Picking an MSI laptop used to be a real head-scratcher, with no less than five separate sub brands… and that was just on the productivity side. The gaming division had almost as many again. The firm has fixed that for 2026, streamlining its work-friendly range down to Prestige, Venture and Modern. The Prestige leads the way, with the regular and Flip variants each getting an all-new chassis – and the latter also adding a secret stylus stash into the mix.
The Prestige is launching soon in 14in and 16in flavours, either as a traditional laptop or as a 2-in-1 convertible with a Nano Pen-supporting touchscreen. You get one bundled in the box, and it slots into a groove on the bottom of the laptop when not in use. Flick the mechanical latch and it pops out, giving you pen input, a built-in microphone, and a button that can wake Microsoft’s CoPilot AI assistant. A 13 second fast charge inside its storage slot is good for 45 minutes of writing or doodling.
Having seen the new line-up at a pre-CES preview, I’m loving the new design: each laptop has rounded corners, a metal alloy build that seemed pretty resistant to fingerprints during my demo, and is impressively slim. Whether you go 14in or 16in, Flip or regular, you’re getting a super-slim machine that’s just 11.9mm at its thinnest point, and weighs as little as 1.32kg. They don’t skimp on ports either, with twin Thunderbolt 4 USB-Cs and two USB-As along with full-size HDMI and a 3.5mm headset port.
The touchpad has seen a massive growth spurt from the outgoing laptop, and has smartened up too. There are now shortcuts for volume, display brightness and other controls at the corners of the pad. Other upgrades include doubling the speakers to four, up from two before. As a work-ready machine you can also expect both Windows Hello fingerprint and facial recognition, TPM 2.0 enabled by default, and vPRO support. The webcam (which has a built-in privacy slider) can also automatically lock your machine when you walk away.
MSI has ditched IPS displays on the Prestige 16 in favour of a 2.8K resolution OLED panel with 48-120Hz refresh rate, DisplayHDR 600 certification and 100% P3 colour coverage, which should please creative types. The Prestige 14 goes with a 1920×1200 OLED instead.
Performance comes courtesy of Intel’s latest “Panther Lake” processors, up to a Core Ultra X9 388H. Efficiency is the name of the game this generation, with desktop performance only seeing a small hike, but GPU and AI-based processing have seen bigger gains.
Models with X7 and X9 chips will get the faster Arc B390 integrated GPU, which should provide a healthy power boost over the previous generation, while lower-tier silicon sticks with simpler Intel Graphics. Dual fans and a vapor chamber cooling system should keep everything cool while sticking below 30dBA under full load, so as not to disturb any colleagues that aren’t working quite as hard as you are.
MSI reckons the more efficient CPU is good enough to last for a massive 30+ hours of 1080p video playback, despite the 81Whr battery not being a colossus. That’ll translate to all-day use without having to bring the power brick along. It should be powerful enough to give a 50% refuel in 30 minutes, and the laptops also support 100W PD 3.0 recharging.
If you want something even more portable, the Prestige 13 AI+ sounds like the one to go for. Though I didn’t get to see it in person at MSI’s preview event, the firm says the laptop has managed to shed a considerable 100g from the previous generation, making it the lightest 13in laptop around at just 889g – as long as you opt for the smaller 53Whr battery version.
It’ll also use Panther Lake Intel silicon, so you might not need the extra staying power the 75Whr model will provide – it weighs 930g as a result of the bigger batts.
There’s no word on pricing just yet for this or any of the other four new Prestige variants. They’ll be available to pre-order from tomorrow, and official sales should kick off from 27 January.
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