Something to look forward to: Are you looking for a reasonably priced gaming laptop powered by AMD hardware? MSI might have the answer. The company has started pre-orders for the MSI Bravo 15 and Bravo 17 machines that combine Ryzen 4000 H-series processors with Radeon RX 5500M GPUs.
Last month, we detailed the Ryzen 4000 chips, which are based on the Zen 2 architecture built on the 7nm process and come in low-power U-series and high-performance H-series variants.
The Bravo laptops can be specced up to a Ryzen 7 4800H---an 8-core/16-thread CPU with a 2.9GHz base clock speed that can boost up to 4.2GHz. Those looking to save some money could opt for the Ryzen 5 4600H, which drops the core count to six (12 threads) and has a base clock of 3GHZ with a boost of 4GHz.
Other specs include AMD's Radeon RX 5500M GPU that comes with 4GB of GDDR6 memory. You also get up to 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, while the Bravo 17 includes a 1TB HDD with the sold-state drive.
Both laptops' "IPS-level" screens are 1920 x 1080 and feature a 120Hz refresh rate. There's also AMD Freesync, so less demanding titles should offer super smooth gameplay at high frame rates. Elsewhere, there are three USB Type-A ports, two USB Type-C ports, an RJ45 Ethernet port, a security lock slot, a headphone jack and an HDMI port, though the Bravo 17 swaps out one of the Type-C ports for a microphone port, strangely.
"We successfully doubled the power efficiency of the Bravo series compared to its previous generation, delivering a high performing laptop consumers can rely on, at a competitive price," said Andy Tung, President at MSI Computer Corp.
The Bravo 15 with 8GB RAM and the Ryzen 5 is available from Newegg for $929, while the 16GB/Ryzen 7 option costs $999. At the time of writing, both are listed as out of stock, but you can be notified when they're back in. The Bravo 17 is available with 16GB RAM and a Ryzen 7 for $1,099, though its Newegg listing appears to have been removed.