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We've tested enough RTX 4050s this year to say that it's a solid step up over the RTX 3050 or even the 3050 Ti. If you're in the market for an RTX 4050 gaming laptop, the MSI Cyborg 15 is probably one of the cheapest ones you can pick up right now at Rs 99,990. It's got a great design going for it, decent I/O options, a decent 144 Hz display, and solid hardware under the hood. The only flaw we would say is that it runs a bit on the hotter side. Definitely worth considering if you're looking to pick up an RTX 4050 laptop under Rs 1 lac.
The MSI Cyborg was first revealed during CES 2023, and it's cool cyberpunk design and the specs on board were certainly pretty appealing, however what was even more appealing was the fact that you could get all of that for just Rs 99,990, at least as of writing this review. We're talking a 12th gen Intel Core i7 paired with the new 40 series NVIDIA RTX 4050 Laptop GPU. There's also a 13th gen variant that isn't available in India yet. Let's do a quick breakdown of the specs on board before we get to the in-depth review.
Processor: 12th gen Intel Core i7-12650H
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4050 Laptop GPU
Display: 15.6-inch 144Hz FHD
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 512GB
Ports: 2 USB-A, 1 USB-C, HDMI 2.1, RJ45 Ethernet, 3.5mm audio
Let's start things off with the build and design. The MSI Cyborg 15 immediately distinguishes itself from other gaming laptops with its rather unique looks. The sides, the lip and the base of the laptop are all translucent. This gives the laptop that cyberpunk look we were talking about earlier, but at the same time, it's not so flashy that it might draw attention in public. The same translucent design is present on the WASD keys as well.
Unsurprisingly, the laptop features a plastic chassis. This is fairly common with budget laptops, but you do still get an aluminium metal lid. The laptop feels pretty sturdy overall, and even the hinge didn't give us too much flex. Most of the laptop features a matte black finish.
The laptop features a backlit keyboard, with no RGB. Which we didn’t really mind at all. We found the keys to be well-spaced and the overall typing and gaming experience was pleasant. The touchpad doesn't get in the way of typing.
Also Read: Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 Review: The premium gaming laptop experience (digit.in)
The MSI Cyborg 15 comes with a 15.6-inch 144Hz FHD IPS display. As far as displays are concerned, it's pretty decent. During our testing, we got a peak average brightness of 307 nits, an sRGB coverage of 65.9 per cent, and we tested 48.7 per cent DCI-P3 coverage. All in all, we'd say the display on the MSI Cyborg 15 is slightly above average, we would not however recommend this for professional editing work, but you should have great visuals while gaming.
Gaming laptops don't usually come with long battery lives, and the same applies to the MSI Cyborg 15. DUring our PC Mark 10 gaming battery benchmark, the Cyborg 15 lasted 65 minutes, so a little over an hour.
Coming to the thermals; the MSI Cyborg can run pretty hot. During our stress test, we recorded CPU temps of 94 degrees Celsius. Surface temps can also get pretty high, especially the centre of the laptop, which hit around 43 degrees during our gaming stress test. WASD was on the slightly warmer side at 35 degrees, while the palm and touchpad stayed cool at around 26 degrees. Regardless, you'll want to keep this laptop on a desk when you're gaming, and not on your lap. Note that we do all of our thermal testing in an air conditioned environment, so the laptop could run even hotter in non-AC environments.
Finally, we come to the performance. We'll start things off with the gaming performance.
The MSI Cyborg 15 features an NVIDIA RTX 4050 Laptop GPU, which in our tests so far has managed to outperform the RTX 3060 Laptop GPU in most real world gaming benchmarks. However, compared to the RTX 4050 in the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 we recently tested, the 4050 in the Cyborg falls short by a pretty large margin.
In synthetic GPU benchmarks, for which we use 3DMark, the MSI Cyborg 15 has surprisingly low scores.
However, it's a different story in real-world gaming benchmarks where the MSI Cyborg more than makes up for the low synthetic GPU scores. Ultimately, real-world gaming performance is what matters, so in this case, the RTX 4050 onboard the MSI Cyborg 15 delivers.
MSI Cyborg 15 general performance
Next we come to the processor performance. The 12th gen Intel Core i7-12650H performs pretty well in most processor benchmarks, namely R23 for single and multi-thread performance, and in our encryption and decryption tests. However, general productivity scores were a bit on the lower side as can be seen in the PCMark 10 benchmark.
The 16GB of DDR5 RAM on the Cyborg 15 is clocked to 4800 MT/s, and tested pretty well in the AIDA64 benchmark, especially in this price category.
Coming to the storage, we saw decent read and write speeds of 3600 MB/s and 2500 MB/s respectively during our CrystalDiskMark benchmark; it's not the fastest or the slowest storage we've tested, but should more than suffice for your gaming needs.
Also Read: MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI 13th Gen Core i9-13950HX Review (digit.in)
We've tested enough RTX 4050s this year to say that it's a solid step up over the RTX 3050 or even the 3050 Ti. If you're in the market for an RTX 4050 gaming laptop, the MSI Cyborg 15 is probably one of the cheapest ones you can pick up right now. It's got a great design going for it, decent I/O options, a decent 144 Hz display, and solid hardware under the hood. The only flaw we would say is that it runs a bit on the hotter side. Definitely worth considering if you're looking to pick up an RTX 4050 laptop under Rs 1 lac.