We love to test laptops very much MSI. Leptopes of different classes visited our hands, and they were all good: decent displays, adequate prices, impressive performance. This time, we came to us MSI Bravo 15 C7VF-038RU-a computer from the brand’s starting line, which still includes its 17-inch older brother. At first glance, Bravo 15 is a strong middle peasant. But is it so simple? Check what this pretty in the case is!
Design, materials, assembly
The appearance of the laptop is practically identical to what we have repeatedly seen in the models class above. The case is completely black and very concise. Only a pair of chopped lines on the sides and on the top cover, air ducts like aggressive sports cars, a logo with the image of the Petrel and the design font of the keyboard are hinted at the game nature of the device.
The assembly also complies with the standards by which laptops are made much more expensive: the machine is firmly knocked down and is felt reliable. The keyboard, if it bends, is only with a strong press.
Nothing bad about materials is also bad. The upper part of the case is a smooth half -glossy plastic, the lower is matte and rough, and on the side faces it is stylized for grinded metal. The laptop does not collect fingerprints, it is easily cleaned and not afraid of transportation in a backpack. Here with the top cover you need to be more accurate: it is the most tender and quite easily scratches.
We note the dimensions separately. Bravo 15 is 2.5 cm in thickness, and weighs 2.2 kg. Together with an adapter of 200 watts and wires, it will be 2.7 kg. Excellent result for device from the base line!
Ergonomics and autonomy
Ergonomics is typical for MSI laptopes. The keyboard is full-size, with ANSI-disagreement and many hot keys. With their help, the sound and brightness of the display are adjusted, the touchpad, webcam and the microphone are blocked, the keyboard is turned on and off, the inhabitant mode of the internal components at the maximum speed of the fans is forcibly activated, and the sight is even displayed on the screen.
The backlight of the keyboard is blue. Quite moderate in brightness, but with exemplary readiness of both the Cyrillic alphabet and Latin. In the room, it is enough with the head, working with the text is comfortable. Exclusion-the keys of the WASD block and Power. They are translucent (apparently, to emphasize the game orientation of the laptop) – and now the symbols are not so good at them.
The touchpad here is medium -sized (10.5 x 6.5 cm) and is located exactly under the gap key. No questions to the accuracy of questions. The left and right buttons are pressed independently – you can play strategy without mouse. Gesture management is and works without complaints.
The display rises with one finger and leans back to ~ 180 °, fixed well in intermediate positions. The screen is not shaking, and it is not necessary to correct it. Work on the road and watch movies, lying on the couch, comes out without problems.
There are not many connectors, but the necessary base is present. On the left hand – USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A, USB 2.0 type-a plus nest of power. By right – USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C, aka DisplayPort, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A, Ethernet Port, HDMI output and, finally, analog 3.5 mm headphone output.
The autonomy of the MSI Bravo 15 C7VF is quite expected. The 4700 mAh battery lasted 55 minutes in the game F1 2021 with the maximum graphics settings and about four hours worked in office applications. The brightness of the screen and the sound level were recorded by 50%.
As for heating, everything is fine with this: Bravo 15 C7VF is one of the most cool to the touch of gaming laptops that we saw. The keyboard and touchpad are only slightly warm at any operating mode. The spent air is thrown back and to the left – the right of the palm will not burn. However, Levsham nothing is particularly worried about: outgoing air flows are moderately hot. We meet with this in a powerful gaming model for the first time.
Display, sound, webcam
The screen is assembled on an IPS matrix with a diagonal of 15.6 ”, LED backlight and deployment frequency of 144 Hz. Colors cover 78% SRGB palette. For serious work with graphics, the matrix is not suitable-but this is still a game, not a professional solution.
But the resolution here is perfect – FullHD. In terms of a diagonal of 15.6 "The density of pixels (PPI) reaches 141 points per inch. This is more than that of the conditional 32 "4K panels. Thus, MSI engineers killed two birds with one stone at once: the picture in games and the text in office programs look clearly, and the video card easily pulls a heavy graphics, without stumbling about UltraHD or WQHD permits. And if 15 inches appear a little, you can always pay attention to Bravo 17, he has the same advantages.
By color rendering we did not notice problems. The factory calibration is very nothing: the white balance is only slightly raised relative to the standard – the color temperature is located around the 6700K mark. There are no obvious distortions towards any shade. The contrast is not for IPS – in the region of 960: 1. The matrix response speed is sufficient for single-user games, although in dynamic shooters like Quake, Counter-Strike 2 and Apex Legends the image is slightly lubricated.
The viewing angles are expected to be good, because it is about IPS. However, there is a small Glow effect, which is also the norm for this type of matrices, and in some places the spots of the backlight are visible. In our case, we counted two such along the lower edge of the display. They were in size with a five -ruble coin, which fits into permissible frames. The brightness of the matrix is not record, but adequate. At the peak, she gives out about 270 threads, and minimally in the region of 15 – reading the text at night does not bother.
MSI sound has always been at the level, and this case is no exception. Two built -in speakers directed down give the sound an additional volume. There is almost enough bass, but this is a problem in general all laptops. But at the volume of the MSI Bravo 15 C7VF, we compare with smartphones and tablets of top-level.
3.5 mm exit was tested with headphones Sennheiser HD 660S. Music and games are clean, tight, with a volume margin, a neutral tonal balance, a good scene and a dynamic range. Comparable to available external DACs and amplifiers.
Webcam, as always, is a purely utilitarian nature: 720p and 30 to/s. It is not worth counting on high-quality streaming: you still need a webcase more serious. But for calls in Zoom or Discord, it will be enough with your head.
Iron and cooling system
The MSI Bravo 15 C7VF-038RU has a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 video card for laptops with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. Energy consumption is dynamic, at the peak reaches 105 watts.
RAM scored by two DDR5 standard modules at 8 GB. Operates at a frequency of 4800 MHz with timings 40-39-39-77. If desired, you can put 32 GB modules by increasing the array to the maximum 64 GB.
Separately about the drive. This is NVME SSD for 1 TB and it is high -speed: linear reading and recording reached 3.6 GB/s and 2.5 GB/seconds, respectively. The storage can be expanded: there is a slot for another NVME M.2-disc.
Network capabilities are standard: Bluetooth v5.3, Wi-Fi 6e and gigabit Lan. We downloaded almost 1 TB per day through the built-in network and did not meet any pounds.
But the most interesting processor here. Prior to this, productive laptops from MSI came across to us only with Intel chips. In this case, we are dealing with the AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS crystal. This is a solution with eight physical cores and sixteen logical flows, a frequency of up to 4.75 GHz and consumption of up to 54 watts according to the specifications of the manufacturer. This is interesting, because in our case, if you rely on the testimony of the Hwinfo monitoring program, the processor requested up to 65 watts depending on the mode of operation. There are four such modes and they are selected by the user in the proprietary MSI Control Center.
"Super-Battery" limits the power consumption of the processor and video cards at marks 15 and 75 watts, respectively. In the game A Plague Tale: Requiem, with such a ceiling, the frequency of core nuclei fluctuates between 1.4–3.1 GHz, heating reaches 72 °. GP, in turn, is selected to the threshold of 2100 MHz and is heated to 75 °.
The "silent" mode exhibits the 26 and 75-watt limit for the CPU and GP, respectively. Frequencies – 2.8–3.6 GHz for processor nuclei and 1920 MHz for video chip. The temperature is 78 ° for both components. In the "Balance" mode, the video card issues 2280 MHz and warms up to 82 °, CP – 3.1–4.0 GHz and up to 80 °. Consumption is 85 watts for the first and 25 watts for the second.
The last mode is called "extreme performance". Here CPU consumes 65 watts, and GP – all 105 watts. And if the video card with such power reaches a plateau of 2520 MHz and becomes really hot, approaching 82 °, then the processor does not increase its frequencies so much, fluctuating between 2.5 and 3.0 GHz, but its temperature grows to 87 °. The explanation for this phenomenon is quite simple: the logic of the CPU attaches the nuclei to increase the frequencies, but the temperature limit is immediately triggered, which lowers them. Such an eternal struggle. But no Trottling – since. The laptop does not hot, like a hell of a boiler, unlike cars with Intel processors – two. It is quieter than analogues from MSI at least 2 dB (the maximum noise we recorded was only 48 dB) – three.
Plus everything I want to note the outstanding efficiency of Ryzen 7 7735HS. When working in the battery -saving modes, it is quite realistic to play the same A Plague Tale: Requiem, and this is an extremely demanding title. Yes, of course the FPS indicator is not as high as with unlimited consumption, but remains playable. What is the main thing, the laptop is almost silent.
Once we started about noise – let's talk about the cooling system MSI Cooler Boost 5. It is built as follows: six copper heat pipes and three nickelled heating pipes. The architecture of Shared Pipes is involved, https://fitzdares-casino.co.uk/ which implies joint use by the processor and video card of one heating grinder. Two reserved turbine type fans blow the entire structure. By the way, it is interesting that the one who blows at the GP is slightly larger and is equipped with two radiators. At the same time, the CPU cools the turntable smaller, and it serves the radiator only one. However, more and not required.
Even with such a tremendous load, which is given by the Linx 0 stress test.9.7 peak temperatures were 90 °, and on average it was about 80 °. And again the slightest signs of Trottling, coupled with the frequencies decent for AVX calculations: 3.6–3.8 GHz. In the case of other heavy, but already close to reality applications, things are even better. In Corona Benchmark, the processor confidently holds the bar in 4.0 GHz and does not exceed 79 °, gaining 3 874 755 final points.
Game performance
Approached the most interesting – game benchmarks. The testing technique is simple. Its goal is to get an average of 60 frames per second and above. To begin with, the game starts in a native resolution laptop for the matrix and with the preset maximum settings. In the presence of DXR effects, they are included, and NVIDIA DLSS technology is vice versa. If the system is not able to give out the desired result, DLSS is involved. The next step is turned off RT, after the graphics settings are reduced after. And so until the desired numbers are achieved.
The conclusion based on testing in ten games is positive: MSI Bravo 15 C7VF perfectly drags modern titles on maximums without DXR effects. When turning on, Framrates falls to about 40-50 f/s on average, which is not perfect, but absolutely acceptable.
Exception – Cyberpunk 2077, in which the average FPS rate fell to 30 with a small one, as well as a Plague Tale: Requiem, where the Framrameite was about 40 filled, but everything ruined the serious frizes (freezing of the entire system for a short time). Note, however, that they completely disappeared, it was worth only to slightly lower the quality of the graphics or turn on DLSS.
Results
MSI Bravo C7VF-038ru in a good way surprised us: relatively inexpensive, but not at all budgetary in sensations, a very balanced apparatus with decent performance. Yes, this is not a flagship, letting dust into the eyes with staggering characteristics. But if the task is to get a gaming laptop pulling modern projects for sane money, and even from the eminent brand, then the solution is just excellent.
This laptop has a lot of advantages: strong assembly, practical materials, restrained design, moderate heating and noise and more than enough frames in games. Purely consumer advantages are also enough: the presence of the Russian official stores, warranty support and the main one is an excellent price balance, the level of components and their clean performance. Small disadvantages against this background lose all meaning. The perfect choice of practical gamer at the end of 2023.