The Bravo 15 surprised me by having a better keyboard, more ports, and a good level of performance both for work and pleasure. Granted, its screen could be much better, and finding games to work on was sometimes a laborious task. However, as a mid-range gaming laptop, the Bravo 15 performs on its promises, which is probably all it needs to achieve.
The Bravo 15 should suffice if you already have moderate handheld gaming requirements and a budget to match. You’ll have to go for a more powerful and perhaps more expensive laptop else.
What you will see here?
MSI Bravo 15 Price
While an MSI Bravo 15 has a variety of pricing and settings over the years, the present edition offers only one option. For $899, you can get it from Sam’s Club (Walmart’s answer to Costco, for those that don’t know). This necessitates the purchase of a Sam’s Club membership, which costs $45 per year.
The MSI Bravo currently has an AMD Ryzen 5600H processor, an AMD Radeon 5500M GPU, a 512 GB SSD,16 GB RAM, and a 15.6-inch 1080p screen with a 144 Hz refresh rate. To be fair, they are modest specs, but they’re not terrible for the price.
Design
The MSI Bravo 15 is a low-cost gaming laptop with a stylish appearance. The Bravo 15 is a huge, unwieldy beast, full of weird angles and superfluous embellishments, unlike the svelte Razer Blade models or MSI’s own Stealth series of laptops. It’s near twice as heavy as some of its more expensive 15-inch gaming laptop competitors, measuring 14.1 x 10.2 x 1.0 inches. It’s also a half-pound heavier, weighing in at 5.1 pounds. Carrying the device about isn’t too difficult because it fits comfortably into a regular commuter backpack.
The basic black chassis has a huge gap at the hinge as well as a convex geometric pattern on the lid, which are both distinctive design characteristics. For good measure, there’s also a phoenix emblem, albeit it doesn’t light up.
The Bravo 15 is an odd-looking gadget that wouldn’t look out of place in an office setting — however, as we’ll see later, it’s not bad for productivity tasks.
Display
The MSI Bravo 15’s display was the most serious issue I encountered. I thought the system appeared a little dull and lifeless when I first started using it for business, multimedia, and gaming.
The Bravo 15 is slightly less bright and has significantly less color when compared to the Asus ROG Flow X13 and the Razer Blade 15 Advanced. While the color accuracy isn’t poor (closer to zero with Delta-E is better), displaying only 67 percent of the sRGB range isn’t very outstanding if other gaming laptops typically display more than 100%.
I’ll admit that 1080p is a fine resolution for a 15-inch screen, as well as the Bravo 15, could play select games at 144 frames per second. Even with the brightness turned up, the display pales in comparison to some of its rivals, both literally and metaphorically.
MSI Bravo 15 Performance
The gaming performance of the MSI Bravo 15 can be seen in two ways. One would be as a $900 machine, which is what it performs admirably. And one is in comparison to more expensive gaming laptops, where it falls short. Here’s how the gadget performed in gaming benchmarks at 1080p resolution, measured in frames per second:
| MSI Bravo 15 | Asus ROG Flow X13 | Razer Blade 15 Advanced | |
| Dirt 5 | 30 | 29* | 78 |
| Grand Theft Auto V | 40 | 42 | 106 |
| Assassin’s Creed Valhalla | 32 | 29 | 66 |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 33 | 35 | 82 |
For benchmarking purposes, the resolution was set to 1920 x 1200.
And first foremost, if you’re asking if indeed the Bravo 15 could compete with a high-end gaming laptop, the answer is no. A $1,000 (or more) investment in that in the Razer Blade 15 will result in a much-improved performance.
The Bravo 15, on the other hand, performs brilliantly in its price bracket, even when compared to the slightly more costly ROG Flow X13. It didn’t drop below 30 frames per second in any of our tests, so you should expect performance similar to that of a PS4 or Xbox One, albeit with better graphics and lighting.
MSI Bravo 15 Productivity
The Bravo 15 is a mixed bag when it comes to productivity.
| 33 | MSI Bravo 15 | Asus ROG Flow X13 | Razer Blade 15 Advanced |
| Geekbench 5.4 (artificial performance benchmark) | 6,676 | 7,640 | 6,924 |
| Copying 25 GB from flash drive | 433 | 750 | 1,796 |
| Handbrake video encoding (minutes: second) | 7:55 | 8:13 | 8:46 |
While the Bravo 15 compresses video more quickly than I expected, it isn’t particularly fast or strong for productivity tasks. The Bravo 15, on the other hand, has much more having enough money capacity to operate any productivity software you need without breaking a beat as a gaming machine. Moreover, I’m writing this review with 10 demanding tabs open in Microsoft Word, Spotify, Notepad, Slack, and Google Chrome, and I’m only utilizing roughly 8 GB of the available 16 GB RAM. However, programs may take longer to start than intended, and 512 GB of storage will fill up far faster than you expect.
The software that is preinstalled is my only major criticism of the Bravo 15’s performance. The AMD Radeon program is, to put it mildly, a shambles. The Bravo 15 comes with the incorrect software version loaded (this is something of a theme with MSI machines). Even when I upgraded it, it was still not very good at optimizing games, measuring frame rates. You’ll need some DIY tech support skills if you wish to run games on the Bravo 15.
Ports
Firstly, this MSI Bravo 15 comes with a respectable amount of ports for such a little laptop.
There are two USB-A connectors and a charging port on the left. A 3.5 mm headphone jack, a USB-A port, a USB-C port, an HDMI cable, and an Ethernet port are all located on the right side of the device.
While a second USB-C port would be good, I had no issue connecting the necessary devices. The lack of an SD card slot may be a drawback for productive output users, however, the Bravo 15 is first and foremost a gaming computer.
MSI Bravo 15 Keyboards and Touchpad
One of the most pleasant shocks of the MSI Bravo 15 was its keyboard. One of my common complaints about gaming laptops would be that they misplace their keyboards, pushing tiny configurations into the chassis’s center rather than utilizing all available space. However, the Bravo 15 boasts a full keyboard that spans the whole device’s face, including a number pad!
For touch typists, the Numpad alone makes a big difference, plus the full-size Enter, Backspace, and numeric keys make navigation a snap. To be honest, there are a lot more expensive gaming laptops that might learn a thing or two from the Bravo 15.
But on the other hand, the touchpad is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s responsive enough, and it didn’t in the way of my typing.
MSI Bravo 15 Battery life
Firstly, MSI Bravo 15 offers excellent battery life for a gaming pc with a battery capacity of 51Wh, which is tiny. But the device lasted 9 hours and 10 minutes of Web browsing plus 8 hours and 25 minutes of video playback . That was with the Windows Faster Performance option enabled and the screen intensity set to 120 nits, as well as all applications except the one we were testing closed.
Conclusion
The MSI Bravo 15 is a competent machine that costs $900. It’s competent rather than stunning, and it’s practical rather than creative. However, it runs productivity apps for almost six hours of battery life and plays games at decent frame rates. The Numpad just-on the keyboard is a wonderful touch, and it’s tiny enough to fit in a backpack easily.
If you want high-end performance, you’ll have to spend a lot of money on a Razer Blade. It’s also worth noting that Bravo 15 is straining its hardware to run the freshest and best games at 30 frames per second. This implies that this may not be the most prospective system available. However, it’s not often that a gaming laptop with such few compromises can be found for less than $1,000. However, if you’re already a Sam’s Club member, you might as well make the most of it.
