MSI Modern 14, AMD Ryzen 5-5500U, 14″ FHD IPS-Level Panel Laptop (8GB/256GB NVMe SSD/Windows 10 Home/Radeon Graphics/Carbon Grey/1.3Kg), B5M-045IN

Device getting heat very much even if we use only for office works …
not worthy and very bad laptop

I chose this machine to run Analytics tools like POWER BI, ALTRRYX, etc. This machine runs it without sweating or to say gasping for air.

To address speaker performance, yes it could have been better, but decent enough for calls, but common people use blutooth speakers anyways, so it’s not relevant for me

RAM options between 8/16 , would have been cherry on the cake or upgrade options in service centres.

I would say I’m satisfied with the purchase.

Will update after a month or so

Laptop is good. And the seller sent duplicate charger and the laptop pack was tampered.

I got this to reduce back pain from carrying my 2.5kg HP Victus around the house. While I do have a few traditional PCs, laptops tend to be pretty handy for impromptu meetings and getting servers to shut down if the power goes out. What sold me on this laptop was the weight and supposed build quality – I’m replacing a lighter, thinner but much weaker iBall Pentium Laptop. Having bought it, there are a few issues you should be aware of.

1. Display is actually very poor. While it is IPS, it can’t be called that due to trademark issues. It’s a very cheap AUO panel, the same one as used in almost every 14″ laptop by every manufacturer. While MSI has done a decent job of ensuring gamma tracking between 40 and 70% brightness (and the brightness is ok for indoor use), the actual reproduction is washed out and lacks contrast – exactly as per it’s 45% NTSC spec. You’ll have to do a lot of jugglery in the AMD settings to get the panel to look right.

2. Won’t belabour the point about the speakers. They are forgettable at best.

3. It’s a noisy little beast. The fan whine is irritating and gets to you within a few minutes. I had a tough time finding the setting to make it semi-passive, and now it’s quiet if you’re just browsing or reading something. Unusually, you have to set it to ‘High Performance’ and then add a custom fan curve.

4. Windows 11 compulsory. Mine came with W10 20H2 and no upgrade path was offered within W10. I would have preferred to stay with W10, but maybe Linux will be worth looking at now. This is of course your personal preference.

5. Single-channel 1R8 memory, which is possibly the worst kind of memory to use on an APU. And to make sure you can’t do anything about it, they put a tamper sticker over one screw hole. I will probably upgrade it anyway, but given it’s MSI it’s probably better to stick with 1R8 as the motherboard might not be able to take 2Rx8 memory properly. BIOS allows you to basically do nothing at all about timings, I don’t see the point of a BIOS with so few options.

There’s a lot of good things, one of which is the R5500U APU. Even in 2022 it is no slouch, if MSI had paired it with the correct sort of memory it would have been close to perfect. The big issues are the fact that it’s basically ‘just’ a tuned-up 4600U, and some older quirks are present – mostly the IF clock being capped at 1.2GHz, which means memory performance is always out of whack with >2400MHz DDR4. For a daily grind laptop, this likely won’t matter much.

Loud fan aside, the cooling (on a new laptop, this will degrade) is excellent. After a few hours of large-screen gaming tests – never mind the fps, that was not the point – the CPU was in the 75C range. Officially the TGP is 15W, but I’ve seen 35W being drawn at max load. This is 15C better than my Victus 5800H managed out of the box, and is very impressive overall. Even when running in fully passive mode with a Youtube video, the area under the heatpipes is just mildly warm.

It is truly lightweight. While it is also quite chonky, exceeding 20mm through most of the depth, it is almost 100% metal shell and that reduces weight and is more rigid than plastic. This also allows more heat to conduct to the keyboard and trackpad area, so you can see why they emphasised cooling over noise. The weight means carrying it around is easy.

The hinge is a good compromise between stiffness and ease of adjustment. While I would have wished for a little stiffer between 120 and 180 because it tends to go flat if you carry it around with the lid open. The first few degrees also seem to be a little stiffer than usual and there’s no proper opening lip, so getting it open is a little more involved. It also moves around a bit when typing on the keyboard, but it’s not a lot.