Our primary overall benchmark, UL’s PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC’s storage throughput.
Three more tests are CPU-centric or processor-intensive. Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs’ Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular tasks ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the freeware video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Creators rates a PC’s image editing prowess using various automated operations that it runs inside the seminal photo software Adobe Photoshop 25.
Across all of our productivity tests, the MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo made a decent showing, outpacing most competitors in some tests (Cinebench, Photoshop) but falling behind in others (HandBrake and Geekbench). The productivity results are interesting because the Prestige laptop kept pace with the 16-inch Acer model in more tests than not, even outpacing it in Photoshop. Meanwhile, the Prestige comparatively lagged in HandBrake, which might be down to cooling system differences. Regardless, the Prestige’s performance results revealed a reliable productivity and content creation machine, especially for its size.
