MSI Prestige 15 (A12Ux) – Top 5 Pros and Cons

Office laptops have no business being boring, despite most manufacturers making you believe that this should be the case. We call that laziness and we don’t appreciate it, especially in more expensive offerings.

MSI was never one of those brands, putting a decent amount of time into the design, which can yield positive results, as while people don’t often admit it, they care about their laptop’s appearance. Fortunately, with the 2022 model of the Prestige 15, MSI not only worked in the design but on the internals and performance as well, delivering a well-rounded office device that is capable of a lot.

Today we present you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the MSI Prestige 15 (A12Ux).

MSI Prestige 15 (A12Ux): Full Specs / In-depth Review


3 reasons to BUY the MSI Prestige 15 (A12Ux)

1. Design and build quality

Unpacking the box and we see a slab of aluminum, which feels premium, and is pretty durable. The lid is the stronger of the two, showing better rigidity. There is some flex from the base, but nothing to worry about that much. The laptop has a grey exterior with an MSI logo on the lid, sharp edges, and rounded corners. In terms of dimensions, the laptop weighs only 1.69 kg and has a profile of 18.9 mm.

On the sides, we see the I/O, which consists of two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 2) ports, two USB Type-C 4.0 ports with Thunderbolt 4 support, an HDMI 2.0 port, a MicroSD card reader, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.


2. Display quality

The Full HD IPS panel comes with comfortable viewing angles, a max brightness of 312 nits in the middle of the screen, 298 nits as an average for the entire display area, a max deviation of 12%, and a contrast ratio of 1150:1. The panel covers 94% of the sRGB color gamut, while also showing 0 PWM usage across all brightness levels.

In terms of accuracy, we tested the display with both the stock settings (left) and with our Design and Gaming profile applied (right). Our profile managed to lower the dE value down to 0.9. Even with a stock value of 2.0, the panel has decent accuracy.


Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for MSI Prestige 15 (A12Ux) configurations with 15.6″ FHD IPS Innolux N156HCE-EN1 (CMN152D).

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


3. Battery life

The laptop has an 83Wh battery pack which lasts for 13 hours and 3 minutes of Web browsing, or 11 hours and 3 minutes of video playback. Now, we conduct the battery tests with the Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.


2 reasons NOT to buy the MSI Prestige 15 (A12Ux)

1. Upgradeability

The laptop’s 15.6-inch form factor apparently isn’t large enough for MSI to justify fitting SODIMM slots, as soldered RAM is everything that you’ll be getting with the Prestige 15. At least there are up to 32GB of it, so you can be set for a while if you’re willing to shell out the cash. Storage-wise, there are two M.2 PCIe x4 slots, one of which fits Gen 4 drives.

Here is our teardown video, which shows how to access the SSD slots.


2. Cooling

The cooling setup consists of two bulky heat pipes that cover both the CPU and GPU. They are connected to two fans on the left and right sides, along with two heatsinks on the rear end of the laptop, which siphon the heat away.


Max CPU load

Intel Core i7-1280P (28W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
MSI Prestige 15 (A12Ux)2.76 GHz @ 2.27 GHz @ 72°C @ 59W2.74 GHz @ 2.28 GHz @ 79°C @ 59W2.45 GHz @ 1.98 GHz @ 84°C @ 47W

The Core i7-1280P doesn’t overheat, while also showing pretty decent speeds.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan)
MSI Prestige 15 (A12Ux)1489 MHz @ 74°C @ 40W1441 MHz @ 82°C @ 40W1499 MHz @ 72°C @ 40W

Obviously, this isn’t a gaming notebook, so the clock speeds and wattage will be lower. The RTX 3050 has a power limit of only 40W but manages to maintain a clock speed of around 1400-1500MHz.

Gaming comfort

The outside of the chassis gets quite warm, with a hotspot of 53°C.


All MSI Prestige 15 (A12Ux) configurations:

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