MSI Stealth A16 AI+ (Strix Point | RTX 5070 Ti) Laptop Review

TweakTown Rating: 94%

Our Verdict

The MSI Stealth A16 AI+ is a unicorn laptop that does it all: it's powerful, packed with features, great for multimedia, great for gaming, and great for all kinds of work. It's even portable, too. If you can afford the hefty price tag, it should be near the top of your list.

Pros

• Sublime, 240Hz, HDR, OLED screen
• Great speakers
• Perfect for both work and play
• 14.5-hour battery life
• Weighs just 2.1KG

Cons

• Expensive
• Can get very warm

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Amazon for $2699 USD

Buy at Amazon for £2966.56

Introduction, Specifications and Pricing

Around 2019, the likes of MSI and NVIDIA realized that many designers were using gaming laptops for complex graphic-design work and 3D rendering tasks: the GPUs and ports even facilitated mobile design in VR apps. One particular proponent was Colie Wertz, who, at Computex that year, used an MSI Creator laptop and VR to design a spaceship in less than five minutes. Some of his previous work included the trench from Rogue One's Death Star and the ship from Galaxy Quest. He said the laptop had transformed how he worked.

Subsequent 'Creator' laptops were made that combined gaming hardware in the base with more professional screens that eschewed speed for graphical performance. NVIDIA, meanwhile, tweaked its drivers by offering a more stable 'Studio' variant that got updated less frequently and prioritised design applications over gaming.

In the intervening years, MSI has been a leader in this space and now, here's the latest model - unusually, from its Stealth range, which has typically focused upon gaming. The Stealth A16 AI+ features a powerful AMD Strix Point APU and the latest NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti GPU. It's all wrapped up in a (relatively thin) ninja-black chassis but still sports some RGB flourishes. Its high-spec screen is also very fast, meaning it has the potential to suit demanding gamers, too.

Unicorn laptops like this naturally don't come cheap, and this Stealth is no exception: our variant costs an eye-watering $2,999 AUD. So, who should buy it? Is it worth the money? And, is this an ultimate productivity laptop that also suits gamers, or vice versa?

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Features, Details and Design

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The 16-inch MSI Creator Stealth A16 AI+ takes a page out of the ninja-Metallica-Space-Odyssey design book with its all-black, monolithic design, sharp angles, and a barely-there, glossy logo on top. It can hide in the shadows but explodes into life when you open it up to reveal its very bright screen and schmancy, per-key-lit RGB keyboard. It's a great-looking laptop.

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The screen on our review unit is one of the very best on the market. It's an HDR-compatible, 1000-nit OLED display with a coating that, while glossy, manages to banish many (but not all) reflections. The 2,560 x 1,600 resolution provides plenty of space to work with multiple documents and windows. Colours are naturally vibrant, blacks are true and contrast unsurpassed - you can simultaneously see details in highlights and shadows. You might have to dial down the brightness settings to avoid highlights blowing out in some content, and very dark scenes still transform the screen into a black mirror, but this very rarely manifested in day-to-day use.

When HDR was activated, both colourful and monochromatic transitions were also rendered totally smooth with no blocky artefacts or stepping. Plus, it supports 100% of the demanding DCI-P3 colour space, which some designers will love.

It also has a speedy 240Hz refresh rate, which, when matched with the OLED pixels' quick response time, led to some of the sharpest, blur-free, fast-moving graphics being displayed on any laptop on the market. So, both competitive FPS players and designers who work with fast-moving graphics should consider it already.

It's worth noting that MSI also makes this Stealth available with a similarly specified, matte, IPS screen for those who can't countenance any reflections, plus a 120Hz, Mini LED, UHD display for those wanting the maximum resolution.

Above the screen is a Full HD webcam that captures a relatively grain-free image even in low light. Its partnering IR camera supports Windows Hello's facial recognition log-on (and there's a fingerprint reader that does likewise).

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The low-travel, Scrabble-tile keyboard looks great and is comfortable and accurate to type (and game) upon for extended periods. It also features very usable, reduced-size arrow keys, a number pad, plus plenty of feature shortcuts. I should note that I did have to spend a little extra time learning to hit the Space Bar just so... it's not inaccurate but if I didn't strike it right, some wordslacked properspacing.

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The trackpad is smooth and accurate, and the button-actuation is well-weighted and near-silent.

Despite the relatively thin chassis, the Stealth A16 AI+ fits in six (count'em) speakers: four 2-Watters and two 2-Watt woofers. They get impressively loud, provide punchy bass, and offer impressive fidelity from the bottom to the top end.

Software

The NPU in the AMD Strix Point processor makes the Stealth A16 AI+ compatible with Windows CoPilot+. Beyond that, there's a refreshing lack of bloatware, with only MSI Centre present to monitor your system and switch between performance modes. There's also the steelseries GG app, which lets you adjust the RGB settings of your keyboard and create macros. Plus, there's the MSI TrueColour app to adjust colour profiles and add an onscreen crosshair, for if you're playing something like CoD in Hardcore Mode.

I/O

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On the left of the MSI Stealth A16 AI+ is a Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.1, and a USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port.

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On the right is a 3.5mm audio jack, a Thunderbolt 4 port, another USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, and a rather awkwardly placed power adapter socket.

Inside, there's Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. All that's really missing is a form of SD card slot, which actually isn't too surprising considering this chassis was originally designed for gaming.

Portability

The MSI Stealth A16 AI+ weighs 2.1KG which isn't particularly heavy for a stacked, 16-inch laptop. Just remember that, as with many similar 'portable' laptops, it comes with 758g of power brick and cables, which you'll need to bring with you for maximum-powered computing.

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If you make use of the MUX virtual switch (in MSI Center), you'll be able to disable the discrete NVIDIA GPU and run the PCMark 10 Modern Office benchmark for an impressive 14 hours 26 minutes. That's almost two days out of the office. If you're not doing much. It's impressive for a stacked 20mm-thick laptop, though.

Build quality is impressive. The chassis is solid. The lid is rigid, and it barely flexes when a moderate twisting force is applied. It should survive life on the road, but it's not a laptop that's undergone the full gamut of torture testing that business-class laptops usually suffer, so bear that in mind if you're frequently travelling with it.

Benchmarks

Our review unit of the MSI Stealth A16 AI+ has an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, which has 12 cores that operate from 2-5.1GHz across 24 threads. There's also an NPU that can operate at 50 TOPS and integrated, 16-core Radeon 890M graphics. Most of the time, you'll be utilizing the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPU with 12GB of GDDR7 RAM. This is all partnered by a 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe hard drive (there's an additional slot for more) plus 32GB of LPDDR5 memory.

We ran the full gamut of performance benchmarks to see what it could and couldn't do.

CrystalDiskMark

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In the CrystalDiskMark benchmark, Stealth A16 AI+ hit 4,943MB/s write speeds. That's fast enough for the most demanding applications.

Cinebench R24

Having 24 high-performing threads is always a benefit when rendering, and the Cinebench R24 benchmark spells out why. While the single-thread score of 117 rivals that of lightweight ultraportable processors, its multi-thread score of 1,234 is more than twice what we'd expect from them. This is a good portable computer for processor-based rendering.

3DMark Speed Way + Steel Nomad

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I moved on to the challenging 3DMark Speed Way and Steel Nomad benchmarks to check for gaming potential. In the former, which runs at 1,440p with ray-tracing, the MSI Stealth A16 AI+ scored 4,039 (average 40fps). In Steel Nomad (which tests for 4K gaming potential without ray-tracing), it scored 3,477 (35fps). As such, you'll be able to play the latest and greatest games on this Stealth, but you'll likely have to drop the resolution and/or detail settings to keep things running smoothly.

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It's also worth noting that the NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti's scores were comparable to (and often a smidge ahead of) last-generation RTX 4080 GPUs running at stock speeds.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme + Time Spy

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It was a similar story in the older 3DMark Time Spy tests. In the regular, 1,440p version, it managed 14,224 (average 95fps) while in the Extreme (UHD) version, it managed 5,170 (average 30fps). It's a competent gaming machine when you want it to be.

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3DMark Solar Bay + Night Raid

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Not surprisingly, the Stealth A16 AI+ blitzed through the easier casual and competitive game tests. In 3DMark Solar Bay (1,440p with ray tracing), it scored 71,733, which is an average framerate of 272fps. In the easier (Full HD) Night Raid test, it scored 63,787, which is an average of 620fps.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

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I also ran the built-in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's benchmark. At Default settings (native resolution displayed with 66% rendered resolution and no DLSS AI frame generation), it averaged 114fps with a 1% Low score of 89fps: very playable. At more competitive Minimum Settings and a Full HD resolution (66 per cent rendered) with DLSS off, it averaged 155fps with a 1% Low of 124fps. DLSS frame generation boosted this to 251fps with a 204fps 1% Low score, which is high enough for competitive players to make the most of the fast, 240Hz screen.

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So, the transition to a more professional positioning has not diminished the Stealth's gaming prowess.

Cooling

Most of the time, the Stealth runs silently thanks to the mature, MSI Cooler Boost 5 technology, which uses five heat pipes (some of which are shared) and two fans to keep things cool. The base can still get a little warm, though - a thin chassis will always struggle with powerful components. When Extreme Performance Mode (with discreet graphics only) is activated, it will routinely get more-than-warm on the base with the fan activating into a low, unobtrusive whoosh from time to time. Under load, the fan will stay on to a more noticeable level (without getting too loud).

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Final Thoughts

There are a few people who wouldn't want the MSI Stealth A16 AI+. It's a professional tool that will likely make you more productive, whether you're doing office-oriented or design work. It's brilliant for consuming all kinds of multimedia, and it's a great gaming laptop too. On top of that, its relatively svelte chassis and 14-and-a-half-hour battery life make it portable, meaning it's one of those wonderful, rare unicorn laptops. The downside, as ever, is that such desirability doesn't come cheap. But if you can afford one, buy one!