MSI Katana 15 Gaming Laptop (B13VGK-1095UK), Intel Core
MSI Katana 15 Gaming Laptop (B13VGK-1095UK), Intel Core i9-13900H, 15.6″ FHD 144Hz Panel, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, 8GB*2 DDR5, 1TB NVMe SSD, Windows 11 – Black
REFORGED COOLING FOR NEXT-GEN GAMING
Dedicated thermal solutions for both the CPU and GPU with up to 2 fans and 6 heat pipes.
New CPU&GPU Shared-Pipe design enables real-time heat dissipation balancing between CPU& GPU for improved efficiency. In conjunction with MSI exclusive thermal grease, ensuring maximum performance under extreme gaming.
*Illustration for GeForce RTX 4050 and above GPU. Design may vary by configuration.
LEADING I/O PORTS SELECTION
- 1x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C / DP
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A
- 1x USB 2.0 Type-A
- 1x HDMI (8K @ 60Hz / 4K @ 120Hz)
- 1x RJ45
- 1x Audio combo jack
LIGHT UP WITH GAMING STYLE
The Katana Series is equipped with a 4-Zone RGB Keyboard with the lightened WASD and specially-designed keycaps. Enjoy the colorful light that shines like pulse energy giving you an immersive gaming experience with style!
- 1.7mm Key Travel
- Highlighted WASD Built for Gamers
- Number-pad Equipped
MAGIC LOADING SPEEDS
Accelerate performance on all levels with faster memory read/write speed on DDR5 memory.
PCIe Gen 4 SSDs allows users to load up any game and task with lighting fast speeds.
| Weight: | 4.01 kg |
| Dimensions: | 25.9 x 35.9 x 2.49 cm; 4.01 Kilograms |
| Brand: | MSI Notebook |
| Model: | Katana 15 |
| Colour: | Black |
| Manufacture: | MSI |
| Dimensions: | 25.9 x 35.9 x 2.49 cm; 4.01 Kilograms |
I bought this laptop by a really good price, it was literally the cheapest set with 4070.
It has a good 144hz screen but in my opinion 1440p would be better, because you’ll get the best perfomance in games anyways and it’s just more nextgen, but I don’t mind because I never had better monitor, but I would agree that you should buy a better monitor.
The biggest problem is that this model has manufacturing defects. You can live with this but if you are one of those who likes to dettach harware than you should think twice. Let’s begin with SSD which you won’t be able to install until you ask MSI support for a free mounting kit. You also won’t be able or it will be really hard to change termopaste, because of one screw(number 3, I think) under pipes which I’m not able to unscrew.
That is why it has such a good price but I am still a little bit dissappointed, because I wanted to buy pricey termopaste for CPU. And oh my god, you really need something to cool it, like a pad above 80$. Yeah, MSI has turbo-cooling mode but it’s really loud and not healthy for coolers.
It’s not like everything is bad, it’s the best mid tear laptop, I am pretty sutisfied but it’s better to hear some critique.
I had to return this laptop because it had a screen fault. Amazon refunded no issues. I loved the specs for the price and ended up buying again cheaper elsewhere at the time. This is a great gaming laptop with pretty decent specs for the money. I added an additional 1tb ssd and swapped the ram from 16 to 32gb. You need to have an online chat or email MSI to be sent the missing upgrade bracket for the additional SSD slot. It arrived in a week. The weak point as others have said is the screen quality and brightness. Plug in an external monitor and it’s brilliant. I actually purchased the MSI 32″ monitor and it’s awesome. Edit. I do have to add that the complete exterior especially the lid is a horrible finger print magnet, and shows every single mark!
I use this for game design and 3D Modelling and it works brilliantly so far. When it come to actual games it can run games very well. Maybe not all games at ultra settings but again it depends on the game.
Performance wise it’s really good specs for the moneyit’s not a desktop 4070 but it IS faster than a desktop/laptop 4060 (the 4060 is the same for both desktop and laptop variants). The built in display is not very good, don’t get me wrong it looks “ok” and functions “ok” but if you’re a serious gamer consider getting an external monitor with GSync, that’s what I did. The USB C port doubles up as a displayport (which is required for GSync) so that is good!
The i9 13900H is an excellent laptop CPU and the 4070 is the 105W variant (not the 140W variant) but unlike the 30 series GPUs the 105W 4070 performs pretty much the same as the 140W 4070 give or take a meagre 1-2fps. This has been proven by numerous tech reviewers. The mobile 4070 is incredibly power efficient while maintaining high clock speeds and it will rarely ever hit its maximum TDP, I’ve only seen it hit 105W on a few occasions it can maintain most modern games at high settings at 60+ fps without even hitting triple digits in the power draw. That may be because I use a 60fps cap in a lot of story based games though opting more for graphical fidelity/60fps over higher frame rates. It’s very power efficient which is good for your electricity bills! While maintaining decent fps on high graphics settings. The only complaint I have which isn’t of this laptop but rather of the mobile 4070 GPU8GB vRAM, same as the 4060 GPU. Really NVIDIA? REALLY?! Should have been 16GB like the 4060 Ti. 8GB, though, is enough for high settings at 1080p with 60fps in most modern games and ultra settings in older games. But 16GB vRAM would allow for higher resolutions and ultra settings in more recent games with headroom for additional texture streaming. DLSS 3, exclusive to the RTX 40 series, is amazing magic though. Quality mode renders at 720p resolution and upscales to 1080p while looking just as good as native 1080p but with even higher fps. It’s wizardry! Add in frame generation and you can get really good fps in modern titles like Star Wars Jedi survivor, even with ray tracing enabled! Been playing avatar frontiers of Pandora recently and it’s been a great experience. Running high graphics settings with a 60fps cap (uncapped it would hit over 100 in some areas but the fluctuating fps would cause microstuttering, even with GSync, and the experience is far smoother when capped to 60fps). Destiny 2 is another of my favourites and I consistently get 165fps on my 165Hz external monitor with high graphics settings (though that’s a far less intensive game than avatar).
Can’t comment on the battery life because who games on battery? The beauty of a laptop is being able to take it with you anywherebut I also take the power supply soI don’t really care about the battery because I never use it. Just remember to calibrate it once every few months if you’re like me.
All in all? Can’t complain for 1199. It may look cheap and plastickywith a mediocre built in displaybut it’s the specs inside that count. Pair it with an external monitor and you’re golden really! They had to cut costs to offer these specs for this amount of money. It’s cutbacks that are worth it if you ask me. The only gripe I have is the 8GB vRAM limit but, like I said, that’s not an issue with this laptop. It’s also an issue even with the far more expensive 4070 laptops. It’s NVIDIA being greedy and, although it’s enough for 1080p on high settings, it’s not enough for ultra in some modern games. The 16GB 4060 Ti, however, is! The visual difference between high and ultra though is minimal (unlike medium and high) but that’s not really the point! Nobody wants to have to pay 1000+ for a current gen GPU and have to turn down settings, not because the card itself can’t handle it but because it’s vRAM limited. Why NVIDIA? WHY?!
I bought this as a replacement to my decade old laptop, which was struggling with gaming in 2024. The trackpad arrived “stuck” due to a manufacturing issue, and the ability to add a second SSD is tricky, also due to manufacturing errors. That being said, a web chat with MSI saw an SSD kit being sent out to me free of charge, and opening the laptop up released the trackpad, which was apparently stuck between bits of plastic before. The laptop runs games great, I have been playing Alan Wake 2 on high settings without issue. The screen/display is pretty mediocre (reds are particularly pathetic), but when paired with a monitor, it runs great!
In Fortnite the machine achieves up to 200FPS and averaging around 150FPS on high. The DLSS feature really assists amazing performance and overall good quality reflections, light, colours and shadows. The i9 CPU is extremely efficient in gaming and other high perfomance tasks such as using Adobe programs.
The keyboard is one of my most loved features of the laptop. The keys have perfect travel time for typing and gaming along with nice tactility. The RGB is fully customisable and has some slight bleed with certain colours but nothing to complain about. The trackpad is responsive and works as you would expect.
The only slight downfall of this laptop is the 144Hz screen. As much as I am in love with this rig and would 100% recommend, I have to be honest and talk about this screen. It has a brightness of around 300nits and dark contrast with dull inaccurate colours. It DOES NOT affect gaming but if you are a creator and need that colour accuracy then maybe a monitor would have to be considered if you really wanted the laptop. I create art using Photoshop and find it fine for what I do but it is worth taking it into consideration. I was dubious about the screen before buying but do not regret my decision as I am so happy overall.
I don’t know who these gamers are who want to or expect their laptop to run high perfomance games whilst having their machine off charge but come on people it is a gaming laptop! Of course it is going to need to be plugged in 24/7 🙂 I think that is to be expected for high perfomence tasks.
I think this is the perfect choice for gamers on a budget as it offers amazing specs for the price range. It has been 100% stable, reliable and offered amazing performance! Thanks MSI 🙂
UPDATE: Really upset that the screen gave up on me after only a couple of weeks. It developed black shadows right across the screen. Really disappointing as I loved the performance of the machine. Maybe it was just a faulty one – who knows!
Build quality is not the best but for that price it’s typical robust plastic quality that you would get in a 1000-1500 laptop expect this one has hardware worth almost double that! You can use this as a workstation with an external monitor and keyboard at home plus you can also take it anywhere you want. Don’t expect to have the same performance as a normal desktop would have with the same hardware as both cpu and GPU are limited in terms of power.
Needed a laptop that could handle editing videos as well as be used for some light gaming.
So far it’s been a very impressive laptop that can handle quite beasty edits as well as deliver high FPS on very demanding games like Star Citizen and Cyberpunk.
It has very good vents and fans which stay fairly quiet, even under heavy load.
The negatives would be the screen quality and colour, which are quite terrible when compared to my 4k monitor for PC edits. Although, for this price point, it’s still decent colour for gaming and light video edits, just don’t use it for high quality colouring on videos, switch to a better monitor for that. It also has a very cheap plastic effect which makes fingers prints and marks a nightmare! Be prepared to clean it down after every use as it can look quite grubby within a week.
All in all, a very solid laptop, well worth the 1200 paid for it. Excellent performance for AAA gaming, video edits and use in Adobe products, multiple chrome tabs and multitasking.
The built in speakers are also surprisingly good, incase your headset dies or you want to give your ears a rest.
I may switch the 16gb DDR5 ram for 32gb, then this thing would be perfect.
Haven’t used it without power cable in yet, but I imagine it can handle quite alot, just don’t game when on battery power, always use plug power for that.
Cons: 1. The screen is only 1080p, I had to increase the resolution via DSR, and the colour gamut is a pathetic 68% RGB. My 2019 bought PC even has 98% RGB.
2. The Win11 system feels inferior to Win10 in some places. I waited almost an hour for the initialisation
3. The courier called my phone with no sound, delaying my courier by a day!
Overall, it’s okay. The performance of playing games is still very satisfactory, but DSR enhances the screen to 4K, which is still not as good as the native 4K.