For a long time, stagnation reigned in the laptop market, and Intel and NVIDIA sluggishly puffed out for innovations. In 2019, AMD brought a revival to the market with its progressive Zen architecture. One of the first purely gaming laptops based on this platform was the MSI Alpha.

Entry-level Alpha laptops typically cost less than $800, feature quad-core Ryzen 5 processors, and feature Radeon RX 5300M-caliber graphics cards. This is an entry-level card based on the Navi 14 architecture with 3 GB of video memory on board. Its performance is approximately on par with the GeForce GTX 1650. That is, it is an option for gaming at 1080p at medium graphics settings.


In higher-end MSI Alpha laptops, Ryzen 7 and Radeon RX 5600M are most often found in combination. This is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 level card that will deliver Full HD resolution at maximum settings in AAA titles like Assassin's Creed Valhalla and RDR2. At the same time, the TDP of the chip is slightly less than 60 W, which has the most positive effect on the battery life of the laptop.

To set the new series apart from a million other low-cost laptops, MSI emphasizes that each Alpha-book is equipped with a high-end SteelSeries keyboard with zone or individual RGB backlighting, a KILLER gaming LAN controller, a quality audio path with loud speakers, and a massive cooling system with seven heat pipes. As for the displays, it all depends on the money spent: the most affordable assemblies have simple 60-Hz IPS matrices, the higher models mainly use IPS displays with FreeSync support and a refresh rate of 120-144 Hz.