MSI Alpha 15 A3DDK
Specifications
Price comparison
Average of 4 scores (from 14 reviews)
Reviews for the MSI Alpha 15 A3DDK
AMD made its comeback into the CPU business with its Ryzen series not only on desktops but also on laptops. The company made a similar foray into the GPU market with its Navi desktop cards earlier this year, a move that it is trying to replicate on laptops with its Navi 14 GPUs. NVIDIA has dominated the upper midrange of laptop GPUs for a while, but AMD is looking to change that, offering consumers more choice in the process. Read on to find out what we think of one the first upcoming all-AMD laptops.
Source: Laptop Mag
Archive.org versionThe MSI Alpha 15 does all right for a $999 gaming laptop. It boasts a solid graphics card; a colorful, 144Hz display that puts the competition to shame; and a comfortable keyboard with rare per-key lighting. However, its AMD CPU doesn't perform as well as its Intel-laden opponents. Plus, the battery life is a little short, and the speakers are weak.
Single Review, online available, Long, Date: 03/12/2020
Rating: Total score: 70%
Source: Lowyat.net
Archive.org versionFor a gaming laptop that’s worth RM4799, it provides the necessary gaming essentials with its impressive display and excellent hardware performance. The Alpha 15 is an easy recommendation if you’re not planning to go overkill on specs, and if you’re looking for an alternative to Intel and NVIDIA.
Single Review, online available, Long, Date: 02/15/2020
Source: Extreme Tech
Archive.org versionLooking over these test results, you may get a false impression that the Alpha 15 is a somewhat lackluster product. It’s true that the Alpha 15 struggled to rise above last place in many of these tests, but there’s more to a laptop than just how well it benchmarks. The Alpha 15 is targeted as being both an affordable gaming laptop and a high-performance gaming PC.
Single Review, online available, Long, Date: 01/27/2020
Source: Unbox
Archive.org versionThe MSI Alpha 15 is priced at Php 62,995 for the base configuration that comes with 8GB of RAM. It also comes with the AMD gaming bundle with each purchase that allows you to choose from games like Borderlands 3 and The Outer Worlds.
Single Review, online available, Medium, Date: 01/05/2020
Source: PC Mag
Archive.org versionMSI's all-AMD Alpha 15 gaming laptop combines a Ryzen 7 processor and Radeon RX 5500M graphics for a tempting, affordable alternative in a market dominated by Intel and Nvidia. It brims with high-end features, though it could use quieter cooling fans.
Single Review, online available, Short, Date: 01/03/2020
Source: Pokde
Archive.org versionYou get a Ryzen 7 3750H, the latest 7nm Radeon RX 5500M, a good 512GB PCIe SSD and 16GB RAM, straight out of the box. You can even upgrade it with cheap SATA SSDs to bump up the storage in case 512GB isn’t enough for you. The chassis which all of that comes in may be a point of contention, as the liberal use of plastic and bulky form factor does lessen the appeal. I must mention that while its mainly made of plastic, it is one of the most solid laptops I have played with recently. For an affordable mid-range gaming laptop, I believe the MSI Alpha 15 ticks all the right boxes as it is.
Single Review, online available, Very Long, Date: 12/03/2019
Rating: Total score: 78% price: 88% performance: 85% mobility: 65% workmanship: 72%
Source: Ultrabook Review
Archive.org versionThe overall value of this MSI Alpha 15 AMD configuration remains to be determined in a future review, though, but potential buyers should know that $1099 and even less can actually get them Core i5 and even i7 gaming-laptops with 1660Ti graphics these days, so the big question is how will the RX 5500M fair against the 1660Ti, and not against the 1650, as suggested in AMD’s presentation.
Single Review, online available, Medium, Date: 11/25/2019
Source: Ultrabook Review
Archive.org versionThe overall value of this MSI Alpha 15 AMD configuration remains to be determined in a future review, though, but potential buyers should know that $1099 and even less can actually get them Core i5 and even i7 gaming-laptops with 1660Ti graphics these days, so the big question is how will the RX 5500M fair against the 1660Ti, and not against the 1650, as suggested in AMD’s presentation.
Single Review, online available, Medium, Date: 10/07/2019
Foreign Reviews
Source: Chimera Revo
IT→EN Archive.org versionSingle Review, online available, Long, Date: 04/20/2020
Rating: Total score: 75%
Source: Webnews.it
IT→EN Archive.org versionSingle Review, online available, Medium, Date: 04/16/2020
Rating: Total score: 95% price: 92% performance: 95% workmanship: 95%
Source: Ixbt
RU→EN Archive.org versionPositive: Decent hardware; nice gaming performance; good speakers; great display. Negative: Short battery life; noisy under loads.
Single Review, online available, Very Long, Date: 07/23/2020
Source: 3DNews.ru
RU→EN Archive.org versionPositive: Premium design; great built quality; excellent display; comfortable keyboard; long battery life; good cooling system. Negative: High price.
Single Review, online available, Very Long, Date: 12/18/2019
Source: FPT shop
VN→EN Archive.org versionPositive: Powerful hardware; high gaming performance; excellent keyboard; great display; good cooling system.
Single Review, online available, Medium, Date: 12/07/2019
Source: Pemmzchannel
ID→EN Archive.org versionPositive: Powerful hardware; high gaming performance; backlit keys.
Single Review, online available, Long, Date: 02/09/2020
Comment
Model:
MSI is the latest to join the gaming laptop market with its MSI Alpha 15 A3DDK mid-range gaming laptop. The 15.6-inch display delivers an awesome user experience, even with an as good an average maximum brightness as anyone would hope for. However, some have opinionated that the display is still quite bright compared to some of its competitors. But again, the experience of using it with its predetermined display brightness is entirely subjective, depending on the user’s preferences as well.
Being completely matte black with signature MSI ridges, the Alpha 15 is definitely elegant and presentable. The green bird with a red pair of eyes featured on the back of the black aluminum lid was indeed a surprise for most ardent MSI fans, as MSI changed the dragon that used to be the signature mark of the company for the first time. When it is opened, the Alpha 15 gives off a business-notebook vibe with its overall physical presentation. The thin dark gray bezels situated around the sides of the screen definitely add to this impression. The display can be opened up to 160 degrees with one hand, and the lid is also quite sturdy.
The illuminated USB ports and the keyboard with RGB lighting is obviously something to be appreciated with this model. The Alpha 15 A3DDK has been equipped with a backlit chiclet keyboard that has slightly rounded keys. The keys have medium stroke and clear pressure points, which has to be noted for user convenience. Apart from the keyboard, this laptop comes with a multi-touch trackpad large enough to perform multi-finger gestures. The smooth surface is an added benefit, because it allows various movements, such as swiping and scrolling, without any resistance. This also increases user comfort and convenience while using the laptop.
As far as the USB ports are concerned, the Alpha 15 features three Type-A and a single Type-C USB port that operates on the USB-3.2 Gen-1 standard. There are also an HDMI port and a mini DisplayPort, along with dedicated ports for a microphone and headphones respectively. In addition, there is also a Gigabit Ethernet port. Despite all the respective ports provided by the Alpha 15, one drawback of this model is definitely the exclusion of a Thunderbolt 3 port. This prevents users from connecting to a more powerful external GPU, which might not be good news for some of the gaming fans out there who are considering the Alpha 15 as their next gaming laptop. Even though the Alpha 15 A3DDK has quite a presentable display and an awesome keyboard, it still could not make its way into the best gaming laptops list due to its middling performance. The laptop uses an AMD Radeon 7 3750H CPU along with 16 GB of RAM, which can definitely deliver enough performance for simple productivity and some gaming, but nothing more than that.
Hands-on article by Jagadisa Rajarathnam
AMD Radeon RX 5500M: Mid-range mobile graphics card based on the Navi 14 chip (new RDNA architecture) and manufactured in the modern 7nm process. Offers 1,408 cores clocked at 1,645 MHz and using GDDR6 graphics memory.
With these GPUs you are able to play modern and demanding games fluently at medium detail settings and HD resolution.
» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Graphics Cards and the corresponding Benchmark List.
R7 3750H: Mobile Quad-Core APU using Zen+ cores clocked at 2.3 to 4 GHz and a Vega graphics card with 10 CUs clocked at up to 1400 MHz. The 3750H is the 35 Watt version of the 3700U with the same specs but a higher TDP for better performance under long periods of load.» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Processsors.
15.60":
15-inch display variants are the standard and are used for more than half of all laptops.
The reason for the popularity of mid-sized displays is that this size is reasonably easy on the eyes, often allows high resolutions and thus offers rich details on the screen, yet does not consume too much power and the devices can still be reasonably compact - simply the standard compromise.
» To find out how fine a display is, see our DPI List.MSI: Micro-Star International (MSI) was founded in 1986 in Taiwan. MSI is especially known as a manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards for PCs, but also offers computer accessories, complete systems, motherboards, graphics cards, laptops, desktop PCs, monitors and other components. However, the Microstar brand name in Germany belongs to the Medion company. MSI is known for its gaming products and has developed a wide range of gaming laptops and desktop PCs. The company is also active in workstations, servers and industrial automation. MSI has offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
79.5%: This rating is not earth-shattering. This rating must actually be seen as average, since there are about as many devices with worse ratings as better ones. A purchase recommendation can only be seen with a lot of goodwill, unless it is about websites that generally rate strictly.
» Further information can be found in our Notebook Purchase Guide.
