MSI Bravo 15 review
Our Verdict
The MSI Bravo xv leverages solid AMD components to deliver decent gaming performance, although information technology doesn't take the prettiest design or screen.
For
- Decent components and performance
- Better-than-expected keyboard
- Reasonable price
Against
- Dim screen
- Bulky, ugly chassis
- Cumbersome software
Tom's Guide Verdict
The MSI Bravo 15 leverages solid AMD components to deliver decent gaming performance, although it doesn't have the prettiest pattern or screen.
Pros
- +
Decent components and performance
- +
Better-than-expected keyboard
- +
Reasonable toll
Cons
- -
Dim screen
- -
Bulky, ugly chassis
- -
Cumbersome software
MSI Bravo 15: Specs
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5600H
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 5500M
Brandish: 15.six inches, 1080p, 144 Hz
RAM: sixteen GB
Storage: 512 GB SSD
Dimensions: 14.1 x 10.2 x ane.0 inches
Weight: 5.i pounds
Afterward a week with the MSI Bravo 15, I had a pleasant realization: I liked the auto a lot more than than I had expected to. Equally gaming laptops go, it's non exceptionally powerful, offer 1080p resolution and 30-ish fps frame rates, if you turn the settings all the way up. On the other manus, it's non uncommonly expensive, either, retailing for less than $1,000, rather than $two,500 — or more.
I found that the Bravo 15 had a better keyboard than I expected, plenty of ports and a decent level of performance for both work and play. Granted, the screen could be a whole lot better, and getting games up and running was occasionally a frustrating process. But equally a middle-of-the-road gaming laptop, the Bravo fifteen delivers what it promises, and that's arguably all it has to do.
If y'all have modest portable gaming needs and a upkeep to lucifer, the Bravo xv should serve yous well. Otherwise, yous'll accept to seek out a more powerful — and probably more than expensive — auto. Read on for our full MSI Bravo xv review.
MSI Bravo 15 review: Price and configurations
While the MSI Bravo xv has had a number of prices and configurations over the past few years, in that location'due south only i choice for the current version. You lot can buy information technology at Sam's Society (Walmart's answer to Costco, for those who aren't familiar with it) for $899. This ways you'll also need a Sam'south Club membership, which retails for $45 per year.
The electric current incarnation of the MSI Bravo comes with an AMD Ryzen 5600H CPU, an AMD Radeon 5500M GPU, xvi GB RAM, a 512 GB SSD and a 15.vi-inch, 1080p screen with a 144 Hz refresh rate. These are minor specs, to be sure, only not bad at all for the price.
MSI Bravo xv review: Blueprint
The MSI Bravo fifteen is a budget gaming laptop, and it looks the part. Dissimilar the sleek Razer Blade models or MSI's own Stealth line of laptops, the Bravo 15 is a bulky, mesomorphic thing, brimming full of foreign angles and unnecessary flourishes. At 14.1 x 10.two x 1.0 inches, it's almost twice as thick every bit some of its more than premium competitors in the fifteen-inch gaming laptop infinite. And at five.1 pounds, information technology's also a good one-half-pound heavier. The device does fit hands into a standard driver backpack, though, then conveying it around isn't too much of a problem.
The plain blackness chassis has some unusual design features, including a large gap at the hinge, and a raised geometric pattern on the hat. In that location'south also a phoenix symbol in that location, for good measure, although it doesn't light up.
The Bravo 15 is a strange-looking motorcar, and probably wouldn't feel at home in an function environment — although it's non terrible for productivity piece of work, as we'll touch later.
MSI Bravo 15 review: Ports
Because that it's not a huge machine, the MSI Bravo 15 packs a respectable number of ports.
On the left, there are ii USB-A ports and a power port. On the correct, there'due south a 3.5 mm sound jack, a USB-A port, a USB-C port, an HDMI port and an Ethernet port.
While another USB-C port would have been nice, I didn't accept any trouble connecting the accessories that I needed. The lack of an SD carte reader may be a hindrance to productivity-minded users, but the Bravo 15 is a gaming machine, first and foremost.
MSI Bravo xv review: Keyboard and touchpad
The MSI Bravo 15's keyboard turned out to be i of its most pleasant surprises. One of my frequent criticisms of gaming laptops is that they misplace their keyboards, cramming tiny setups into the middle of the chassis, rather than using all available infinite. The Bravo 15 has a full keyboard — with a number pad! — that expands across the device'southward whole face.
The numpad alone makes a huge departure for touch typists, while full-size Enter, Backspace and number keys make navigation a cakewalk. Frankly speaking, there are much fancier gaming laptops that could stand to learn a lesson from the Bravo 15 in this regard.
The touchpad, on the other hand, is more of a mixed bag. It feels responsive enough, and didn't arrive the way while I was typing. But it's a fleck off-centre from the balance of the automobile, making it a pain to contort your arms into position for it. Consider one of our picks for the all-time gaming mouse instead.
MSI Bravo 15 review: Display
The most significant problem I ran into with the MSI Bravo 15 was its display. When I started using the machine, I thought it looked a piddling dim and lifeless for work, multimedia and gaming alike. Compared to another gaming laptops that Tom'southward Guide has reviewed recently, the numbers dorsum up my observations:
| MSI Bravo fifteen | Asus ROG Menstruation X13 | Razer Bract 15 Avant-garde | |
| Brightness (nits) | 251 | 290 | 313 |
| sRGB Color Gamut (%) | 67 | 114 | 109 |
| Delta-E | 0.25 | 0.28 | 0.24 |
Up against the Asus ROG Menstruation X13 and the Razer Blade 15 Advanced, the Bravo xv is somewhat less bright and offers considerably less color. The color accurateness is not bad (with Delta-E, closer to zero is better), merely displaying only 67% of the sRGB spectrum isn't particularly impressive when other gaming laptops routinely get more than 100%.
I'll grant that 1080p is a perfectly expert resolution for a 15-inch screen, and the Bravo 15 tin can indeed run some games at upward to 144 frames per second. But even if you lot crank up the effulgence, the screen pales in comparison — both literally and figuratively — to some of its competitors.
MSI Bravo xv review: Gaming performance
In that location are ii ways to view the MSI Bravo xv's gaming functioning. One is as a $900 auto, which is where it does but fine. The other is in comparison to fancier gaming laptops, which is where it doesn't do as well. Hither's how the device fared in gaming benchmarks, measured in fps at 1080p resolution:
| MSI Bravo 15 | Asus ROG Flow X13 | Razer Blade 15 Advanced | |
| Assassinator's Creed Valhalla | 32 | 29 | 66 |
| Dirt v | 30 | 29* | 78 |
| Grand Theft Auto V | twoscore | 42 | 106 |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 33 | 35 | 82 |
*Measured at 1920 x 1200 resolution for benchmarking purposes
First and foremost, if you were wondering whether the Bravo 15 can become toe-to-toe with a premium gaming laptop, it can't. Your extra $1,000 (or more) on something like the Razer Blade 15 volition go you much better performance.
Withal, the Bravo 15 holds up admirably in its own price range, even confronting the somewhat more expensive ROG Menstruation X13. Information technology didn't autumn below 30 fps in whatsoever of our benchmarks, which means you lot can expect performance comparable to a PS4 or Xbox Ane, potentially with better textures and lighting.
It's as well worth noting that from a qualitative standpoint, you tin can coax much higher frame rates out of the Bravo xv. Past using medium or high graphical settings, rather than cranking the visuals all the way up, I was able to run Age of Empires IV at 75 fps, Doom Eternal at 70 fps, Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen at 140 fps and Final Fantasy XIV at 140 fps. All of the games ran smoothly, even after playing them for long periods of fourth dimension. However, I did notice that all of the games took a surprisingly long fourth dimension to boot upwards, considering that they were running off of an SSD.
MSI Bravo 15 review: Productivity performance
Every bit a productivity machine, the Bravo xv is a flake of a mixed bag. Here'south how it stacked upward confronting its competitors on an artificial Geekbench five.4 benchmark, which measures overall system power, too as a file transfer and video encoding exam:
| MSI Bravo xv | Asus ROG Menses X13 | Razer Bract 15 Avant-garde | |
| Geekbench 5.iv (artificial performance benchmark) | 6,676 | vii,640 | vi,924 |
| Copying 25 GB from wink bulldoze (MBps) | 433 | 750 | 1,796 |
| Handbrake video encoding (minutes:seconds) | seven:55 | 8:xiii | 8:46 |
While the Bravo 15 encodes video faster than I would have expected information technology to, it's not incredibly fast or powerful for productivity work otherwise. On the other manus, as a gaming automobile, the Bravo fifteen mostly has more than enough power to run whatsoever productivity apps you demand without skipping a beat out. As I write this review, I have Microsoft Word, Spotify, Notepad, Slack and Google Chrome with 10 enervating tabs open, and I'm using just about eight GB of the available sixteen GB RAM. Programs do sometimes take longer than expected to kicking upwardly, and 512 GB storage will fill up a lot faster than you expect, though.
My only big complaint about the Bravo 15's performance has to exercise with the software that comes preinstalled. The AMD Radeon software is, charitably speaking, a bit of a mess. The Bravo 15 actually comes with the wrong version of the software installed (this is something of a theme with MSI machines). Only fifty-fifty after I updated, it still wasn't very good at optimizing games, measuring frame rates or even assigning the correct GPU to demanding applications. (I couldn't run Doom Eternal at kickoff, considering the Radeon software absolutely, positively insisted that the Bravo xv had to run it with integrated graphics). If you desire to run games on the Bravo xv, you'll need to have some DIY tech back up know-how.
MSI Bravo xv review: Battery life and heat
The MSI Bravo 15 has decent battery life for productivity, and abysmal battery life for gaming. It also gets a bit hot, whether or not you're gaming on it. Both of these are par for the course in the land of gaming laptops:
| MSI Bravo 15 | Asus ROG Flow X13 | Razer Blade 15 Advanced | |
| Bombardment life – productivity (minutes:seconds) | six:20 | 7:23 | five:22 |
| Bombardment life – gaming (minutes:seconds) | 1:14 | ane:34 | one:35 |
| Heat – productivity (°F) | 94 | 105 | 88 |
| Rut – gaming (°F) | 115 | 130 | 123 |
The Bravo xv's bombardment life is past no means best-in-class, but information technology'll last for a long flight, if you lot demand it for productivity.
At 94 degrees, it'southward non comfortable to proceed in your lap for long periods of time — but it'due south not quite as dire equally the ROG Menstruum X13's 105 degrees, either.
MSI Bravo 15 review: Verdict
At $900, the MSI Bravo 15 is a capable lilliputian machine. It's competent rather than impressive, and workmanlike rather than innovative. Only it plays games at respectable frame rates and runs productivity software for more than than six hours on a single accuse. It's small enough to stash in a haversack comfortably, and the numpad on the keyboard is a squeamish touch.
If you need high-end performance, you'll have to dig deep for Razer Blade coin. It's as well worth considering that the Bravo xv is pushing its limits to run the latest and greatest games at 30 fps, which means it may non be the almost hereafter-proof arrangement on the market. But it's not often that you can find a gaming laptop with so few compromises for less than $one,000. If y'all're a Sam's Social club fellow member already, you may every bit well put that membership to good utilise.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/msi-bravo-15
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