If a ‘price to performance’ gaming laptop is what you are after, you will be pleased to learn that the MSI Katana 15 has dropped back to its lowest price of $1,199.99 on Amazon. There were occasions when the portable powerhouse was hovering around the $1,215 to $1,249 mark, but now, the latest deal becomes a significantly sweeter option for those who wish to replace their desktop with something that they can carry around with them at school, or their favorite coffee shop.
To keep the price fairly low, MSI had to use an all-plastic body for the Katana 15, so unlike other products that sport an aluminum build, you have to be extra careful with this purchase. What you do not have to be careful with is firing up the most demanding titles and cranking their visual settings to the max because the Katana 15 was designed to do just that. Its 15.6-inch 1080p IPS LCD with a 144Hz refresh rate is ideal for running both eSports titles and taxing but visually impressive AAA games.
The RTX 4070 GPU has 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, and Intel’s 13th-generation Core i7-13620H handles all the processing. The listing does not mention how many cores this CPU has, but Intel’s website notes that it is a 10-core part with six performance and four efficiency cores designed to tackle a multitude of workloads, including gaming. You also get 16GB of DDR5 RAM, along with 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD that can be swapped with a higher capacity one in the future.
The ports selection is impressive on the Katana 15, but MSI chose to leave out Thunderbolt 4 to cut down on costs, most likely. Other than that, the only thing you have to watch out for is the small 53.5WHr battery, which will only give you a handful of hours away from the wall, and that is if you turn down the brightness, switch off keyboard backlighting, disable background apps and make other tweaks in Windows 11 Home.
There is also no way to charge the Katana 15 through a USB-C port, so you have to carry around the 200W power brick with the barrel connector at the end. Overall, for $1,199.99, from a hardware specifications perspective, there are hardly enough options listed on Amazon that compete with this, but MSI made compromises that we have pointed out. If you can get around those hurdles, then this can become a terrific daily driver for you.
Get the MSI Katana 15 gaming laptop with an RTX 4070 from Amazon
About the author: Omar Sohail is a reporter and analyst for Wccftech's mobile section, specializing in the technology and business of the mobile industry. His expertise lies in the intricate hardware supply chain, covering developments in semiconductor manufacturing, chip lithography, and camera sensor technology.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
