MSI Creator 15M A9SE Mounting Notebook Review — Alternative to MacBook

If you are look­ing for a lap­top that will do great edit­ing at a min­i­mal price, check out the MSI Cre­ator 15M A9SE.

This is not a pro­fes­sion­al review — the descrip­tion is based only on my feel­ings and per­son­al expe­ri­ence.

In order to under­stand why MSI suit­ed me, you need to know what exact­ly I am mount­ing.

These videos are usu­al­ly no more than 15 min­utes long, using sta­bi­liza­tion, nest­ing (com­bin­ing sev­er­al frames into one sequence), with a fair­ly large num­ber of audio and video sources, and as a result, at least 3 audio and 3 video tracks.

In gen­er­al, not a sim­ple sequen­tial instal­la­tion, but noth­ing super­nat­ur­al either. Roast medi­um, so to speak.

A laptop for those who want powerful, but inexpensive

Find­ing a device with as high a spec­i­fi­ca­tion as pos­si­ble, but as cheap as pos­si­ble, was my main con­cern when choos­ing a lap­top. And to be pret­ty.

Let’s start with a sim­ple life hack. How to under­stand what char­ac­ter­is­tics are need­ed for a lap­top? View the sys­tem require­ments for the pro­gram in which you are going to work.

I edit in Adobe Pre­miere Pro. We go to the page with sys­tem require­ments and com­pare with the char­ac­ter­is­tics of our lap­top.

In con­clu­sion, the MSI char­ac­ter­is­tics cor­re­spond to the sys­tem require­ments of the pro­gram, and in some cas­es even exceed the per­for­mance.

On the same page, pay atten­tion to the list of rec­om­mend­ed video cards. Our MSI — NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 — is just one of those list­ed.

Advantages

1. Pow­er and per­for­mance

My old dream is to have Pre­miere “fly” on a lap­top. She came true.

Sta­bi­liza­tion, nest­ing, sev­er­al audio and video tracks — every­thing works smooth­ly. Com­pared to my pre­vi­ous Leno­vo for 36 thou­sand rubles, which not only couldn’t cope with the edit­ing, but fell into a coma, the fly­ing Pre­miere on MSI is a balm for my edit­ing heart.

How­ev­er, of course, there is a lim­it to every­thing.

An exam­ple so you under­stand the edges:

Video for 12 min­utes, 3 video tracks, 3 audio tracks with a huge amount of sounds and video sources, footage, tran­si­tions and speed-ups — the moment when the sys­tem slows down and says “Stop, I need to think.”

So I col­lect­ed this video in pieces: I edit­ed the parts sep­a­rate­ly and col­lect­ed every­thing in a com­mon sequence.

8 min­utes is ok, 12 is too much. Does not hang, does not fly out, but thinks for a long time. Well, we’re not edit­ing The Avengers.

2. Screen

Bright, great col­or repro­duc­tion.

3. Sound

Nor­mal, not qui­et and not loud, slight­ly volu­mi­nous.

4. Styl­ish min­i­mal­ist design

For me, design is an impor­tant cri­te­ri­on. A lap­top is my main work­ing tool, so the more com­fort­able and pleas­ant it is to work on it, the more work will be done.

MSI Cre­ator 15M A9SE is a gam­ing lap­top. And gam­ing lap­tops have an aggres­sive, gaudy design — lines, let­ter­ing and back­light­ing — every­thing that requires the soul of a real gamer. And also a weighty, pow­er­ful body.

Among lap­tops of the right price and fea­tures (which were most­ly gam­ing lap­tops), our mod­el was the most attrac­tive to me.

Min­i­mal­ist design, rem­i­nis­cent of the style of a Mac lap­top, with a mat­te gray body and an unprint­ed logo on the lid. It looks neat and con­cise, despite the thick­ness of the case.

Flaws:

1. Flim­sy case

The touch­pad wob­bles, and the lap­top case feels like cheap Chi­nese plas­tic in terms of tac­tile sen­sa­tions — after Leno­vo, which is strong in this respect, the first press of the touch­pad but­ton was a rather big dis­ap­point­ment from the pur­chase.

This does not apply to the key­board — typ­ing on the keys is a plea­sure.

2. Noisy

For me, the noise of a lap­top has always been a sign that a friend is over­worked and needs to rest.

MSI makes noise always and every­where, when it is good and when it is bad, even when the lid is closed and no work process­es are run­ning.

Ini­tial­ly, this scared me — I was afraid that the lap­top could not cope with the load. And at night, when you for­get to turn off the device, you wake up from the noise, as if there is a snow­storm out­side, and you for­got to close the win­dow.

It turned out that this is the norm.

3. Gets hot

It hap­pens that the lap­top heats up when you just type in Word — it’s annoy­ing. It’s not like it should always be a cool sea breeze, but it gets hot­ter than usu­al com­pared to oth­er lap­tops.

4. Poor­ly holds a charge + heavy pow­er sup­ply

Dis­charges pret­ty quick­ly, and the charg­ing cord is quite large and weighty. There­fore, for those who would like to work out­side the home or take a lap­top, for exam­ple, to uni­ver­si­ty for cou­ples, this may not be the most suit­able option.

5. No SD card slot

And, as a result, the need to pur­chase a card read­er.

So is it worth buying MSI for editing?

Ini­tial­ly, I did not under­stand at all how to choose a com­put­er, so I decid­ed to take the easy way — to buy a Mac­Book. It had a rep­u­ta­tion for being the most pow­er­ful lap­top that is ide­al for mount­ing. For the price, I could afford a lit­tle, so I set­tled on the Mac­Book Pro 13.

But then I decid­ed to ana­lyze the char­ac­ter­is­tics and real­ized that for that kind of mon­ey (130 thou­sand rubles) you can buy some­thing more pow­er­ful.

I am sat­is­fied with the pur­chase of a lap­top from MSI. It sat­is­fies my per­for­mance require­ments. Not even talk­ing about edit­ing, I can have a lot of pro­grams open: What­sApp, Telegram, two or three browsers with sev­er­al tabs in each, Word doc­u­ments, PDF and pho­tos, and play­ing music in par­al­lel — every­thing is fine.

The design is pleas­ing to the eye — it’s nice to bring it with you to a cof­fee shop and enjoy your work: tap­ping on strong keys and edit­ing, look­ing at a bright, clear image.

The ambigu­ous sit­u­a­tion with a flim­sy case and touch­pad, as well as the fact that the lap­top dis­charges quite quick­ly, makes noise and heats up more than it should, may alert you.

For 122 thou­sand, of course, I would like every­thing at once. But, I repeat, for me the main thing was the price + per­for­mance + nice appear­ance. Obvi­ous­ly, for every­thing else today you need to pay extra.

It was my first inde­pen­dent choice of a lap­top and I think that in gen­er­al I man­aged. The ide­al gad­get can only be cho­sen through tri­al and error, so next time I will pay atten­tion to the strength of the case and the sever­i­ty of the charg­ing unit. In the mean­time, you can for­get about the prob­lem of buy­ing a lap­top for at least a year.