Arc Raiders ultraportable, thanks to Intel’s Panther Lake

The MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ is an ultraportable with amazing power held by a short trackpad. It’s a shame, really, because it’s built really well and thanks to Intel’s Panther Lake CPU, it can even run games like that Arc raiders without sweating. And with more ports than most small and light devices, its OLED screen is perfect for productivity work and at three pounds it’s easy to carry around all day. But damn its mechanical trackpad – why is it there when Apple, Microsoft and others have been able to use excellent touchpads for years? Come now.

Computer hardware

With its gray case, low-profile design and chunky bezels, the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ doesn’t make an impressive impression. From a distance you can tell it’s quite thin, and it’s also clear that MSI has made the most of its small case by shoving in two USB-A ports, two USB-C connections, one HDMI port and a headphone jack. It would have been nice to have some sort of SD card slot, but at least the Prestige 14 can be connected to older devices, monitors and TVs without a USB-C hub.

Once you’ve picked it up, however, the Prestige 14’s three-pound frame feels pretty impressive. It’s only slightly heavier than the 2.7-pound MacBook Air, but its screen size competes directly with the 3.4- to 3.6-pound 14-inch MacBook Pro. The “Flip” in its name also means it’s flexible, with the ability to rotate its screen into tablet mode, or various tent configurations.

What makes the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ really attractive is its Intel Core Ultra X7 358H processor, which includes 16 cores and a maximum speed of 4.8GHz. Specifically, it includes four fast-working P-cores, eight efficient E-cores and four low-power E-cores. The Ultra X7 is also one of the new Panther Lake chips with the graphics power of Intel’s Arc B390 GPU, giving it more gaming chops than previous chips. The laptop also sports 32GB of RAM, which is just the right amount for heavy productivity work, and 1TB of SSD space.

The Prestige 14’s stylus-friendly 14-inch OLED screen helps detract from its standard case design, with the usual deep black levels and excellent contrast that I enjoy in OLED, as well as 100 percent color coverage for DCI-P3. It makes almost everything look great, although I wish MSI offered more than a 60Hz refresh rate – a 90Hz or 120Hz screen would make scrolling through web pages look much smoother.

And speaking of the stylus, which sits on the bottom of the Prestige 14. I didn’t find it particularly useful for taking notes, but for those who do it’s easy to throw away. It’s too small for extended handwriting, and anyone doing important notes or digital art would be better off with a larger stylus or dedicated drawing pad.

Usage: Hidden artist

After seeing the small Lenovo Panther Lake laptop reach 190 fps in Battlefield 6, using only the built-in Intel Arc B390 GPU, I was eager to see how those new machines would perform in the real world. Simply put, the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ did not disappoint. It scored 10,169 on PCMark 10, the highest score we’ve seen on a Windows PC.

And yes, that includes plenty of powerful gaming systems like the Alienware 16 Area 51 (8,245 points) and the Razer Blade 18 (7,703), both of which used Intel’s last-gen Core Ultra 9 275HX chip. Of course, those systems have faster GPUs, like NVIDIA’s RTX 5080, but PCMark 10 doesn’t rely too much on graphics performance. The Prestige 14 tied closely with the M5 MacBook Pro in Geekbench 6’s multi-threaded CPU test, scoring 16,633 compared to Apple’s 18,003. But the MacBook Pro reigned supreme in the single-threaded test, scoring 4,310 compared to MSI’s 2,864.

When it comes to gaming, the Prestige 14 reached an impressively high 80-95 fps Arc raiders while playing at 1080p with medium graphics settings, along with AMD’s FSR3 upscaling and 2x framerate reproduction. Apart from those AMD features, Arc raiders ran at 45-50 fps, still respectable for an ultraportable. To my surprise, Intel’s XeSS upscaling technology was not available Arc raiders during my testing, but there’s a good chance that tool will get more functionality. (I’ve asked Intel about the omission of XeSS, and will update when I hear back.)

In cyberpunk 2077, The Prestige 14 hit 35 fps while playing at 1080p on default settings. Browsing on Intel’s XeSS framework bumped that to 45 fps. If you’re used to the 30 fps performance of consoles, those numbers are still vaguely playable, but they certainly fall short of the 60 fps PC gamers often demand. It’s best to think of the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ as a laptop where you can occasionally play games, perhaps while away from your gaming desktop. It’s definitely not the place for a dedicated gaming laptop.

For some prosaic productivity tasks, like merging dozens of browser tabs and editing large images, the Prestige 14 didn’t break a sweat. Its healthy 32GB of RAM gave it plenty of breathing room for multitasking, and unlike other laptops, I didn’t notice any serious performance dips while running on battery. On that note, the Prestige 14 also lasted 22 hours and 15 minutes on the PCMark 10 battery benchmark. That’s the highest number we’ve seen for a laptop, and it’s a promising sign of what we can expect from other Panther Lake systems.

While there’s clearly a lot to like about the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+, I’m less impressed with its mechanical trackpad and keyboard. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the haptic trackpads from the competition, but the Prestige 14’s old-school trackpad keeps slowing me down with missed clicks and other annoyances. The laptop’s keyboard felt similarly cheap, lacking the depth and comfort I expect from other ultraportables in the $1,299 price range. Even after hours of testing, I had trouble typing Prestige 14 at full speed without errors. It’s a shame that MSI gets so right, but is held back by these weak parts.

Should you buy the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+?

As one of the first Panther Lake laptops on the market, the $1,299 Prestige 14 Flip AI+ is a solid machine, if you’re willing to overlook its touchpad flaws. Most of all, the Prestige 14 makes me excited to see what other PC makers offer with new Intel chips. It took a while, but now Intel finally has some decent competition against Apple’s M-series hardware. The time to play with ultralight equipment is finally here.