MSI Bravo 17 laptop review: All-AMD gaming machine

Among the Bravo 17's competitors are other budget gaming laptops in the price range of less than 1,500 Euros (~$1,696) such as the Asus TUF FX705DT, the Asus TUF A17 FA706IU, and the Lenovo Legion Y540-17IRH. The MSI Alpha 15 and MSI GF75 Thin 9SC in-house contenders also appear in the tables as comparison devices.

The case of the Bravo 17 looks surprisingly high quality for the estimated price. In this way, not only the lid is made of brushed aluminum but also the keyboard surroundings. You often had to live with a rattly plastic chassis in the past here. When you open the somewhat wobbly screen, the stability also cuts quite a fine figure. In most areas, the base unit can only be bent a bit under strong pressure. The design is - apart from the keyboard with red labeling - rather plain, which makes the device not look too flashy.

There are also plus points for the moderate weight: At 2.2 kg, the Bravo 17 is the lightest 17-incher in the test. The competition ranges between 2.3 and 2.8 kg. Some buyers will also be pleased with the low overall height: 2.3 cm guarantees a slender look. Thanks to the slim bezel design, the main dimensions are also kept within limits (39.7 x 26.0 cm). The workmanship doesn't leave anything to be desired either. In our test device, all elements merged neatly into one another. MSI could improve the rubber feet and the hinge construction, respectively. The laptop slips away very easily/quickly when it's opened.

Ports

You shouldn't expect the Bravo 17 to have a generous port configuration. MSI forgoes both a DisplayPort connection as well as a card reader. USB 3.2 Gen 2 (x2), not to mention Thunderbolt 3, is also a no-show. As a result, the existing USB ports (3x Type-A, 1x Type-C) only support USB 3.2 Gen 1, which corresponds to the old 3.0 standard. In addition, there's an HDMI port (note: Only 30 Hz at 4K), an RJ45 port and two gold-plated audio jacks. Even if the arrangement of the connections isn't quite ideal due to the ventilation grills on the sides, you don't lose that much room for movement when using an external mouse.

Although the Wi-Fi results are not comparable with the competition due to the recently changed test setup (ax router instead of ac router), the Bravo 17 is right at the top of the list when it comes to WLAN performance. 880 Mb/s for sending and 1,520 Mb/s for receiving data represent good to very good values. With the Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200, MSI has installed a cutting-edge wireless module.

Like most laptops, the Bravo 17 also lacks a decent webcam. Neither the image sharpness nor the color accuracy are convincing (see photos).

In terms of accessories, MSI has only included a quick-start guide and a recovery guide in the box. The 180-watt power adapter, which weighs approximately 600 grams, turned out to be relatively compact with a size of 15 x 7.5 x 3 cm.

The maintenance options are typical for a gaming laptop. After you have removed the 12 Philips screws from the case bottom, the complete bottom side can be lifted out of the anchoring - provided you have some skill. Inside the chassis, you will find the battery and the Wi-Fi chip and also two RAM slots, an M.2 slot, and a (free) 2.5-inch slot. The cooling system consists of two fans with several heatpipes running from them towards the CPU and GPU (each soldered).

The warranty is valid for 24 months. MSI mentions a pick-up-and-return service.

The touchpad proves to be unspectacular. Thanks to the smooth finish, fingers glide quite well over the surface. The precision isn't bad either. The same goes for the multi-touch support. Documents, websites, etc., can be zoomed and scrolled stress-free with two fingers. Gesture recognition works reliably for the most part. Since the touchpad doesn't have any dedicated keys, left and right clicks are triggered by pressing the main area. The triggering noise is - in contrast to the keyboard - relatively loud and sounds rattly. However, there's nothing to complain about with the basic stability of the mouse replacement.

The 17-inch display delivers mixed results. Let's start with the positive aspects. Due to the low black value of 0.23 cd/m², the Bravo 17 is able to offer a convincing contrast. Just under 1,150:1 should satisfy most buyers.

While the CPU belongs to the high-end segment, the GPU is "only" positioned in the mid-range. Since most games are graphically limited, we would, therefore, speak of an upper mid-range laptop, as mentioned at the beginning.

We checked how the Ryzen 7 4800H behaves in practice with the help of the Cinebench R15 benchmark. Around 3.7 GHz in the multi-core test is a good result. In contrast to other laptops, the CPU performance only drops slightly over a longer period of time (less than 5% in the Cinebench loop).

The benchmark results are particularly impressive. With a multi-score of 1,892 points, the Ryzen 7 4800H sprints almost 80% past the hexa-core Core i7-9750H processor in Cinebench R15. The gap to the popular quad-core CPU, the Core i5-9300H, is even over 120%. Ergo: Intel is currently hardly competitive when it comes to budget products and has to prepare itself for the worst in 2020.

The fast processor also helps put the Bravo 17 in the top position in the system performance category. 5,970 points in PCMark 10 could also come from a genuine and considerably more expensive high-end system. However, the 17-incher has to struggle with short delays in everyday use, which mainly occur when launching a program. The graphics-switching solution, which dynamically switches between the CPU's graphics chip and the dedicated GPU depending on the application, could be to blame.

As is appropriate for a modern laptop, the operating system (Windows 10 Home 64-bit) runs on a PCIe SSD. The 512 GB Toshiba KBG30ZMV512G model built into the test device is oriented towards the Kingston SSD of the MSI Alpha 15 and the WDC drive of the Asus TUF FX705 or the Lenovo Legion Y540 in the CrystalDiskMark. On the other hand, the 1 TB models of the MSI GF75 (Crucial) and the Asus TUF A17 (Intel) are able to gain a certain lead - at least on paper.

The graphics card is only partially on par with the level of the Ryzen 7 4800H. With the Radeon RX 5500M, AMD has a DirectX 12 accelerator in its portfolio that offers a performance ranging between the GTX 1650 and the GTX 1660 Ti. Depending on the benchmark, the results sometimes tend more towards one direction and sometimes rather towards the other.

Technically, the RX 5500M has access to 1,408 shaders and 4 GB of GDDR6 video memory (128-bit interface). 4 GB is a borderline amount nowadays, since some games crave for at least 6 GB at higher settings.

Speaking of games: We tested the clock speeds of the Navi chip for about 60 minutes with the RPG The Witcher 3. Result: The RX 5500M settles at around 1,650 MHz. That is clearly more than the base clock speed of 1,448 MHz. As you can see from the graph below, the frame rate remained very constant over the entire period of time.

In general, the Radeon RX 5500M runs almost all titles at the native Full HD resolution (1920x1080) at high to maximum details, whereby the display frequency is rather rarely exploited. Stuttering only occurs in very demanding and/or moderately optimized games like Borderlands 3. Small tip: You should absolutely update the graphics driver after purchase. Some titles complained about the version with our test device. Doom Eternal didn't even want to run at all with the preinstalled driver (at least on the dedicated graphics card).

The noise level generated in idle usage is reminiscent of the MSI GF75 with the Core i7-9750H and the GeForce GTX 1650. The two fans aren't extremely quiet, but 33 to 35 dB is still in order.

The noise level increases significantly under load. About 48 dB in The Witcher 3 and 52 dB in the stress test with the FurMark and Prime95 tools tend towards the Asus TUF A17 and the Lenovo Legion Y540, respectively, and they represent a value that ranges from clearly audible to annoyingly loud (without headphones). At least the Bravo 17 runs noticeably quieter than its MSI counterpart, the Alpha 15.

We were able to draw up to 48 °C (~118 °F) from the case's top side and up to 50 °C (~122 °F) from the bottom in the stress test. However, these temperatures primarily apply to the rear third of the laptop. In idle usage, the entire chassis stays pleasantly cool at around 24 °C (75 °F).

The 2.0 system integrated into the front area offers a good volume of maximum 84 dB and a decent sound pattern with the - other laptops send their regards - usual weaknesses in terms of bass. According to our audio analysis, the sound is better than with the thicker Alpha 15.

In comparison to the last CPU generation, AMD seems to have noticeably optimized the energy management. Instead of the 14 to 32 watts that the Alpha 15 required in idle usage (Ryzen 7 3750H), the Bravo 17 only needs 9 to 13 watts. On the other hand, the consumption under load is similar at 69 to 214 watts - but the Ryzen 7 4800H also offers twice as many cores.

With a capacity of 51 Wh, the battery is not designed for particularly long runtimes. Thanks to the graphics-switching solution and the 7 nm components, the Bravo 17 lasts at least 5 hours when surfing the Internet on WLAN (medium brightness). However, even under ideal conditions, it's almost impossible to squeeze more than 7 hours out from the battery.