PS42 ultraportable: MSI isn't just gaming laptops

Construction

More used to laptops for gamers in black & red dress and aggressive curves, MSI delivers us here an ultraportable at the same time sober and very pretty. The design of the PS42 is not revolutionary, but turns out to be well constructed and even gives itself a touch of personality. Its all-aluminum chassis is as pleasing to the eye as it is to the touch. We particularly appreciate the vertical brushed effect on the hood.

Once opened, we discover a screen well highlighted by a very thin frame, as well as an input area that incorporates a fairly large keyboard, but a touchpad that seems particularly small. In use, the keyboard is pleasant to use despite a fairly short stroke: the typing sensation is good and the return well marked. On the other hand, the touchpad disappoints: in addition to being small, it is not very reactive and it is often necessary to repeat it several times to validate a double click or a right click. Note, however, the presence of a fingerprint sensor and an adjustable backlight on three levels.

If the PS42 is a "real" ultraportable, it makes few concessions in terms of connectivity, and we will not complain. It therefore has two USB 3 ports, two USB 3.2 Type-C ports, an HDMI output, an SD card reader and a mini-jack combo jack.

We will end this part of the test with a slightly more negative note by mentioning the operating temperature. With a hot spot measured at 46 ° C at the front, above the keyboard, and especially 62.2 ° C under the chassis, we can not say that the PS42 is a cooling model. It is in particular the temperature below which is problematic so it becomes difficult to use the PC while keeping it on your knees, which is still annoying for an ultraportable.

The sound emissions are more satisfactory: after 1 hour of benchmark under Unigine Heaven, the PS42 reaches 40 dB, which remains acceptable, even if we distinctly hear a fairly muffled breath.

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Screen

The MSI PS42 has a 14-inch matte IPS screen in Full HD definition (1,920 x 1,080 px). First of all, note a very good occupancy rate of the slab, which rises to 79.6% thanks to a particularly fine frame. We are not at the level of a Dell XPS 13, but the effort is notable.

And this is not the only positive point of this screen, since the results of our probe measurements are excellent on almost all criteria. First of all, it should be noted that there are several color profiles offered and that "sRGB" displays the best results with a good contrast ratio of 1,200: 1, as well as a very correct maximum brightness (310 cd / m²). Add to that a perfectly stable gamma curve, and you get good readability.

The colorimetry is in tune, since we measure a delta E which drops to 1.3 and a color temperature to 6 900 K. Recall that delta E measures the difference between the actual colors and the colors displayed, and que it is considered very good below 3. The temperature should be close to the standard which is 6,500 K. The colors are therefore extremely faithful here and the rendering very balanced.

The only negative point of this screen lies in its high persistence, which rises to 22 ms. A very average figure, but which has little impact on an ultraportable primarily dedicated to office use.

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Performances

The configuration tested consists of an Intel Core i7-8550U processor, 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD for storage. Note that this PC also exists in Core i5-8250U version, 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB SSD.

This 8th generation Core i7 model in any case delivers slightly disappointing performance compared to what we are supposed to expect from such a technical sheet. We have indeed noticed a permanent throttling on the CPU side, which simply never runs at the expected frequency. As a reminder, the Core i7-8550U has 4 cores / 8 threads and displays frequencies between 1.8 and 4 GHz. When it is not used, the 4 cores rotate here at around 3.69 GHz, and inexplicably drop to 2.7 GHz once loaded, regardless of the benchmark launched. We updated the bios, checked all the power settings and even put the PC in the fridge for 10 minutes, but nothing worked: the frequency remains blocked at 2.7 GHz under load, while the temperature CPU temperature rises to 78 ° C maximum, which is nothing unusual.

The result is performance that remains very correct, but below what you would expect from an ultraportable equipped with an 8th generation Core i7. We are getting closer here to the performance of a Core i5-8250U. Unfortunately, we were unable to test the performance of the model equipped with Core i5.

On the game side, the GeForce MX150 from Nvidia allows you to launch some recent games that are not very greedy or well optimized. For example, you can play Overwatch or Fornite quite comfortably in Full HD.

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Mobility / Autonomy

Even if he is not yet used to developing PCs in ultraportable format, MSI has done a very good job of optimization. It is not the lightest or the thinnest on the market, but it still weighs only 1.2 kg for 1.6 cm thick. The optimization of the chassis relative to the diagonal of the screen allows it to slip very easily into a medium-sized bag. It comes with more than one small charger.

On the autonomy side, the results are fairly average. MSI announces up to 10 hours of autonomy, which seems very optimistic. Our usual video streaming test (Netflix in Chrome, brightness at 200 cd / m², backlight off and headphones plugged in) therefore ran for 6:07. This remains a correct figure, but we are far from the tenors of the genre.

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Audio

As is often the case with this type of laptop, the headphone jack does well, but the speakers don't fly high. The sound from the speakers is thus particularly mediocre, not very powerful and with a very unpleasant "megaphone" effect. The voice remains correctly intelligible, but the bass and treble are absent.

The headphone output, on the other hand, is doing much better and its only defect is a somewhat fair power output. Distortion is therefore perfectly acceptable, as is crosstalk. The listening experience is in any case of quality.

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Conclusion

MSI is trying to prove to us that it also knows how to design quality ultraportable PCs, and not just laptops for gamers. Lightweight, well built and with an excellent screen, the PS42 starts on a very good basis, but sins on a few important points: under-clocked processor (on the Core i7 version here tested), a little just autonomy and high heat under the frame. So many flaws that prevent it from rising among the essentials of this market.

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