Review MSI Stealth 15M – B12U

Recently, laptop designs have become slimmer. Provides flexibility and convenience for its users. The specifications offered also continue to increase. In fact, several vendors have managed to offer slim laptops that are very powerful.

One of the slim laptops with high specifications that had stopped by our editorial desk was the MSI Stealth 15M -B12U. This laptop comes with quite high specifications and already uses the latest Intel processors.

Design

This MSI Stealth 15M – B12U comes with a thickness of only 17 mm. The design is square, but rounded at the edges. There is a change in the logo and design on the cover, where the new Stealth 15M series shifts the Dragon logo and the MSI brand with this hologram access closer to the right side of the cover. The cover feels smooth with a black metallic finish.

Although thin, the MSI Stealth 15M – B12U is equipped with quite a variety of connectivity. On the right side there is an HDMI port, 1x USB type-A 3.2 Gen1, and 1x Type-C USB3.2 Gen2, 1x Type-C (USB3.2 Gen2 / DP). While on the left side there is a charging port, 1x USB type-A 3.2 Gen1, 1x microphone and headphones.

The thing that is quite interesting is the exhaust area. MSI 15M – B12U has a large exhaust area. Almost on every side, both the right, left, and rear have hot air exhaust holes. At first I thought it was a USB slot, that's a lot.

This series comes with a 15.6-inch FHD 1932 x 1080 pixels screen. The screen looks very spacious thanks to the thin bezels. However, you will still get a webcam in the bezel at the top of the screen.

The hinge design hasn't changed much, being sturdy enough to support the screen when opened on any tilt scheme. The design of the holes with a fairly wide area is also still visible at the top of the keyboard. These holes appear to be areas for air circulation, along with where the Nahimic by SteelSeries-supported audio exits.

For the keyboard, the MSI Stealth 15M uses an exclusive keyboard with backlit spectrum. You will get a keyboard with a different backlit color display in some areas.

The character of the keyboard is very soft and light. The size is also quite large with the ideal distance to help typing. When pressed, the distance is quite short. I think the keyboard is comfortable for playing games or working.

The touchpad is also quite spacious. Supports smooth and responsive cursor movement.

In terms of exhaust air, the MSI 15M – B12U has abundant air exhaust features. Almost on every side, both the right, left, and rear have hot air exhaust holes.

Even so, I initially doubted its convenience. Considering the exhaust to the right, in fact where the hand to operate the mouse is located, hot air is blown out. In fact, the air output is not hot, even though it is being used to play heavy games and the fan is spinning at maximum.

Features

For easy laptop configuration, MSI includes support software called MSI Center. You can get various information and other settings to maximize the performance of this MSI Stealth 15M – B12U.

MSI Center can display the current CPU and GPU performance, including the temperature of the CPU and GPU, storage usage, and memory used. Here you can also see the complete specifications of this laptop, starting from the processor series, RAM amount, GPU series, storage amount, as well as LAN or WiFi network speed.

In the second tab, a place where there are many support settings that can support the performance of using a laptop. You can set the fan speed or leave it to the AI-powered Smart Auto mode so it will automatically adjust the fan speed depending on what application is being opened.

Generally, if you activate Smart Auto, when you open gaming applications and benchmarks, the fan will spin faster. Or you can activate Extreme Performance if you are really going to run editing applications or play games.

For those who like to play competitive games, you can rely on MSI Companion to monitor frame rate stability. You can also record your gaming sessions, and make cool video compilations from those video clips.

MSI Center also has a feature to check how optimal your system is and provides options to maintain battery health on the MSI Stealth 15M – B12U laptop. Including a way to revocery a laptop when there is a problem.

With MSI Center, you no longer need to install third-party applications to get what you need.

Specifications

For specifications, the MSI Stealth 15M – B12U I received uses an Intel i7-1280P processor. The GPU is NVIDIA RTX 3060, 16GB RAM and 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSD storage.

With specifications like these, you can imagine how powerful this laptop is to run many things. Starting from working, to playing games with a fairly high specification requirement.

Performance

As I mentioned earlier, when running heavy games, the MSI Stealth 15 M – B12U fan spins faster. However, here is precisely what makes me quite like this laptop.

The fan sound produced by this laptop is not as loud as other gaming laptops. Smoother. Not like the sound of a storm which sometimes really annoys my cat.

In addition, the heat dissipation wind also doesn't feel hot, it tends to be warm. Interestingly, this condition also applies to the surface of the laptop, especially the keyboard area. It doesn't feel hot, let alone makes your fingers sweat.

No less cool, when the fan rotates to the maximum, the temperature of the components can be maintained. From some observations that I made, the component temperature remains below 50 degrees Celsius, even though it is being used to run games and benchmark applications that force the components to work optimally. This laptop has excellent cooling performance.

Conclusion

Despite its slim build, this laptop is a great gaming machine. Not only is it equipped with qualified specifications, a screen with a high refresh rate, a comfortable keyboard, but MSI is able to offer a great cooling system overall. This is one of the reasons that keeps the laptop's performance agile and comfortable, when used to play my favorite games.

Its software support is also quite complete. So I don't have to download third-party apps to find the features I need, they're all available in MSI Center. Nahimic audio software support is also able to make the gaming experience even more exciting. Not only games, this software can also provide good sound for playing music or watching movies.

The notes on the MSI Stealth 15M – B12U are port connectivity and still use DDR4. The type of port connectivity is arguably too modern. There are only two USB type A that are still commonly used by some peripheral brands. Even so, this is not a fatal flaw.

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