Excellent computer fast for gaming stays super cool with its fans you can turn the fans on and turn them off Is reuse very self-explanatory laptop helps you understand itself better .

I’ve had this for about 2 years and it runs great except for a crash every once in a while but that’s after extended use.

The last MSI laptop I owned was one of their monstrous dual-NVIDIA 18” GT80 Titans with a full mechanical keyboard; I think it cost me more than 3 mortgage payments at the time. It was a gamer’s delight & I loved every minute of it--except for the mild backache I would get lugging that 10 pound boat anchor & 5 pound power brick around. I’m older now & while my gaming tastes haven’t changed that much, what has changed is my desire for something a bit more sensibly priced & a bit more portable without sacrificing playability. Enter the MSI Bravo 15, a much more modestly appointed laptop that clocks in well below a grand—but can such a budget offering still deliver a compelling gaming experience without cutting too many corners? The answer is…mostly yes. The MSI Bravo 15 comes off reasonably svelte clocking in at less than 5 lbs with a decidedly modern gamerish aesthetic…think spaceship-like trapezoidal exhaust ports, multiple Aztec-style lines on the lid, & several sets of Dutch-angled honeycomb vents on the bottom. The lid is adorned with MSI’s new thunderbird logo with a tiny red accent in the eye (no, it’s not LED-backlit, which would have been really cool); it feels quite solid & the hinges hold the screen resolutely in place while allowing you to open the screen flat to a full 180 degrees. The plastic shell is actually quite stiff with very little flex around the keyboard or trackpad. It’s got a nice smooth satin finish which is unfortunately also a fingerprint magnet—if you have OCD about not wanting oily fingerprints all over your gear, you’ll probably need a bit of Xanax to deal with the Bravo because there seems to be no way around it & it stacks up FAST! The trackpad is serviceable if a bit small given how far off-center it is placed. In all fairness, the trackpad is centered in the middle of QWERTY keys, but the extension of the keyboard into the full numpad on the right side makes it feel like the trackpad is placed a bit too far to the left—at least for me. Given the fact that this is a 15” laptop, the inclusion of a full numpad is a welcome addition, though some design concessions were made to squeeze in all those keys. For example, the up-arrow took a chunk out of the traditionally lengthy right shift key which took some getting used to so I wouldn’t hit the up-arrow while quickly stretching for the right shift. The numpad keys are also about 60% the size of the other chicklet keycaps & are taller than they are wide so if you have muscle memory built up using a regular-size number pad, your keying speed will probably take a serious hit using this rather cramped set of keys. Speaking of the keyboard, the font can take some getting used to. It’s stylized & similar to the Zosma or Spider-Man movie font—I found it very easy to read, but my sense is that it’s a bit of an acquired taste over conventional typefaces that may appeal to more mature users. The keyboard is LED backlit in blue only, there are no effects, other colors, or animations available—but you do have three levels of brightness in addition to turning the backlight off. It’s easy to see in the dark, & the white lettering on black keys works well for non-backlit operation, but the coloring of the WASD keys is a bit odd. The translucent effect is cool at first, but the white lettering has poor contrast against the clear keycaps when backlit making them a little difficult to read. Initial setup was a breeze though it took a good 30 seconds after turning it on before the MSI post logo first showed up; I was almost tempted to do a hard reset/reboot until the logo finally popped up on the screen. It was about 1 min before reaching Windows setup which included 1 auto-restart for initial updates; all told it was about 8 min 30 sec before I was mousing on the desktop. MSI center provided 1 live update; there were another 11 patches available in Windows Update; & opening the Windows store yielded another 48 app updates. The OS installation was about 64GB; you can claim another 3GB through Windows Drive cleanup which left more than 400GB for game installations which you can unfortunately chew through pretty quickly with just a handful of AAA titles. My Bravo came with a 512GB Micron 2400 QLC NVMe drive; it was snappy enough, but obviously your tolerance for QLC-related slowdowns & the decrease in expected longevity will depend on whether you are a light gamer, hardcore gamer, or intend to work with massive video files or other tasks that involve write-heavy operations. Without an SD slot (the Bravo doesn’t have one) or simply replacing the stock drive, there is still an open M2 slot to accommodate more high-speed storage, but infuriatingly so--you have to contact MSI support to order a proprietary mounting bracket to make use of the slot at all (Reddit users report varying degrees of success obtaining or even locating the bracket). From the factory, the open M2 space is blocked by an adhesive-backed rubber block; I removed it & DIY’d my own solution by epoxying a small waterblock standoff to the interior for a second 2TB NVMe drive. Despite the cramped stock SSD, bloatware is blessedly minimal with MSI Center which offers a number of system maintenance & customization options, MSI App Player--which is actually a really slickly designed Android emulator, & two Nahimic apps, one for audio/mic customization & one that acts as a version checker for the Nahimic client & audio driver. The Bravo also includes an Xbox Game Pass trial as well as three 60-day licenses for Norton 360 for Gamers. Nahimc actually produces some compelling 3D positional audio via the modest built-in speakers--though you’ll be hard-pressed to enjoy the effects during more demanding titles because the fans spin up pretty loudly once the CPU & GPU are taxed; a BT headset or one using the combo 3.5mm jack is pretty much mandatory. The fans have two built-in speeds that you can toggle with a keyboard shortcut: normal & ludicrous speed. The fans aren’t harsh, but can get quite loud—I could easily hear them running full speed from across two rooms. The BIOS features are minimal & don’t provide any advanced overclocking or fan profile tweaks, but you can set a manual fan profile via MSI Center if you want. You can also adjust the power/fan profiles using one of MSI’s various “user scenarios” (balanced, silence, performance, etc.) which can tweak power & fan settings though it’s not clear to the user what those settings actually are. The screen is reasonably bright & clear with decent off-angle performance typical of an IPS panel. Though not advertised as such, it *is* VRR-capable which means AMD’s FreeSync will kick in to make your games look silky smooth up to the 144Hz limit of the panel--this was an unexpectedly pleasant surprise. I used CRU to extend the FreeSync range even further down to 10Hz with no artifacts or hiccups! There’s a full-sized HDMI port on the side, but FreeSync also worked flawlessly via the DP-enabled USB-C output when feeding my 300Hz portable monitor. Out of the box color reproduction was reasonably good at 6810K with just a small boost in greens & slight cut in reds. A few tweaks with the Windows color sliders produced a very pleasing image with a slightly more realistic (and neutral-measuring) color cast. Situated above the top of the panel is a small 720p webcam. Image quality is only middling & produces a somewhat blurry & waxy picture with tinny sound captured via the mic; it would do for a Zoom or Teams meeting in a pinch but it definitely isn't top-drawer capture quality. There is no privacy slider, but there is an activity LED to indicate when the webcam is active. With all of that out of the way, let’s get to the heart of the matter—how well does this budget gaming laptop actually game? Surprisingly, the Bravo 15 pulled off some pretty respectable performance in some very demanding modern titles. I ran my tests in MSI's performance mode without VSYNC or VRR (min/max/ave): - Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (ultra preset) – 3/51/36 ; +FSR balanced – 30/104/73 - Red Dead Redemption 2 (medium across the board) - 3/91/60 ; +FSR2 – 31/118/71 ; topmost automatic “Favor Quality” preset +FSR2 – 36/118/82 - Crysis Remastered (high preset) – 1/235/47 - AC Valhalla (high preset) – 5/56/34 ; +FSR balanced – 11/137/79 - Shadow of the Tomb Raider (highest preset) – 51/98/62 - Horizon Zero Dawn (ultimate quality) – 6/87/54 ; +FSR balanced - 37/144/80 - Metro Exodus (high quality) – 27/66/47 - Gears 5 (recommended; mix of high & ultra) – 54/109/65 CAN you get better performance…of course, but it would come at a price—which kind of flies in the face of the notion of a “budget” gaming rig. And while the Bravo’s Ryzen 7 CPU is pretty capable, and 16GB of DDR5 RAM is a bit uncommon at this price point, there’s only so much performance you can wring out of the 4GB RX6550M GPU now matter how much more RAM or storage space you might add. Still, the pending rollout of AMD’s new FSR3 frame interpolation feature should definitely extend the value proposition of this laptop a bit further into the future. Obviously, the hardware accommodations made to keep the Bravo 15’s price tag less eye-watering means you won’t be pushing newer AAA titles at ultra and maxing out the panel’s native refresh rate, but that was never really the point, was it? For your gaming dollar, there’s still enough horsepower under the hood of the Bravo 15 to provide imminently playable framerates at decent detail levels in a reasonably stylish and travel/wallet-friendly package—recommended!

I bought this for gaming/rendering video projects (i know apple does a lot better with adobe software in general but I dont want to spend thousands) and at first I loved this laptop more than my high end pc but after finding out that it doesn’t handle adobe applications like photoshop and illustrator that well it brought down my opinions of the laptop. I came from a macbook air m1 with 8gb of ram which did exceptional with adobe illustrator and photoshop but lacked in video and rendering applications like after effects, which makes sense due to the little ram it has. But what makes this interesting is that this laptop does great in after effects and other rendering applications but sucks in photoshop and illustrator. I honestly wish I just returned it and gotten a better laptop for gaming and designing but it is too late now. I will keep just is an inconvenience. 6.5/10

This MSI laptop is a nice machine for the price. Works very well to play several games and work on MS Office programs. I love the light up keyboard, it's a fun little extra thing. I've owned for about 2 weeks at this point and I only wish it came with more ram & a larger M.2 drive but those are both easy upgrades. When the fans really get running they are slightly noisy but that really doesn't detract for me.