Available In-Store Only; In stock at all stores (except NY-Brooklyn) the time of posting this.
SPECS:- 15.6" QHD (2560x1440) 16:9, 165Hz, 300-nits, 100% sRGB, Anti-glare, IPS (WVA) Display
- AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (8C / 16T, 3.8 / 5.1GHz, 8MB L2 / 16MB L3)
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU 8GB GDDR6, Up to 1980MHz Boost Clock 105W Maximum Graphics Power with Dynamic Boost.
- 16GB (8GB*2) DDR5 5600MHz
- 1TB NVMe SSD Gen4x4
- AMD RZ616 Wi-Fi 6E + BT 5.3
- 720p HD Webcam
- 4 zone RGB keyboard with Anti-Ghost key (99 Key)
- 3-cell 53.5Whr Li-Polymer
- 4.96 lbs. (2.25 kg)
- Model: B8VG-430US
- Ports:
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen1
- 1x USB 2.0 Type-C Port
- 1x USB 3.2 Gen1 w/DP 1.4
- 1x HDMI v 2.1
- 1x RJ45 (Gigabit Ethernet)
https://www.microcenter.com/produ...uter-black 
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SPECS:
https://www.microcenter
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This laptop has excellent specs for it's price, it's been this price a couple of times already but always goes back up to $1100 after a day or so. Getting a laptop with a upper-midrange (closer to high end than midrange) current gen cpu, a good screen, a functionally full power rtx 4070, 16gb (or more) of ddr5 ram, and a 1tb gen4 ssd is normally at absolute minimum $1100 on a good sale. The only major downsides to this laptop are the small battery and less premium chassis which seems to have poor thermals.
Msi's official specs page can be found here, the model is "Katana A15 AI B8VG-430US": https://us.msi.com/Laptop/Katana-...cification
This laptop has an ips QHD (1440p) screen with: a 165hz refresh rate, 100% DCI-P3 coverage (far better than basic 100% srgb coverage), and a claimed 2.5ms response time. These are high end specs, being beyond what you'd expect from a screen in a thousand dollar gaming laptop with a rtx 4070 and good cpu. While no brightness is listed (I'm not sure where the OP found the 300nits spec), I'm not aware of any panels being manufactured with these specs that are below 300nits. All the QHD 165hz screens in previous years msi laptops I checked reviews for had a brightness of over 300nits. Contrast in the QHD 165hz screens from previous msi models is acceptable for ips, but not excellent. I do not believe this panel supports hdr. Msi advertises the katana a15 ai as having a "mux design", so it has a mux switch. However, there's no mention of advanced optimus, so it's quite possible you will need to reboot the laptop to switch between discrete and hybrid graphics mode. While a lack of g-sync support would be unusual for a laptop with a mux switch and higher end screen, please keep in mind that some previous msi models that have had a QHD 165hz screen have lacked g-sync/vrr.
The Ryzen 7 8845HS cpu in this laptop is essentially a refreshed version of the r7 7840hs with better npu performance for ai, the uplift in performance outside ai tasks is fairly minor. Still, having 8 current gen zen4 cores and the rdna3 radeon 780m igpu means this cpu is high end overall, and should offer an excellent mix of performance and battery life. The cpu in this laptop is more than sufficient for any games you can play with the mobile 4070, the gpu will almost always be the bottleneck. Productivity performance should also be fairly good.
The mobile rtx 4070 is essentially just a mobile rtx 4060 with more cores enabled, it's still held back by a minuscule memory bus width, having only 8gb of vram, and being voltage limited such that it can't take advantage of more than 100 watts of power while gaming. Overall, the mobile 4070 is around ~20% faster on average in gaming compared to the mobile rtx 4060. Therefore, at ~$1000 the value proposition of this laptop with the 4070 is fairly similar to that of 4060 laptops with good specs, which go for around $800 on a good sale. The 4070 in this laptop has a tgp of 105w, meaning it's technically not a full power variant. However, the mobile 4070's performance in gaming stops scaling past 100w, so you're not actually losing any gaming performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMMrh6P
The next step up over the mobile rtx 4070 is the mobile rtx 4080, which is massively more powerful but also massively more expensive. The mobile 4080 is approximately 55% faster than the mobile 4070 and has 12gb of vram instead of eight. However, the cheapest you'll find a new laptop with a rtx 4080 is ~$1600 on an excellent sale (excluding price mistakes).
This laptop has two user accessible ram slots (occupied by 2x8gb ddr5-5600 ram sticks), and officially supports up to 64gb. This laptop has two user accessible m.2 2280 storage slots (one occupied by the 1tb gen4 m.2 ssd). The primary slot is gen4, but no specs are given for the second slot. Still, the reviews I've read indicate the second slot is also pcie gen4. Having 16gb of ram and a 1tb gen4 ssd are good for the price range.
The primary downside of this laptop is it's 53whr battery. This is fairly low for a non-thin gaming laptop, and by itself means that this laptop will have relatively poor battery life even amongst gaming laptops, which are already notorious for poor battery life. The fairly efficient cpu should mitigate this to some extent, but I would not expect good battery life with this laptop. You can likely extend battery life to several hours in hybrid graphics mode by avoiding using the 4070, but gaming without being plugged in will drain your battery exceptionally fast.
The msi katana chassis from previous years has a somewhat mediocre reputation, though ultimately I'm not aware of there being any major known issues. Still, build quality and thermals will likely be worse compared to more premium chassis's offered by other brands (at substantially higher prices for the same specs). A couple of users who purchased this laptop in previous deals and posted in the previous threads mentioned that this laptop runs hot.
Ultimately, considering the specs, this laptop is a rather good deal at $1000. If you can get the $100 off microcenter coupon (mentioned at the top of this post), this laptop is an exceptionally good value at $900. That being said, if you're willing to purchase refurbished and there happens to be stock near you, the refurb hp victus laptop with a 13700hx and rtx 4060 at $650 is a much better value, though obviously somewhat weaker in gaming performance and having a much worse screen: https://slickdeals.net/f/17581830-hp-victus-16-refurb-16-1-fhd-144hz-i7-13700hx-rtx-4060-32gb-ddr5-1tb-ssd-microcenter-in-store-649-99
Current leaks with regards to amd's zen5 mobile "strix" cpus indicate that they will likely launch in July and have good supply by August (in time for back to school sales). Prices on gaming laptops also seem to be trending downwards in general. Therefore, if you're willing to wait a couple of months, there might be even better deals available compared to this laptop at $1000.
This laptop has excellent specs for it's price, it's been this price a couple of times already but always goes back up to $1100 after a day or so. Getting a laptop with a upper-midrange (closer to high end than midrange) current gen cpu, a good screen, a functionally full power rtx 4070, 16gb (or more) of ddr5 ram, and a 1tb gen4 ssd is normally at absolute minimum $1100 on a good sale. The only major downsides to this laptop are the small battery and less premium chassis which seems to have poor thermals.
Msi's official specs page can be found here, the model is "Katana A15 AI B8VG-430US": https://us.msi.com/Laptop/Katana-...cification [msi.com]
This laptop has an ips QHD (1440p) screen with: a 165hz refresh rate, 100% DCI-P3 coverage (far better than basic 100% srgb coverage), and a claimed 2.5ms response time. These are high end specs, being beyond what you'd expect from a screen in a thousand dollar gaming laptop with a rtx 4070 and good cpu. While no brightness is listed (I'm not sure where the OP found the 300nits spec), I'm not aware of any panels being manufactured with these specs that are below 300nits. All the QHD 165hz screens in previous years msi laptops I checked reviews for had a brightness of over 300nits. Contrast in the QHD 165hz screens from previous msi models is acceptable for ips, but not excellent. I do not believe this panel supports hdr. Msi advertises the katana a15 ai as having a "mux design", so it has a mux switch. However, there's no mention of advanced optimus, so it's quite possible you will need to reboot the laptop to switch between discrete and hybrid graphics mode. While a lack of g-sync support would be unusual for a laptop with a mux switch and higher end screen, please keep in mind that some previous msi models that have had a QHD 165hz screen have lacked g-sync/vrr.
The Ryzen 7 8845HS cpu in this laptop is essentially a refreshed version of the r7 7840hs with better npu performance for ai, the uplift in performance outside ai tasks is fairly minor. Still, having 8 current gen zen4 cores and the rdna3 radeon 780m igpu means this cpu is high end overall, and should offer an excellent mix of performance and battery life. The cpu in this laptop is more than sufficient for any games you can play with the mobile 4070, the gpu will almost always be the bottleneck. Productivity performance should also be fairly good.
The mobile rtx 4070 is essentially just a mobile rtx 4060 with more cores enabled, it's still held back by a minuscule memory bus width, having only 8gb of vram, and being voltage limited such that it can't take advantage of more than 100 watts of power while gaming. Overall, the mobile 4070 is around ~20% faster on average in gaming compared to the mobile rtx 4060. Therefore, at ~$1000 the value proposition of this laptop with the 4070 is fairly similar to that of 4060 laptops with good specs, which go for around $800 on a good sale. The 4070 in this laptop has a tgp of 105w, meaning it's technically not a full power variant. However, the mobile 4070's performance in gaming stops scaling past 100w, so you're not actually losing any gaming performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMMrh6P
The next step up over the mobile rtx 4070 is the mobile rtx 4080, which is massively more powerful but also massively more expensive. The mobile 4080 is approximately 55% faster than the mobile 4070 and has 12gb of vram instead of eight. However, the cheapest you'll find a new laptop with a rtx 4080 is ~$1600 on an excellent sale (excluding price mistakes).
This laptop has two user accessible ram slots (occupied by 2x8gb ddr5-5600 ram sticks), and officially supports up to 64gb. This laptop has two user accessible m.2 2280 storage slots (one occupied by the 1tb gen4 m.2 ssd). The primary slot is gen4, but no specs are given for the second slot. Still, the reviews I've read indicate the second slot is also pcie gen4. Having 16gb of ram and a 1tb gen4 ssd are good for the price range.
The primary downside of this laptop is it's 53whr battery. This is fairly low for a non-thin gaming laptop, and by itself means that this laptop will have relatively poor battery life even amongst gaming laptops, which are already notorious for poor battery life. The fairly efficient cpu should mitigate this to some extent, but I would not expect good battery life with this laptop. You can likely extend battery life to several hours in hybrid graphics mode by avoiding using the 4070, but gaming without being plugged in will drain your battery exceptionally fast.
The msi katana chassis from previous years has a somewhat mediocre reputation, though ultimately I'm not aware of there being any major known issues. Still, build quality and thermals will likely be worse compared to more premium chassis's offered by other brands (at substantially higher prices for the same specs). A couple of users who purchased this laptop in previous deals and posted in the previous threads mentioned that this laptop runs hot.
Ultimately, considering the specs, this laptop is a rather good deal at $1000. If you can get the $100 off microcenter coupon (mentioned at the top of this post), this laptop is an exceptionally good value at $900. That being said, if you're willing to purchase refurbished and there happens to be stock near you, the refurb hp victus laptop with a 13700hx and rtx 4060 at $650 is a much better value, though obviously somewhat weaker in gaming performance and having a much worse screen: https://slickdeals.net/f/17581830-hp-victus-16-refurb-16-1-fhd-144hz-i7-13700hx-rtx-4060-32gb-ddr5-1tb-ssd-microcenter-in-store-649-99
Current leaks with regards to amd's zen5 mobile "strix" cpus indicate that they will likely launch in July and have good supply by August (in time for back to school sales). Prices on gaming laptops also seem to be trending downwards in general. Therefore, if you're willing to wait a couple of months, there might be even better deals available compared to this laptop at $1000.
MSI Katana 15 B12VFK-291US 15.6" Gaming Laptop Computer - BlackIntel Core i7 12th Gen 12650H 1.7GHz Processor; NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 8GB GDDR6; 16GB DDR5-4800 RAM; 512GB Solid State Drive
This laptop has excellent specs for it's price, it's been this price a couple of times already but always goes back up to $1100 after a day or so. Getting a laptop with a upper-midrange (closer to high end than midrange) current gen cpu, a good screen, a functionally full power rtx 4070, 16gb (or more) of ddr5 ram, and a 1tb gen4 ssd is normally at absolute minimum $1100 on a good sale. The only major downsides to this laptop are the small battery and less premium chassis which seems to have poor thermals.
Msi's official specs page can be found here, the model is "Katana A15 AI B8VG-430US": https://us.msi.com/Laptop/Katana-...cification
This laptop has an ips QHD (1440p) screen with: a 165hz refresh rate, 100% DCI-P3 coverage (far better than basic 100% srgb coverage), and a claimed 2.5ms response time. These are high end specs, being beyond what you'd expect from a screen in a thousand dollar gaming laptop with a rtx 4070 and good cpu. While no brightness is listed (I'm not sure where the OP found the 300nits spec), I'm not aware of any panels being manufactured with these specs that are below 300nits. All the QHD 165hz screens in previous years msi laptops I checked reviews for had a brightness of over 300nits. Contrast in the QHD 165hz screens from previous msi models is acceptable for ips, but not excellent. I do not believe this panel supports hdr. Msi advertises the katana a15 ai as having a "mux design", so it has a mux switch. However, there's no mention of advanced optimus, so it's quite possible you will need to reboot the laptop to switch between discrete and hybrid graphics mode. While a lack of g-sync support would be unusual for a laptop with a mux switch and higher end screen, please keep in mind that some previous msi models that have had a QHD 165hz screen have lacked g-sync/vrr.
The Ryzen 7 8845HS cpu in this laptop is essentially a refreshed version of the r7 7840hs with better npu performance for ai, the uplift in performance outside ai tasks is fairly minor. Still, having 8 current gen zen4 cores and the rdna3 radeon 780m igpu means this cpu is high end overall, and should offer an excellent mix of performance and battery life. The cpu in this laptop is more than sufficient for any games you can play with the mobile 4070, the gpu will almost always be the bottleneck. Productivity performance should also be fairly good.
The mobile rtx 4070 is essentially just a mobile rtx 4060 with more cores enabled, it's still held back by a minuscule memory bus width, having only 8gb of vram, and being voltage limited such that it can't take advantage of more than 100 watts of power while gaming. Overall, the mobile 4070 is around ~20% faster on average in gaming compared to the mobile rtx 4060. Therefore, at ~$1000 the value proposition of this laptop with the 4070 is fairly similar to that of 4060 laptops with good specs, which go for around $800 on a good sale. The 4070 in this laptop has a tgp of 105w, meaning it's technically not a full power variant. However, the mobile 4070's performance in gaming stops scaling past 100w, so you're not actually losing any gaming performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMMrh6P
The next step up over the mobile rtx 4070 is the mobile rtx 4080, which is massively more powerful but also massively more expensive. The mobile 4080 is approximately 55% faster than the mobile 4070 and has 12gb of vram instead of eight. However, the cheapest you'll find a new laptop with a rtx 4080 is ~$1600 on an excellent sale (excluding price mistakes).
This laptop has two user accessible ram slots (occupied by 2x8gb ddr5-5600 ram sticks), and officially supports up to 64gb. This laptop has two user accessible m.2 2280 storage slots (one occupied by the 1tb gen4 m.2 ssd). The primary slot is gen4, but no specs are given for the second slot. Still, the reviews I've read indicate the second slot is also pcie gen4. Having 16gb of ram and a 1tb gen4 ssd are good for the price range.
The primary downside of this laptop is it's 53whr battery. This is fairly low for a non-thin gaming laptop, and by itself means that this laptop will have relatively poor battery life even amongst gaming laptops, which are already notorious for poor battery life. The fairly efficient cpu should mitigate this to some extent, but I would not expect good battery life with this laptop. You can likely extend battery life to several hours in hybrid graphics mode by avoiding using the 4070, but gaming without being plugged in will drain your battery exceptionally fast.
The msi katana chassis from previous years has a somewhat mediocre reputation, though ultimately I'm not aware of there being any major known issues. Still, build quality and thermals will likely be worse compared to more premium chassis's offered by other brands (at substantially higher prices for the same specs). A couple of users who purchased this laptop in previous deals and posted in the previous threads mentioned that this laptop runs hot.
Ultimately, considering the specs, this laptop is a rather good deal at $1000. If you can get the $100 off microcenter coupon (mentioned at the top of this post), this laptop is an exceptionally good value at $900. That being said, if you're willing to purchase refurbished and there happens to be stock near you, the refurb hp victus laptop with a 13700hx and rtx 4060 at $650 is a much better value, though obviously somewhat weaker in gaming performance and having a much worse screen: https://slickdeals.net/f/17581830-hp-victus-16-refurb-16-1-fhd-144hz-i7-13700hx-rtx-4060-32gb-ddr5-1tb-ssd-microcenter-in-store-649-99
Current leaks with regards to amd's zen5 mobile "strix" cpus indicate that they will likely launch in July and have good supply by August (in time for back to school sales). Prices on gaming laptops also seem to be trending downwards in general. Therefore, if you're willing to wait a couple of months, there might be even better deals available compared to this laptop at $1000.
https://slickdeals.net/f/17307121-msi-vector-gp68hx-12vh-006-i9-1200hx-rtx-4080-16gb-1-tb-ssd-open-box-newegg-1249-w-zip-code-zipmypc?src=Sit
That's why I wouldn't even consider this laptop.
https://slickdeals.net/f/17307121-msi-vector-gp68hx-12vh-006-i9-1200hx-rtx-4080-16gb-1-tb-ssd-open-b...
That's why I wouldn't even consider this laptop.
- Open box rather than new (may have cosmetic damage and/or be missing necessary accessories such as the charging brick, no warranty information is given)
- Has a worse cpu
- Has a much worse 1200p 144hz 45% ntsc (62% srgb) screen
- Requires zip pay, which does a soft credit check, can be arbitrarily denied for any reason, and is a buy now pay later service with additional fees
- Is still $249 more expensive
A much better example of a 4080 laptop deal, for someone willing to purchase a non-new laptop (which is still apples to oranges when comparing against a new laptop like the one in this deal), is the $1456 refurbished Acer Predator 16": https://slickdeals.net/f/17594397-acer-predator-helios-16-cert-refurb-16-qhd-240hz-i9-13900hx-rtx-4080-16gb-ddr5-1tb-ssd-1455-99Edit: I see it does have interchangeable one from the above poster's info (thanks for posting this super helpful!)
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