MSI has long been an under-the-radar producer of PCs and laptops, with as many hits as misses in its repertoire. As we enter the “AI laptop” age, MSI’s first volley in the new category lands squarely on the hit side, with its Prestige 13 AI Evo nailing an effective balance among price, performance, and portability.

As the name suggests, the Prestige 13 is an ultraportable 13.3-inch laptop, featuring a 2,880 X 1,800-pixel OLED display (no touchscreen). Inside is an entry-level Intel Core Ultra 5 125H CPU with 16 GB of RAM and a 512-GB SSD. Nothing fancy, but enough to get the job done. There’s also a version with the Core Ultra 7 with double the RAM and storage for not much more.

For those of you who haven’t been following the microchip world closely, Intel's Core Ultra series features (among other innovations) a new neural processing unit designed specifically to improve artificial intelligence operations. The “Evo” designation is bestowed on devices by Intel for laptop designs that “pass rigorous testing around performance, battery life, connectivity, audio and visual quality, size, weight, and more.”

With that preface, I’ll start where the laptop soars the highest: performance. The Prestige indeed lives up to its name on general apps and AI-related tests. MSI’s ultralight Windows machine ran rings around the performance of the more tricked-out Lenovo X1 Carbon, which features a faster Core Ultra processor. The MSI bested it on general app benchmarks by 3 to 47 percent, depending on the test, and the difference was noticeable in daily use, as the Prestige felt whip-crack fast to load apps, recalculate spreadsheets, and the like. The picture wasn’t as rosy in its graphics capabilities, as the lower-end CPU and lack of memory suppressed frame rates on video tasks considerably—although the Prestige did perform surprisingly well on photo rendering tests.

At 2.1 pounds and 18-mm thick, this laptop is about as portable as it gets in the 13.3-inch category, though more diminutive 13.0-inch units can be a few ounces lighter. Available in white or black, the magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis isn’t the sturdiest I’ve felt lately, but at the same time, it doesn’t come across as flimsy.

The port situation is solid. You get two USB-C Thunderbolt ports (one used for charging), a single USB-A port, a full-size HDMI jack, and a microSD card slot on the sides of the machine. The OLED display is plenty bright—I had to temper the brightness for regular viewing—and a proximity sensor and three microphoness with noise-cancellation features round out the laptop’s extras. The speakers are nice, but even better is the fact that the laptop runs dead silent; I could barely get the fans to kick in at all, even under a very heavy load.

What didn’t I love? Primarily the input experience. The keyboard keys are small and offer limited travel, and the combination-split-in-half “backslash-CTRL” button on the bottom right of the keyboard is one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen. Similarly, the touchpad feels undercooked. I had sustained problems getting clicks to register during my days of testing.

Despite claims to the contrary, real-world battery life was disappointing. I got barely over seven hours of life during my YouTube rundown test, a result so surprising I ran it multiple times to make sure it was correct. I’ve seen worse results, but that number is awfully low in today’s world of energy-sipping CPUs.

The Prestige 13 starts at a mere $999, but you should probably just spend extra for the Core Ultra 7 model with double the storage and RAM. At roughly $1,300, this MSI machine sits in an exceptional spot with affordability. If the company paid a bit more attention to input usability, this laptop might have been a home run.