65 W AC adapter for the MSI Prestige 16 AI+ can bottleneck charging rate
The Dell XPS 16, Asus ExpertBook Ultra, and MSI Prestige 16 AI+ are now all shipping with similar Core Ultra X7 processor options for similar levels of performance. The latter, however, ships with a smaller 65 W USB-C AC adapter while the rest would ship with more capable 100 W USB-C AC adapters instead. How does the smaller MSI adapter impact performance or charging rate?
To test this, we would run benchmarks on the MSI Prestige 16 AI+ first with the included 65 W USB-C AC adapter and then a second time with our 140 W USB-C AC adapter from HP (a 100 W USB-C AC adapter was not on hand for testing). When running Prime95 stress on the 65 W adapter, consumption would peak at 65.1 W as shown by our independent measurement below.
Repeating the Prime95 stress test with the 140 W adapter would result in a much higher consumption peak of 96.1 W as represented by the graph below. The Power Delivery of the USB-C port on the Prestige 16 AI+ is rated for only 100 W and so the 140 W adapter cannot be used to full capacity.
The higher power consumption, however, does not translate to noticeably faster performance. The table below shows only minor benefits of just a few percentage points when running multi-thread benchmarks on our higher capacity adapter.
| Benchmark | 65 W AC adapter | 140 W AC adapter |
|---|---|---|
| CineBench R15 Multi-Thread | 2937 | 3033 (+3%) |
| CineBench 2024 Multi-Thread | 980 | 1030 (+5%) |
Instead, the main advantage of the more capable AC adapter is its faster charging rates when running demanding loads simultaneously. For example, when attempting to charge the laptop at 56% battery whilst running Cyberpunk 2077 with the included 65 W AC adapter, the state of charge would actually remain flat at 56%. The battery would only begin charging at a decent rate when we swapped out the 65 W adapter for the 140 W adapter. Indeed, simply running Cyberpunk 2077 alone would already draw over 60 W leaving almost no overhead for charging if the AC adapter is too small.
Prestige 16 AI+ owners who frequently game or run demanding software will therefore benefit the most from a 100 W AC adapter due to its more reliable charging rate. Otherwise, the included 65 W AC adapter is sufficient and more travel friendly.
Additional benchmarks and comparisons can be found on our full review of the 2026 Prestige 16 AI+.
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