MSI Stealth A16 AI+ (2025) Review

Introduction

The MSI Stealth A16 AI+ (2025) is the gaming laptop to purchase if you don’t like traditional gaming laptop looks.

No, seriously – this MSI laptop is significantly thinner and lighter than other laptops in its weight class, while coming with a solid core of an AMD Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 processor and RTX 5070 Ti laptop GPU alongside 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. For good measure, you get a 16-inch 2560×1600 240Hz OLED screen and a huge 99.9Whr battery.

Granted, there is quite a cost attached to the svelte and powerful laptop before me, with it clocking in at £2899.99/$2899.99. That’s approximately the same outlay as some 5080-powered gaming laptops we’ve tested, including MSI’s own Vector 16 HX AI A2XW (2025) and the Medion Erazer Beast 16 X1 Ultimate (RTX 5080).

I’ve been testing the Stealth A16 AI+ (2025) for the last few weeks to see if this slender contender is as good as it’s cracked up to be, and to see if it’s a shoo-in for the best gaming laptop we’ve tested.

Design and Keyboard

• Understated, slender chassis
• Good port selection
• Snappy keyboard and trackpad

In line with its Stealth namesake, the Stealth A16 AI+ (2025) is a slim and slender laptop for one of its power that looks marvellous. It features an all-black metal frame for a durable and understated look against other brasher gaming laptops both in MSI’s own lineup and from rivals.

I like to think of this MSI laptop as a pleasant halfway house between the MacBook Pro-style aesthetics of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2025) and the full-on gaming behemoths with their cooling ducts and thicker chassis.

Plus, with a 2.1kg weight, it’s a fair bit lighter than a lot of larger-screened gaming laptops, making it easier to take around on the go, discounting the need for its heavier power brick against similarly-sized ultrabooks.

A 19.95mm thickness means it’s substantially thinner than other gaming laptops, while not being so slender and svelte that it doesn’t compromise too much on ports. The Stealth A16 AI+ (2025)’s left side has a full-size HDMI port alongside an Ethernet jack for networking and a USB-A port.

The right side is home to two more USB-As, a USB-C and a headphone jack, while the laptop’s rear is devoid of any ports, unlike other laptops. It’s a shame there isn’t a second USB-C, given the ubiquity of the port in 2025.

In keeping with other laptops of its size, the Stealth A16 AI+ (2025) benefits from a near full-size keyboard layout that comes complete with a dedicated number pad, arrow keys and a fully-fledged function row.

The keys have a wonderfully positive keypress with lots of tactility that makes for one of the best laptop keyboards I’ve used in some time, while being reasonably quiet. The RGB lighting sticks only to the legend of the keycap itself for a classier look, as opposed to being across the entire thing.

The trackpad here is larger than the one fitted to the Vector 16 AI HX model I’ve recently tested, and has a slicker and snappier feel to make navigating a breeze.

Display and Sound

• Gorgeous OLED screen with high res and refresh rate
• Deep blacks and punchy contrast
• Speakers have good width, but little else

MSI has pulled out all the stops with the Stealth A16 AI+ (2025)’s screen, opting for a large 16-inch QHD+ (or 2560×1600) resolution OLED panel, complete with 240Hz refresh rate for good measure. That translates to a silky smooth, detailed panel that’s fantastic for games and general computing alike.

Being an OLED means gorgeous contrast and deep blacks, both of which are provided thanks to my colorimeter’s measurements of 13650:1 and 0.03 giving this screen plenty of depth and dynamic range. A 6600K colour temperature is virtually perfect, too.

Colour accuracy is fantastic, with a measured 99% sRGB and 97% DCI-P3 alongside 88% Adobe RGB. That means the Stealth A16 AI+ (2025)’s panel is extremely well-suited to both productivity tasks, such as web browsing, and more colour-sensitive editing tasks.

As is typical with OLED screens, where the Stealth A16 AI+ (2025)’s screen falls down is with its peak brightness. Don’t get me wrong, the 376.5 nits of peak SDR brightness I measured is fine for indoor and outdoor use, although some rivals with IPS-level or Mini LED screens are punchier for brightness.

The speakers here are okay for a set of immersive laptop options, with a surprising amount of width and space, although not much else. It’s mostly mid-range otherwise, with some depth. You are better off using the headphone jack, as usual.

Performance

• Solid performance from Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and 5070 Ti
• Good gaming numbers
• Decent SSD in capacity and speed

It is possible to configure the Stealth A16 AI+ (2025) with up to an RTX 5090 if you wish, although my sample isn’t. Instead, the variation I have comes with the upper mid-range RTX 5070 Ti laptop GPU alongside the beefy AMD Ryzen AI HX 370 chip that has previously wowed in slender ultrabooks such as the Asus Zenbook S 16 (2024) and Asus ProArt P16 (2025).

If you need a refresher, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is a potent laptop chip with its 12 cores, 24 threads, and a boost clock of up to 5.1GHz. As is demonstrated again here in the Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23 tests, it’s a seriously powerful chip.

The single and multi-core tests provide strong results, especially thanks to AMD’s continued use of hyperthreading. Even if the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX has more cores, it’s neck and neck with the HX 370 in multi-threaded Cinebench when comparing against the MSI Vector 16 HX AI A2XW (2025).

Gaming performance is where things get a bit more interesting, with the Stealth A16 AI+ (2025) actually being the first RTX 5070 Ti laptop GPU-powered option I’ve laid hands on. Generationally, the general performance here is akin to RTX 4080 and even some lower-power 4090 laptops, such as the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) with its more constrained form factor.

With this in mind, the results in Cyberpunk 2077 and Returnal at 1080p with 102.87fps and 97fps respectively, are strong, while a 178fps result in Rainbow Six Extraction at 1080p demonstrates that this laptop will have no trouble with eSports titles.

It’s more of the same at 1440p too, with Cyberpunk 2077 sitting at 68.50fps and Returnal at 78fps. These numbers are in and around the RTX 5080-powered Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2025) with its RTX 5080 and Intel Core Ultra 9 285H processor.

Bringing the DLSS Transformer upscaler to the party with Cyberpunk took non-ray-traced results up to 108.23fps at 1080p and to 87.67fps at the laptop’s native 2560×1600 resolution. RT: Ultra Cyberpunk sat at 43.88fps at 1080p and 27.00fps at native res, while with DLSS, results were almost doubled with 66.89fps at 1080p and 50.14fps at native res.

Being a 50-series laptop means the Stealth A16 AI+ (2025) benefits from Nvidia’s clever Multi-Frame-Gen tech that adds in up to three ‘fake frames’ for every traditionally generated one, thanks to AI for a perceivably smoother experience. The addition of these frames is reliant upon a base FPS figure that is high enough to mean the displayed image with Multi Frame Gen isn’t choppy or laggy.

With this, it’s able to mean you can take advantage of high refresh rate displays with smooth and responsive output without much of a penalty in latency. Using the maximum 4x multiplier, it was able to take Cyberpunk 2077 with RT: Ultra at 2560×1600 resolution to 153.50fps, and at 1080p, pushed it to 211.10fps.

The Stealth A16 AI+ (2025) comes with 32GB of fast DDR5 RAM to aid with multitasking and intensive workloads, as well as a solid 1TB SSD, giving you a good capacity for storing apps and games. It is a decently quick drive too, with measured reads and writes of 7033.61MB/s and 4994.26 MB/s, putting it towards the top end of a Gen 4 SSD.

Software

• Clean Windows 11 install
• Minimal MSI apps
• Copilot+ PC functionality is present

The Stealth A16 AI+ (2025) comes with a remarkably clean Windows 11 install, with only MSI-specific app preinstalled. It’s MSI Center, the brand’s catch-all app that allows you to do everything from checking on your system’s vitals to configuring its RGB lighting, and a lot more besides.

With the Ryzen AI HX 370 inside, there is enough horsepower for this laptop to be considered a Copilot+ PC. This provides access to Microsoft’s AI functionality for generative powers and filters in the Photos and Paint app, as well as the clever Windows Studio webcam effects for background blurring, auto-framing and maintaining eye contact.

Battery Life

• Lasted for 4 hours 46 minutes in the battery test
• Capable of lasting for half a working day

The Stealth A16 AI+ (2025) comes with a sizeable 99.9Whr battery inside, and should in theory last for a good amount of time for its class, thanks to some reasonably efficient components. MSI makes no real specific claims on battery life to compare against, though.

In the PCMark10 battery life test with the laptop’s OLED screen at the requisite 150 nits of brightness, it only lasted for 4 hours and 46 minutes before conking out. That isn’t the most impressive result, and means you’ll only be getting half a working day out of the Stealth A16 AI+ (2025) (2025) before needing to go back to mains power.

It comes with a 240W power brick that provides some reasonable speeds for getting juice back into the laptop, with a half charge to 50% taking 61 minutes. A full charge took over 2 hours, at 130 minutes.

Should you buy it?

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