- Playable framerates for low price
- Relatively lightweight
- Funky design with translucent accents
It’s not uncommon to find an RTX 4050 gaming laptop for less than $1,000, but such a machine rarely dips as low as $800. And that’s nearly what the MSI Cyborg 15 is from Amazon. At the time of this review, it was available for $869 but was as low as $812 a month ago. The Cyborg 15 isn’t a good buy at its list price of $1,000 but becomes more attractive as the price inches closer to $800. The thing is, better budget gaming models also go on sale. For instance, an RTX 4050-based Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 is a better deal at its frequent sale price of $850 or $900 at Best Buy. And an RTX 4060-based MSI Cyborg 15 model at Best Buy can sometimes be had for only $750.
MSI sells a variety of configurations of the Cyborg 15, offering a mix of 12th- and 13th-gen Intel Core i5 and i7 processors and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 and 4060 graphics but only one display option: a 15.6-inch, 16:9 display with a 1,920×1,080-pixel resolution and a 144Hz refresh rate. Our test system is available for $1,000 at Costco and $869 at Amazon and features a Core i7-13620H processor, 16GB of RAM, RTX 4050 graphics and a 512GB SSD.
That’s a fine lineup for the money, but the RTX 4050 has lower total graphics power than competing laptops with the same GPU. It has a TGP of only 45 watts, which is just a fraction of the 140-watt RTX 4050 you get with the Acer Nitro 16 or Acer Predator Helios Neo 16. The HP Victus 16 has an RTX 4050 at 120 watts, and the Lenovo LOQ 82XT has an RTX 4050 at 95 watts. As you’ll see in the next section, the Cyborg 15’s lower-wattage GPU landed it near or at the back of the pack on our lab tests.
The MSI Cyborg 15 starts at £1,249 in the UK and AU$2,199 in Australia.
RTX 4050 at 45W
We tested the Cyborg 15 alongside four other budget gaming laptops with RTX 4050 graphics. As mentioned above, its GPU is set to run at a much lower power limit than the others. The TGP of the RTX 4050 GPU can be configured between 35 and 115 watts, and an additional 10 to 25 watts can be added via Dynamic Boost from the CPU. So, setting it to a maximum of 45 watts is well below its full capacity.
Thermal concerns are one reason a manufacturer might set a GPU to a lower TGP. If you put an RTX 4050 into a compact and thin enclosure, a lower TGP will result in less heat output and help prevent the laptop from overheating. The Cyborg 15 isn’t particularly compact or thin, but it does have only a single cooling fan. This arrangement might be a cost-saving measure to allow MSI to price the Cyborg 15 at the lower end of the price scale for RTX 4050 laptops.