MSI Katana 17 Gaming Laptop: 13th Gen Intel Core i7, GeForce RTX 4060, 17.3" 144Hz FHD Display, 32GB DDR5, 1TB NVMe SSD, USB-Type C, Cooler Boost 5, Win11 Home: Black B13VFK-835US

I am doing this review on my new laptop! This thing works great, it starts right up faster than any other laptop I've ever had. It runs all my games on full and doesn't crash. I had another msi laptop before that lasted seven years before it started to slow down a bit, and decided that I would get another msi. This thing is great it is not loud and is very easy to set up. I play a lot of video games and this is awesome.

[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.

I felt like I did plenty of research going into this computer purchase, compared benchmarks and hardware to ensure I was making a choice in product that would last 3-5 years. Let me tell you, this laptop isn’t it for my application.I needed a laptop to be mobile and edit content, primarily graphic design and 1-5 minute video editing. This includes using the entire Adobe suite with either one or multiple programs (not all at once). I found my experience with this laptop to be subpar at best. Right away I was leery of the AMD processor, I much prefer Intel. I cannot prove that this CPU was the root cause of all my issues, but I have a feeling it was a contributor. I was very disappointed with the lack of reliability, and it seemed every time I needed to use the laptop, there was some issue. And then of course if I gave it a little time it would finally come around, just enough for me to question if I could “make it work” in the long run. It got to the point where I started documenting the issues 2 days in and noted weird things I was finding since this laptop just didn’t feel right. Below were several of the things I noticed in just over a week of owning and using daily. Keep in mind I came from a M3 Pro MacBook Pro prior to this.Delivered: 9/20/24Issues with laptop:Google chrome opens first search with bold text every time, super annoying. Incognito mode does same thing so doesn’t seem to be an account setting/issueInitially opened using Yahoo as search engine with brand new Google Chrome download. Could have been an issue with previous extensions that I had, since I had logged into google first before searching anything9/23Laptop was at 10% and went into power saver, keyboard dimmed and brightness went down. Plugged it in for an hour, go to turn it on, black screen. Plugged into other outlet (neither outlet is switched) and it finally fired up 10 minutes later.9/25Got home and opened laptop, won’t connect to home WiFi, which it’s been connected to for almost a week and has remembered. Turned WiFi off and on again, and now says No Wi-Fi Networks found. Need external WiFi adapter to use internet now.9/26Plugged in hard drive (offline) to work on project, computer won’t read hard drive. Previously Norton wanted to run a scan every time I plugged in, so not sure if that’s why it’s not recognizing the drive but I wasn’t able to do work off the SSD until I had WiFi again9/26Was editing a project with computer, closed lid for 15 minutes, came back and screen is black. Won’t turn on or restart… 20 minutes later it turns on after deciding it wanted to be shut down, and tabs are now all closed and unsaved work lost… not cool.9/28Finally used Adobe Premiere Pro for the first time on this device, playback is CHOPPY, it will play forward when previewing, then chop back a few frames, then play forward, they chop back a few frames. Not a clean simple playback to review my timeline and see how my project looks…Trackpad pinch to zoom doesn’t zoom-in on timeline in Premiere… throws off typical workflow, VERY annoying9/29Perfectly on que… blue screen of death “Recovery” while turning on… time to get a MacBook.Another odd thing: EVERY time the computer restarts MSI Center and Xbox re-pin themselves to the taskbarI also added quite a few add-ons to “try” making the laptop feel more like a Mac. I added things like 3 finger drag, spacebar preview, phone link, changed photoshop and Illustrator settings to allow pinch to zoom… and even with all of this to help my workflow feel more like a Mac, the clunky computer workflow and unreliability kept me feeling disconnected from my work.

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