MSI Katana A15 AI (2024)  Laptop Review

The MSI Katana 15 is only available in black. See the bottom of the laptop.

The build quality is decent. The chassis is entirely plastic and feels well assembled, with no gaps in the construction. There's some flex on the lid but almost none on the keyboard deck. The weakest part is the display, which twists noticeably when manipulating it. As for the finish, although it's relatively scratch-resistant, it attracts a lot of fingerprints and smudges, as most dark-colored laptops do. The feet feel solid and stick firmly to the bottom.

The hinges are sub-par. They wiggle sideways in their sockets, giving the impression that they're loose, but they also have far too much resistance to allow for a one-handed lift. On the upside, there's no screen wobble when typing heavily, and their wide range lets you set the display flat on the table, which is handy when you need to show the content to someone across from you.

The MSI Katana A15 AI's serviceability is great. Accessing the internals is relatively straightforward: remove 14 Philips screws, then release the bottom panel's clips with a prying tool. One screw is below an easily removable sticker. There's also one screw that's smaller than the others, so it's best to keep it aside to make the reassembly easier. Both storage slots support M.2 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs. The unoccupied slot is next to the battery (below the wireless adapter); you'll need a mounting bracket to install the SSD. Unfortunately, MSI doesn't provide a service guide.

• Documentation
• 200W power adapter and cord

The MSI Katana 15 is available with the following displays:

• 15.6" IPS 1920 x 1080 144Hz (45% NTSC)
• 15.6" IPS 2560 x 1440 165Hz (100% DCI-P3)

A 1080p resolution looks reasonably sharp on a 15.6-inch display. Individual pixels are visible up close, but this isn't an issue at typical viewing distances. The QHD panel is noticeably sharper, with a pixel density of 188 PPI, making it a better option if you play a lot of RPGs or atmospheric games where you have the time to appreciate the graphics or intend on using the laptop for productivity. As for the 16:9 aspect ratio, although it has very little impact on the gaming experience, it does feel outdated, as most recent laptops, including productivity and gaming models, have adopted the slightly taller 16:10 format.

The FHD display has a 144Hz refresh rate, giving you improved input responsiveness and motion smoothness over a standard 60Hz screen; however, its response time is quite slow, resulting in noticeable blur trails behind fast-moving objects. The QHD display will provide a superior visual experience, as it has a 165Hz refresh rate and a faster-advertised response time of 2.5ms.

The FHD display's contrast ratio is good and within the typical range of most IPS panels. However, it's still relatively low compared to other display technologies, like VA and OLED. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dim settings. The QHD display's contrast is likely in the same ballpark.

The FHD display doesn't get very bright. It's fine for indoor use, but you might still have trouble seeing some content in well-lit environments or direct sunlight. It gets pretty dim, though, which helps reduce eye strain when viewing content in the dark. MSI doesn't advertise the QHD panel's brightness.

The display's matte coating handles reflections well. For the most part, you'll only have trouble with reflections when viewing dark-color content. Intense light sources are visible when viewing light-color content with the screen at max brightness, but they aren't overly distracting. The QHD panel has the same coating.

The QHD display's black uniformity is likely similar.

The FHD display's accuracy is passable out of the box. The white balance inaccuracies are relatively minor and hard to spot. However, many colors are visibly off, as the display can't reproduce highly saturated tones due to its narrow color gamut. An overly cool color temperature gives the image a slight blueish tint, and the gamma is too high throughout, over-darkening most scenes.

The FHD display has a poor color gamut. It doesn't even have full coverage of the commonly used sRGB color space, meaning that most content will look washed out. If you want the best visual experience or need to perform color-critical work like content creation, it's best to go with the QHD panel, as it has full DCI-P3 coverage.

The QHD display is likely also flicker-free.

The MSI Katana has an excellent keyboard. Its layout feels spacious and is easy to get used to. Keycap stability is good overall, though some keys, like S and F, wiggle a bit more than others. The keys have a good amount of travel, require little force to actuate, and provide decent tactile feedback. There are four RGB lighting zones: you can change the lighting profile via the MSI Center app. The arrow keys have additional functions when used with the FN key, such as activating the Cooler Boost feature (up), enabling and disabling the crosshair (down), playing and pausing media (left), and activating Sleep mode (right). The latter can be an issue if you aren't careful, as you can accidentally put the computer to sleep while gaming.

The touchpad is decent. It could be larger, given the available space on the deck, but it tracks movements and gestures well. Palm rejection works as intended, and there's no problem when performing actions like dragging and dropping or zooming in and out of images. This is a diving board touchpad, so you can only click in the bottom half. The buttons feel tactile but require a fair amount of force to actuate, and the right-click only works in a small area at the bottom-right corner of the touchpad.

The speakers are bad. They're very quiet, and they sound hollow and unnatural, with almost no bass.

The MSI Katana A15 has a bad webcam. The image looks soft, noisy, and overexposed, with an overly cool tint and unnatural colors. Voices sound clear over the microphone, but there's some noticeable background noise.

The MSI Katana A15 has a good port selection. Two of the three USB-A ports (one on each side) support USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed of up to 5Gbps, while the third one (on the left) supports USB 2.0 data transfer speed (up to 480Mbps). The USB-C also supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed as well as DisplayPort 1.4. The Ethernet port has a max speed of 1Gbps.

The wireless adapter is an AMD RZ616 Wi-Fi 6E. Wi-Fi 6E gives access to the 6GHz band, providing faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than previous Wi-Fi standards. However, you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features.

The MSI Katana 15 is available with the following CPUs:

• AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (8 cores/16 threads, up to 5.1GHz, 16MB L3 cache)
• AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS (8 cores/16 threads, up to 5.2GHz, 16MB L3 cache)

Both are high-performance processors typically found in gaming, content creation, and workstation laptops. They're essentially refreshes of the older AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS and Ryzen 9 7940HS, but with better NPU (Neural Processing Unit) performance (up to 40% faster than the previous generation) to speed up A.I.-based tasks, like image generation in photo editing apps and background blurring during video calls. Core count and composition are the same for both CPUs; the only difference is that the Ryzen 9 8945HS has faster clock speeds, resulting in slightly better performance overall.

The MSI Katana is available with the following GPUs:

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU 6GB GDDR6 (105W TGP /w Dynamic Boost)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU 8GB GDDR6 (105W TGP /w Dynamic Boost)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU 8GB GDDR6 (105W TGP /w Dynamic Boost)

The available GPUs range from entry-level (RTX 4050) to the upper mid-range (RTX 4070). They all support the same features, like DLSS, ray tracing, Frame Generation, and NVIDIA Reflex, so you aren't losing out on features if you go with the lower-end configurations. All three run at a TGP (Total Graphics Power) of 105W with Dynamic Boost, which is near the upper end of their recommended 35-115W power spectrum.

For the most part, the RTX 4050 is mainly designed for 1080p gaming with low to medium settings. You might be able to play at 1440p in lighter games, like 2D platformers and older or highly optimized titles, albeit with some tweaks in the graphical settings. If you plan to get a model with a QHD display, you'll want at least an RTX 4060, preferably an RTX 4070. The RTX 4060 can handle games at 1440p; however, you'll have to play with pretty low settings and/or rely on DLSS and Frame Generation to get playable frame rates. You'll have to lower the settings on models with an RTX 4070, too, just not as much. Check out the Gigabyte AORUS MASTER 16 (2025) if you want a gaming laptop with NVIDIA 50-series GPUs, which support Multi-Frame Generation.

You can configure this laptop with 16GB or 32GB of RAM. The memory is user-replaceable up to 64GB.

The laptop can be configured with 512GB or 1TB of storage, which is upgradeable. Two M.2 slots support 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs; you'll need a mounting bracket to add the second SSD.

Check out the HP Victus 16 (2024) if you want a similar laptop with a longer battery life.

The keyboard gets a bit toasty under load and can cause mild discomfort, as the hot spot is near the middle, right above the letter Y. Activating the Fan Boost feature lowers the keyboard temperature to 45.3 °C (113.54 °F) but increases the fan noise significantly to 58 dBA. The bottom of the laptop reaches 45 °C (113 °F) with Fan Boost on. If you want a gaming laptop with better keyboard temperatures under load, consider the Acer Nitro V 16 (2024).

The MSI Katana A15 has a few pre-installed applications, including:

• MSI Center: Lets you monitor CPU/GPU and memory usage, temperatures, and fan speed. You can also change the performance and power profile, add a crosshair, disable the Windows key, customize the keyboard's RGB backlighting, and access support pages.
• Nahimic: Audio customization app. Lets you change the speakers' audio profile and tweak the sound via EQ.
• Norton 360: Antivirus software and malware/ransomware protection. Requires subscription.

The keyboard has a four-zone RGB backlight; you can change the lighting profile in the MSI Center app.