The Ultimate Guide to Top-Performing Work Laptops Beyond Lenovo and Apple

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ZDNET’s key takeaways

The MSI Creator 16 AI Studio is available now, starting at $3,999 for the Intel Core Ultra 9, 64GB Memory, 2TB SSD configuration.
MSI jumped on the AI bandwagon with this behemoth of a laptop with enough horsepower to create anything you can imagine.
At this price point, it can be hard to justify, especially when the competition often offers similar specs and features for less money.

MSI has produced high-powered, high-priced laptops for many years, often with exuberant designs and spec sheets. The Creator 16 AI Studio , one of the company’s latest laptops, is no exception. With a starting price of $3,999, this machine comes with everything a creator needs to get their work done, including a Mini-LED display, the latest Intel processor, discrete graphics, and more RAM and storage than you’ll know what to do with.

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It’s a good option for those ready to embrace AI, as it comes with an Intel NPU for locally processing generative AI tasks and powering MSI’s own AI engine that seeks to optimize performance based on what you’re doing. But given the high asking price and bulky design, this obviously won’t be the best laptop for everyone.

ZDNET RECOMMENDS MSI Creator 16 AI Studio Stacked with an impressive hardware configuration, the Creator 16 AI Studio is one of the most powerful creator-focused laptops on the market, with a host of AI features to boot. View at Amazon

At least from a design perspective, you’ll have to accept that this is quite a robust machine. Not only is the display a large 16 inches, the magnesium-aluminum chassis is even bigger to accommodate all the raw horsepower inside. The Creator 16 AI Studio weighs nearly 4.5 pounds and is three-quarters of an inch thick, so you may need extra room in your backpack if you plan on traveling with it.

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Luckily, MSI designed it not just to look tough but to be tough as well. The Creator 16 AI Studio was MIL-STD-810H tested for military-grade drop protection, so you can bang it around, and it’ll be fine. The company also went ham with the port selection; there’s a Thunderbolt 4 port, an HDMI 2.1 port, a USB-C port, a USB-A port, a microSD card reader, an Ethernet jack, and even a headphone jack.

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Open the laptop, and you’ll be greeted with a gorgeous display. MSI sent me the version that uses a 16-inch Mini-LED panel with a 4K resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, and it’s stunning. It’s bright and easy to see outdoors, colors are accurately presented, it can be configured for color grading, and it’s incredibly responsive thanks to the speedy refresh rate (I’m obsessed with this screen, in case you couldn’t tell).

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I also really like the keyboard. The keys offer a lot of travel for comfort during extended typing sessions, and it’s not too loud while still giving you a satisfying “click!” with each key press. I also appreciated the even backlight, which didn’t bleed through much at all.

Max Buondonno/ZDNET

After using the Creator 16 AI Studio every day, it was challenging to find a workflow that was too much for it to handle. My review unit is equipped with Intel’s Core Ultra 9 processor, 64GB of RAM, and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, and it’s an absolute beast. From editing photos in Lightroom to handling raw 4K video footage with ease, this laptop offers plenty of power for creators who need something reliably fast.

MSI uses its AI engine to optimize the performance of the Creator 16 AI Studio, depending on the tasks you’re running. I’ve kept the feature turned on throughout my review period but never entirely understood whether it was making a difference. Sure, I could watch CPU and GPU clock speeds go up and down, but it’s not like it saved me any battery life (which we’ll get to in a bit).

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One feature I did utilize was the AI Noise Cancellation Pro, which helped mitigate background noise when listening to music or while on a video call. It worked well in my testing and helped me focus on the audio playing from the laptop.

The more conventional AI aspect of the Creator 16 AI Studio is MSI AI Artist, which allows you to generate images locally on your laptop using a few simple prompts. We’re all familiar with how this works by now: tell it what kind of image you want in the style you wish, and it’ll spit out a few examples. It didn’t work any better or worse than other AI image generators I’ve tried, but it’s a nice feature to have if you aren’t feeling inspired and need something to get your creative juices flowing.

Max Buondonno/ZDNET

Last but not least, the laptop also comes with Microsoft’s Copilot, along with the dedicated Copilot key on the keyboard. It’s the quickest way to ask complex questions, generate text, or summarize documents on Windows, and it’s especially useful nowadays since it integrates directly with Office apps. MSI is using it to justify using “AI” further in the name of this laptop, and it’s totally fine since a lot of laptops are doing the same thing.

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Of course, the laptop is far from perfect. Like many powerful laptops with intimidating sizes, battery life is abysmal. While it ships with a 99.9Wh battery (the largest size legally allowed on airplanes in the United States), I can only get through 4-5 hours of work before it konks out. If you plan on traveling anywhere with it, you’ll need to remember to bring the huge 240W power adapter, which only adds more weight to your bag.

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The speakers are also disappointing. Playing one song on them immediately makes you want to find your headphones. They’re simply not good, even for a laptop.

Max Buondonno/ZDNET

One final note: why is there no full-size SD card slot? I know a few creators who use microSD cards, and this laptop will suit them well. But I’m not one of those people, and I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that my workflow depends on traditional SDs and not their microscopic counterparts. Since this is a creator-focused laptop, it’d be nice if MSI included such a slot.

ZDNET’s buying advice

The Creator 16 AI Studio is a solid laptop built for those who want a ton of power and to play around with new AI tools. But at just under $4,000, it’s hard to justify when considering other laptops like Lenovo’s Legion Pro 7i and the XPS 16 from Dell, which have similar specs for a thousand dollars less.

Those laptops, while not perfect one-to-one comparisons, have many of the same features as this one, can still power through your creative work, and often last longer on a charge. This laptop is geared for those with a very specific use case: you need an absolute beast to handle your workloads, and money is no object.

For those folks, this laptop will serve you well. For everyone else, it might be best to look for more reasonably priced machines or perhaps wait for a more powerful ARM-based Windows laptop .