MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+
Not every laptop shopper is looking for a hulking behemoth with jet engine fans and a bleeding-edge graphics card. Sometimes you just need a reliable workhorse that’s pretty decent at a lot of different tasks. Maybe it’s for school, or work, or entry-level creative endeavors. In that case, you might end up with something like the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+. I’m normally laser-focused on power or portability, so a machine that covers both was a real novelty for me.
Peeking under the hood, this laptop has a monstrous Intel(R) Core(TM) Ultra X7 358H (1.90 GHz). Meanwhile, the graphics card is a modest Intel(R) Arc(TM) B390 GPU. There’s 32GB of RAM, a 14″ FHD+ OLED screen, and ten-point pen support for the touchscreen. We’ve also got a couple of Thunderbolt 4 ports, a couple of standard USB ports, and an HDMI plug. In other words, all the power is concentrated in that CPU.
The Prestige 14 Flip is trying to do it all. It’s light and portable, with a halfway decent battery life. The screen itself is deliciously crisp. There’s a touchscreen and tablet mode for more unconventional tasks. And it can play a wide range of games. We’re not talking about any AAA heavy hitters, but I did run a whole bunch of indies and slightly older titles without any troubles. Which games, you ask? Why, anything already in my Steam library! Or anything that’s free-to-play. I’ve long since decoupled myself from Xbox Game Pass for budget reasons. Behold an incomplete list!
Good For Certain Games
Ball X Pit: Ran like a dream, crashed once because I was downloading and installing several programs at once.
Deathloop: Defaulted to low or medium settings and honestly should have gone lower. The graphics were hot garbage, but the framerate was shockingly stable. Played much smoother than I anticipated.
Warframe: Smooth as melted butter for the whole time I was playing. Genuinely couldn’t believe it. Is there a server somewhere taking on a chunk of the processing workload? Or is this just an extremely well-optimized game in general?
Supermarket Simulator: Booted up on medium settings, which surprised me. Not what I would describe as a graphically intense game. And yet! Thankfully, the framerate was perfectly smooth, with no glitches during my playtime.
Full Metal Schoolgirl: Absolutely problem-free from the jump, visuals and framerate were pitch perfect.
Cities: Skylines: Graphics settings loaded on high (as opposed to very high), but the framerate was excellent. Had no troubles during my sessions. Still pretty terrible at the game, if anyone was curious.
Tablet Time
When I wasn’t playing games, I generally treated the Prestige 14 Flip like a gigantic tablet. To that end, the flip function is pretty cool. You’ve even got a tablet pen for all your precise tapping needs. Although I can’t speak to the usefulness of the pen-based functions. Since I’m not an artist, I wasn’t doing any drawing. On the other hand, using said pen in a browser convinced the system that you wanted to write out your search terms by hand? This barely worked, if at all. I can’t recommend this particular feature.
I’m also not thrilled about the lack of comics apps on Windows machines. What’s the point of having the enormous, vibrant screen if you can’t read manga or Marvel comics on it? Truly, what are we doing here? This isn’t a knock against this laptop so much as a point against my purchasing one in the future. I’m a big comics reader, and I’d rather not lean on some esoteric techno-sorcery to get my apps running on a system like this one.
The question remains: Can the Prestige 14 Flip do it all? Kind of! Honestly, this is the answer I was expecting right from the start. And that’s totally okay. A good, well-rounded laptop should be pretty decent at everything you need. You can do the usual work tasks, play a wide range of games, and even do a little video editing, if you’re very patient. Better gaming performance would make this machine way heavier, more expensive, and with a terrible battery life. If you want a jack of all trades, you want something like the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+.