MSI Alpha 17 gaming laptop in review: With a Ryzen 7 and Radeon RX 5600M

MSI has made the base unit of the Alpha 17 out of plastic and the back of the display out of aluminum. This makes the gaming laptop look sturdy and stable all around. Furthermore, the screen only bends minimally when opened, even if it's only lifted from one corner. The maximum aperture angle is about 160 degrees. Overall, the build quality is very high and leaves no room for criticism in any area.

Compared with 17-inch gaming laptops from other manufacturers, the Alpha 17 shows slightly wider and also somewhat deeper dimensions. The weight of 2.6 kilograms, on the other hand, is on par with comparable devices.

The MSI Alpha 17 offers numerous ports that cover the essential needs. In addition Gigabit LAN and Mini DisplayPort connections, a USB Type-C port is also offered, but it failed to transmit image output to our test monitor using a suitable adapter.

The memory card reader of the Alpha 17 achieves speeds of up to 77 MB/s for copying data and up to 86 MB/s for reading data with our reference memory card, the 64 GB Toshiba Exceria Pro UHS-II SDXC. This allows MSI's gaming laptop to lead our test field. Moreover, inserted memory cards protrude about four millimeters beyond the case's edge.

With our Netgear Nighthawk AX12 reference router, the MSI Alpha 17 reaches WLAN speeds of up to 1,100 Mb/s for receiving and up to 1,010 Mb/s for sending data. Although these rates are very good, they are still surpassed by our chosen competitor devices.

The Alpha 17 is also equipped with one of the widespread but very low-resolution HD webcams with 0.9 MP. Accordingly, the quality of our test images is low. They are too pale and blurry even in good lighting conditions.

Besides the laptop, the MSI Alpha 17 only comes with a power adapter. However, the manufacturer offers numerous accessories on its website such as headsets, keyboards, mice, monitors, and more.

MSI grants buyers of the Alpha 17 a warranty period of 24 months.

Keyboard

The MSI Alpha 17's keys offer a clear pressure point and a good grip for the fingertips. This makes them well suited not only for gaming but also for typing. The manufacturer also refrains from reducing the size of the arrow keys and provides special keys such as Del, Ins, and the scroll keys as separate keys.  Only the Home and End keys are exclusively accessible as secondary keys.

MSI has also installed an RGB backlight for the keyboard. This can be adjusted in four brightness levels and illuminates the keys uniformly. It's possible to adjust the colors and effects extensively in the corresponding software.

MSI's Alpha 17 is aimed at price-conscious gamers who are looking for a gaming laptop with the largest possible screen. The installed hardware can display modern games smoothly at high frame rates, but it might be necessary to reduce the resolution in very demanding titles.

The MSI Alpha 17 is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 4800H. This processor has eight cores and can process up to 16 threads simultaneously at clock rates between 2.9 and 4.2 GHz. Performance depends on the cooling solution and the TDP setting. MSI fully exploits the latter with a PL1 of 54 watts, but up to 65 watts is possible for a short time.

Our Cinebench R15 endurance test also shows that the initially very high multi-core score outperforms our chosen competition. Afterwards, the result drops moderately down to the value of the Eluktronics RP-17, which is also equipped with a Ryzen 7 4800H, and experiences another significant drop shortly before the end of the test. Compared with the Dell G5 15 SE, however, the MSI Alpha 17 can maintain its performance better.

In the individual tests, the Intel competitor that we chose, the Core i7-10750H in the Schenker XMG Core 17, shows a significantly stronger single-core performance. In return, the Ryzen 7 4800H used here can prevail in the multi-core disciplines.

In the PCMark 10 test for system performance, the MSI Alpha 17 shows a slightly below-average result. While the result of the individual discipline "Digital Content Creation" ensures the first place in our test field, the scores of the remaining individual tests are only enough for the penultimate place. The system always runs smoothly in everyday use and doesn't experience any micro stuttering or the like.

The performance of other laptops in comparison can be seen in our CPU Benchmarks article.

The SSD installed in the MSI Alpha 17 achieves solid write and read rates, but these are surpassed by the other devices in our test field. The results achieved by other mass storage devices can be found in our HDD/SSD Benchmarks article.

The graphics card used here is an AMD Radeon RX 5600M with 6 GB of video memory. It belongs to the mid-range and is suitable for demanding graphics applications. However, the results in the 3DMark tests are slightly below average. For example, the Dell G5 15 can rank much higher in our test field with this GPU. In 3DMark, the Eluktronics RP-17 with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile is just above the MSI Alpha 17.

Our GPU Benchmarks article shows the performance that other graphics cards were able to achieve in our tests.

The AMD Radeon RX 5600M can run most modern games smoothly in Full HD and with high detail levels. In the games that we tested, the detail levels only had to be reduced a bit in very demanding games. However, frame rates around 30 fps were always possible. Nevertheless, users who want to play on an external 4K screen will have to be prepared for higher reductions depending on the game.

The performance that can be expected from the AMD Radeon RX 5600M in other games can be found in our GPU Games article.

Our The Witcher 3 endurance test shows that although the fps drop slowly over time, they still decline a bit. Therefore, users have to expect a slight drop in frame rates during very long gaming sessions.

During our approximately one-hour endurance stress test, the temperatures inside the MSI Alpha 17 rise up to 94 °C (~201 °F). The PL2 of 65 watts is also reached in the process, whereby the average power consumption corresponds to the PL1 of 45 watts. In addition, the cooling system can keep the temperatures at 87 °C (~189 °F) on average and the clock rates at around 3.1 GHz. Consequently, users don't have to expect a drop in system performance due to excessive temperatures even during heavy use.

According to our measurements, the MSI Alpha 17 shows a maximum power consumption of up to 222 watts. While this is the highest value in our test field, the average power consumption is at a comparatively low level both in idle usage as well as under load.

The included power adapter offers an output of 230 watts and has, therefore, a high enough capacity to ensure a reliable power supply.

In our practical WLAN test, MSI's gaming laptop achieves a runtime of 7:18 hours. The "Balanced" performance profile was used for this, leading to a good utilization of the 65 Wh battery.