the thinner side, however, the hinges felt quite sturdy and are placed out towards the far corners which should aid stability. You can’t quite open it up with one finger, because like many other MSI laptops both the battery and cooling are up the back, so it’s more back heavy, however, it still felt stable using it on my lap.
The lid is a matte black aluminum and the interior is silver plastic. The build quality seemed fair and there were no sharp corners or edges anywhere. The design is a little different to most other MSI laptops, it’s a bit less gamer red which is a welcome change.
Despite the thin screen bezels, the 720p camera is found above the display in the center.
The back just has air exhaust vents on the
left and right corners and there’s nothing
at all on the front.
The matte black metal lid has a couple
of grooved lines and the new green logo for
the Alpha 15 in the center rather than MSI’s
usual dragon. You can see there are some grooves
within the circular area.
MSI Alpha 15 Ports:
On the left from the back, there’s a Kensington lock, air exhaust vent, gigabit ethernet port, HDMI 2.0 and mini DisplayPort outputs, both of which are wired directly to the Radeon graphics, USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A port, USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C port, no Thunderbolt here though, and 3.5mm headphone and mic jacks. On the right, there are two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports right down the front, which are seriously going to get in the way of your mouse hand if you’re right-handed and plug anything in with a cable, full-size SD card slot, and the power input. No air exhaust here, so it’s a bit strange the USB ports weren’t pushed back. All three USB Type-A ports light up red when the laptop is powered on, however, you can control them in the dragon center software to either solid color, breathing or flashing, with the option of full brightness, half brightness, or turned off.
MSI Alpha 15 Inside:
To get inside you
need to remove 12 Phillips head screws.
Once inside we’ve got the single 2.5”
drive bay on the left, WiFi card right next
to that, battery right up the back, two memory
slots towards the right in the middle, with
the single M.2 slot to the right of that,
and it supports both NVMe PCIe or SATA storage.
MSI Alpha 15 Speaker:
The two 2 watt speakers are found towards
the front on the left and right. They sound
ok, pretty average but no bass and a little
tinny, however, they got loud enough at maximum
volume and the latency on results looked
alright.
MSI Alpha 15 Battery:
The Alpha 15 is powered by a 6 cell 51wh battery.
I’ve tested it with the screen brightness
at 50%, background apps disabled, and keyboard
lighting off. While just watching YouTube
videos it lasted for 4 hours and 23 minutes,
and this was with the Vega graphics which
are built into the CPU.
While playing the Witcher 3 with medium settings
it was limited to 29 FPS for the first 57
minutes and was playable, however with 5% a battery left it dropped down to 14 FPS, lasting
for 61 minutes in total.
The 180-watt power brick that’s included
with the Alpha 15 was adequate, I never had
any battery drain during any of my testing.
Other:
The MSI dragon center lets us swap between
these different performance modes, I’ve
tested silent, balanced, and extreme performance.
The main difference was silent mode caps the
GPU power limit, otherwise the higher modes
have a higher fan speed. We can also set the fan
speed between auto or cooler boost, which
is maximum, but we can quickly enable this
with the shortcut button above the keyboard.
All testing was done with an ambient room with a temperature of 21 degrees Celsius.
Stress tests were done with Aida64 CPU stress
test and the Heaven GPU benchmark at the same
time and gaming results are from playing
Watch Dogs 2. The CPU never passed 81 degrees,
which is quite cool under this heavy load,
there was never any thermal throttling. The
GPU is cooler in silent mode due to the harsh
power limit cap, otherwise increasing fan
speed lowered temperatures a bit and adding
a cooling pad helped a bit more.
We can see why GPU temps were down in silent
mode, the power limit cap restricts it from
performing well. Otherwise balanced and extreme
modes performed very similarly. No undervolting
was done here as the AMD Mobile platform doesn’t
currently support this.
Specifications are:
Display size: 15.6 inch full HD
Display type: IPS Level, 144 HzAntiGlare display (60Hz Refresh Rate)
Processor: Ryzon 7 3750H
RAM: 16(8*2)GB DDR 4
Storage: 512 SSD
Graphics: AMD Radeon RX5500M 4GB
Preinstalled Software: Windows 10
Ports and CD drive: USB 3. 2 Gen1 *2 USB 3. 2 Gen1 *3 LAN AzureWave AW-CB375NF (2x2 802. 11 ac)
Other features: Full sized back-lit keyboard, BT 5 720p HD Webcam
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