CES 2023 Review: MSI Stealth 14 Studio

Ever since Acer's giant 21-inch gaming laptop made the news, it completely broke the mold of what form the gaming PC can take. But no one is going to pretend that a laptop that weighs as much as my labrador is something that they would lug around everyday.

For those of us who don't need that sort of caliber of gaming power, but still want a powerful laptop for content creation or to get in the occasional round of serious gaming, that is what the MSI Stealth series is geared for. Having experienced a hands-on review with the MSI Stealth 15M, I was blown away by how much a gaming laptop can appear like a business machine. But with MSI's new Stealth 14 Studio, featured at the CES 2023, we're looking at an even more compact laptop that no one would suspect to be a powerful gaming laptop.

New Smaller Footprint

The MSI Stealth 15M boasted the title of 'The World's Thinnest 15-inch Gaming Laptop', and while the new Stealth 14 Studio doesn't challenge that, MSI managed to shrink the footprint of the new ultraportable gaming laptop, shaving 1.7 inches off the width. The slightly smaller 14-inch screen of course attributes to the size reduction, but other drastic design changes were also needed to make this possible.

The most obvious change is the elimination of the ventilation grills above the keyboard, which was one of the only giveaways the Stealth 15M had that it was a gaming laptop. Now that the Stealth 14 Studio is without this obvious tail, it looks even more like a productivity laptop.

Processing Power of a Gaming Laptop

Despite the smaller footprint, the Stealth 14 Studio does not compromise on performance as expected, and packs the latest 13th Generation Intel Core i7-13700H processor, up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU with two RAM slots capable of up to 64GB DDR5 RAM. With this kind of specs, it's a little giant that will surely satisfy most demanding content creation as well as serious gaming needs.

QHD+ Resolution and 240Hz OLED Screen

Having the processing muscle is only half the equation, as the demand for ultra responsive display is just as important for it to qualify as a gaming laptop. The Stealth 14 Studio starts from 14" FHD+ (1920 x 1200), with a 165Hz refresh rate, which already bests its predecessor which tops out at 144Hz.

But for those who are serious about their gaming experience, the Stealth 14 Studio can also be kitted out with a 14" QHD + (2560 x 1600) OLED screen, with a 240Hz refresh rate - which is more the gamer's standard monitor requirement in 2023.

Most Power in Battery and Adaptor

The only chink in the armor with the Stealth 15M was its battery life - which was to be expected given the formfactor and the processing power that's packed inside. What's impressive with the Stealth 14 Studio is that despite its smaller form, MSI has managed to fit in a 4-cell 72Whr battery, a near 30% increase.

The improvements did not stop at the laptops themselves either. We were already impressed with the 150W power adaptor of the Stealth 15M, but the Stealth 14 Studio comes with a strikingly more powerful 240W slim adaptor - that's almost doubling the wattage, and will be sure to satisfy the power hungry high-spec internals of the new gaming laptop.

Final Verdict

The need for business and gaming laptops are vastly different: the former needs to be light and portable - often at the cost of processing power; and the latter prioritizes power over form factor. The MSI Stealth 14 Studio expertly satisfies both uses, even better than the Stealth 15M, its predecessor.

Impressed by how much power MSI was able to pack into an ultraportable form factor of the Stealth 14 Studio, we're awarding it with the IBTimes Best of CES 2023 badge.