The MSI Cyborg 15 Max (2026) is priced at £1499 and is positioned as a mid-range gaming laptop targeting a broader lifestyle audience instead of hardcore gamers. It weighs 2kg, emphasizing portability, and is equipped with an RTX 5070 GPU paired with an Intel Core i7-13620H processor from the Raptor Lake generation (2023), featuring ten cores split across four performance and six efficiency cores with a boost clock up to 4.9GHz.
The laptop received a four-star recommendation, primarily praised for strong 1080p gaming performance, solid port selection, and reasonable battery life. However, the review noted drawbacks including a notably dim screen and scratchier-feeling plastics.
Design-wise, the laptop features a two-tone aesthetic: a silver-patterned metal lid contrasting with black plastic elsewhere. While the metal lid received praise, the plastic sections were considered cheaper. Port selection is spread across the left, right, and rear sides, including a single USB-A port on the left, USB-C, a headphone jack, and a barrel charging port on the right. The rear panel offers two additional USB-A ports, HDMI, and Ethernet.
The keyboard provided reasonable travel and felt slightly soft, while the trackpad was noted as snappy and positive to use, despite being smaller in size.
The display is a 15.6-inch Full HD IPS panel running at 144Hz. It offers reasonably deep blacks (0.11 nits) and a 950:1 contrast ratio at a 6800K colour temperature, with full sRGB coverage. However, the brightness was a main weakness, measuring only 243.8 nits against a 300-nit target, resulting in images appearing flatter than on rivals. Colour-sensitive work, such as Adobe RGB and DCI-P3, fell short of the required threshold.
Built-in speakers were fine for casual use but were described as tinny and lacking bass; the headphone jack was recommended for serious listening.
Performance testing at native 1080p delivered strong gaming results. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 achieved 96.30fps, while Returnal reached 118fps, and Rainbow Six Extraction climbed to 183fps. When DLSS was enabled, Cyberpunk performance reached 105.82fps. The demanding Ray Tracing Ultra preset improved from 42.56fps to 59.69fps with DLSS enabled, and rasterized results reached as high as 271.34fps.
The laptop was equipped with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. This memory/storage combination was considered stingy for the price, although the SSD itself performed reasonably well for reads at 6722.77 MB/s but slower on writes at 3695.14 MB/s.
Software included a clean Windows 11 install with only one preinstalled MSI utility for system monitoring and RGB control. The laptop lacked sufficient AI hardware to qualify as a Microsoft Copilot+ PC, despite having a Copilot key on the keyboard.
Battery life was modest, derived from a 60Whr cell, providing five hours and 52 minutes in an office benchmark. The included 180W charger reached 50% charge in half an hour and a full charge in 65 minutes.
Overall, the review concludes that the MSI Cyborg 15 Max is a solid mid-range choice for consumers who prioritize gaming performance and portability over display quality, positioning it against competitors like the Acer Nitro V16 and other similarly powered alternatives.