MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo review: Copilot+ PC has plenty to offer

If your list of criteria for the best laptops includes Windows, a compact form factor, plenty of ports, an OLED screen, and a decent build quality, then the MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo has a better-than-average chance of making your shortlist.

I've been using this as a working laptop for a couple of weeks for this review, to help inform whether this is the right laptop for your needs. From battery life to audio performance, key specifications to gaming prowess, I've gone into it all included below.

There are plenty of other routes to travel down when picking the right laptop upgrade, though. So if this MSI doesn't seem like the right fit, then check out our guides to the best laptops under £500, the best lightweight laptops, and the best student laptops.

Price & Availability

The MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo review is out now. If you're shopping in the UK you can pick it up from retailers including Amazon, as well as direct from MSI itself.

The widgets on this page will show you the best prices on the web right now, but at the time of writing you buy this laptop up for around £1,500 / $1,400 / AU$2,300.

Design & Display

With a magnesium-aluminium chassis, the MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo tips the scales at 990g, and feels well put together on the whole.

There are some areas of weakness, such as the relatively thick plastic bezels around the screen, and a certain amount of flimsiness. But these points don't detract too much from what is a decent-looking laptop.

It's a laptop that feels solid when it's opened up, though, and it's compact enough to take just about anywhere (the official dimensions are 299 x 210 x 16.9mm).

Ports-wise, we've got a microSD card reader, one full-size HDMI 2.1 port, one Type-A USB 3.2 port, and two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, as well as a 3.5mm combo port for a mic or headphones. It's a decent selection, especially for a laptop this size.

The 13.3-inch, 2880 x 1800 pixel OLED screen delivers a 16:10 aspect – a ratio that's great for writing documents and viewing websites – and it produces an impressively vibrant and rich picture.

Of course, being this is OLED, the blacks are as deep and dark as you'd expect, but the colours are typically gorgeous too. So for movies, TV shows, and videos on YouTube everything looks really great.

Now it's not the brightest screen you'll ever come across, and the refresh rate is capped at 60Hz (one of several reasons why gamers will want to look elsewhere), but it's a display that's going to impress most people who set eyes on it.

Features & Performance

The MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo (this being the A2VMG model that I got in for review) comes with an Intel Core Ultra 9 288V processor, 32GB of RAM, 128MB of integrated Intel Arc graphics, and 1TB of SSD storage on board.

Straight away that tells you this is a decent laptop for just about any task, bar high-end gaming or professional-level video editing.

In fact, MSI has positioned it as very much an everyday all-rounder. This Prestige is here here to handle your spreadsheets, your web browsing, your video calls, your emailing, your social media, and your photo editing.

It's worth mentioning that there is an Intel Core Ultra 7 version of the laptop available, if you want to sacrifice a bit of power and save some money.

There's no real sluggishness or slowdown in terms of performance until you really start overloading the laptop – such as with more demanding photo and video editing tasks.

It will get through the tasks you give it, though if they go beyond the day-to-day, you might have to wait a second or five longer than you would like.

Some basic gaming is possible, too, although with integrated graphics this isn't going to match the best gaming laptops on the market. It's only really the very latest and most demanding games that won't reach an acceptable frame rate – most others will, at least if you're prepared to dial down the graphical settings and resolution.

It's good to see Wi-Fi 7 included here, meaning full support for the latest routers and Wi-Fi mesh systems running the same standard.

However, the audio isn't anything to write home about. You get a couple of 2-watt speakers for stereo sound, and while they're perfectly fine for videos, podcasts, and calls, but they're not really going to get your music sounding its best.

There's also a rather straightforward 5MP webcam built into the area just above the screen, which does the job well enough (and has Windows Hello support).

You get all the Copilot+ PC artificial intelligence extras here, from live captions to AI-enhanced photo editing, plus a few MSI AI extras – including real-time optimisation tweaks – but there's not much in this department that's really of note, or different to what you would get from similar Copilot+ laptops.

Battery Life

I set up the laptop to stream a movie from YouTube, with the screen brightness maximized and the sound muted, and the battery level dropped 13 percent across two hours, suggesting you'll typically get a good 14-15 hours between charges here – depending on what you're doing, of course.

In more general use, battery life exceeded expectations: on the couple of days that I did take the laptop away from a desk for the bulk of the working day, there was still around half the battery life left by the time I was closing down the lid. If you're careful with what you're doing, this could last you a good two days between charges.

MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo review: Verdict

What stood out most for me when testing the MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo is the OLED screen – it's rich and sharp and excellent in terms of contrast.

The battery life – which can be a bit of a worry on Windows laptops like this (especially those with OLED screens) – is the second standout positive, lasting for impressive periods.

In terms of everything else, it's a bit more run-of-the-mill – and by that I don't mean it has drawbacks, just areas where you'd struggle to tell this apart from other laptops in the same sort of price range.

The CPU and RAM combination are way ahead of what you'd get on cheaper models, however, and will cope with most tasks admirably. But gamers and professional creatives are going to need a little more.

Overall, I'd say the MSI MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo ticks the vast majority of the boxes you want in a laptop like this – and if you can find it at a discount price then it's a compelling offering.

Also consider

If the MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo hasn't grabbed you in this review, don't panic – many other Windows 11 laptops are available.

If you like the MSI brand but want a bit more oomph in terms of gaming power on the go, consider the MSI Stealth 18 HX AI. This manages to pack in some serious gaming specs and an 18-inch display without getting overly bulky.

On the other hand, if you're looking for something for working on the go, in the office, and at home, then the HP Elitebook Ultra G1i might suit best. It's key selling points are its build quality and its performance (relative to its size), though we weren't entirely convinced about the keyboard and touchpad combo in our review.