I upgraded to the Katana 17 from the GF75 17 thin (i7 16gb 512gb GTX1650ti) as I saw the Katana go on sale for £899 so snapped it up. I bought the GF75 for £999 back in 2020 and I've had amazing usage out of it but it always felt like a cheap laptop and the GPU was always underpowered from day one.
The Katana feels so much better in every single way. it does not feel cheap and the keyboard is one of the best keyboards I've ever used on a gaming laptop.
The GF75 felt super cheap and very rubbery, where the katana's keyboard feels extremely responsive and has great key travel. I do a lot of office work as well as gaming on my laptop so I'm grateful for the nice keyboard.
The screen is big and bright. my screen has next to no light bleed so gaming at night is great. The screen has the webcam and mic built into it. The webcam is really poor in low light and my old dell work laptop from 2010 has a better webcam (I'm not joking). But at least it has a webcam.
Now the built in mic is out of this world. I cannot believe I've not heard anyone talking about how great the mic is. I do a lot of Teams/zoom calls and I've had a lot of comments saying how great the built in mic is.
The audio is deep and the software removes all the background echo noises. I've got a Logitech headset and the built in mic blows the Logitech's mic out of the water. I know most gamers will not care about the built in mic but the mic was a massive surprise and I only used it because I left my headset at home one day and was forced to use it. I'm glad I did!
This model comes with the i7 16gb DDR5 and the 140W GTX4050 (its really 85W, Nvidia lies to us)
The RTX4050 is a MASSIVE upgrade over the 1650ti and plays all modern games at 60fps at high settings. The RTX4050 140w is comparable to the RTX3070 85w found is much more pricey laptops.
The temps are amazing also. CPU runs at 70/75c while in gaming and the GPU runs at 60c in a standard warm room. I ran a test when the temp was just 10c in my office last week and I wondered if it would make much of a difference to my temps running in a much colder room than normal so I ran a few benchmarks and my GPU never went above 57c and the CPU never went above 66c! Shocking what a difference it made.
And now for the battery life. The Katana smallish 50w battery and I read that the battery life was shocking. I was very shocked to find that I can easily get 5 hours of normal youtube/web browsing and 6 hours for office work.
I switch to onboard graphics, set the screen refresh to 60hz and enable battery saving. That's all do and I get a acceptable battery life. I'm guessing there has been an update which has stopped a battery drain issue? I don't know but I have no problems with the battery life what so ever.
The Kanata is not a light laptop. The GF75 was a very light laptop but felt very cheap because of it but the Kanata feels much more solid but you really notice it in your work bag. Most people don't use their 17inch laptops as laptops but I do so I've noticed the extra weight on my back.
Also lets talk about the USB C port. for me its quite pointless as you CANNOT charge your laptop from it! I cannot believe a laptop in 2023 cannot charge from it's usb c port!! Come on MSI even my wife's old 2015 cheap HP laptop charges from USBC port.
So yeah for the price of £899 I am extremely happy with the laptop. it is the easiest 5 star rating i could give.
if i paid £1100 for it? I'd give it maybe 4 stars and for that price i think it should have a bigger battery and proper usb c port! For £1100 it needs at least a thunderbolt 4 port with charging support!
| Brand | MSI Notebook |
|---|---|
| Product Dimensions | 2.52 x 27.3 x 39.8 cm; 1 kg |
| Batteries | 1 Lithium Polymer batteries required. (included) |
| Item model number | Katana 17 |
| Manufacturer | MSI |
| Series | Katana 17 B13VEK-015UK |
| Colour | Core Black |
| Form Factor | Laptop |
| Standing screen display size | 17.3 Inches |
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Resolution | 1920x1080 |
| Processor Brand | Intel |
| Processor Type | Intel Core i7 |
| Processor Speed | 4.9 GHz |
| Processor Count | 10 |
| RAM Size | 16 |
| Memory Technology | DDR5 |
| Maximum Memory Supported | 64 GB |
| Memory Clock Speed | 14000 MHz |
| Hard Drive Size | 1 TB |
| Hard Disk Description | SSD |
| Audio Details | Speakers |
| Speaker Description | Built-in speakers |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 |
| Graphics Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Graphics Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics RAM Type | GDDR6 |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 6 GB |
| Graphics Card Interface | Integrated |
| Connectivity Type | Wi-Fi |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
| Number of Ethernet Ports | 1 |
| Voltage | 230 Volts |
| Hardware Platform | PC |
| Operating System | Windows 11 Home |
| Are Batteries Included | Yes |
| Lithium Battery Energy Content | 53.5 Kilowatt Hours |
| Lithium Battery Packaging | Batteries contained in equipment |
| Number Of Lithium Ion Cells | 3 |
| Item Weight | 1 kg |
| Guaranteed software updates until | unknown |
