Budget gaming laptops are tricky to get right. Manufacturers have to get the balance between hardware, visual appeal and the price just right, otherwise it is easy to get lost amidst the competition.
The Katana 15 is a rather compact, unpretentious bit of kit. Build-wise, it is plastic-fantastic. The pixel texture around the edges lends it some flair, and the twin heatsink vents at the rear look cool. As a fan of understated designs, I like the Katana 15. It feels solidly put together.
The trackpad itself is a bit small, but responsive. The keyboard gets a customisable 4-zone RGB lighting while the keys feature 1.7mm of travel and are a joy to type on. The 720p webcam does its job well enough. Two Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, one Type-A USB 2.0 slot, one Type-C (supports USB 3.2 Gen1/ DisplayPort with attachments), a 3.5mm audio/mic combo jack, a HDMI 2.1 port and a RJ45 security slot round off the port selection.
The Katana 15 excels with its hardware. Its 13th-Gen Intel Core i7 processor has 10 cores and maxes out at 4.9GHz with turbo boost while the 6GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 is capable of up to 2355MHz with boost clock. The 1TB SSD provides sufficient real estate for data and the 16GB DDR5 RAM is enough to multitask smoothly. The relatively new graphics card combined with the Raptor-Lake silicon and sufficient amount of RAM, proves quite potent.
The Katana 15 breezed through the following games—the five latest Need For Speed titles, GTA V and Cyberpunk 2077. Everything ran without a hitch on ‘High’ and even ‘Ultra’ graphics settings with consistently high framerates and no stutter.
The Katana 15’s cooling system consists of six individual copper heat pipes shared between the processor and graphics card and three heatsinks. Dual fans keep the air circulating and the porous bottom plate helps. Heat management and overall cooling capability of this laptop is fantastic. The fans do their job quietly and the substantial amount of copper and triple heatsinks ensure that surfaces remain cool to the touch even at peak loads and extended gaming sessions.
The 144Hz IPS-LCD screen prioritises motion smoothness over outright picture quality. Coming to the audio, the dual 2W speakers have good clarity. The Steelseries-branded Nahimic 3 sound mixer application performs admirably when external speakers or a headset is connected. The Katana 15 supports Hi-Res Audio, so gaming and content consumption is best done using a wired headset or external speakers. In conclusion, the Katana 15 is a great buy at its price point, and we had a thoroughly enjoyable experience with it.
Price ₹89,990 | in.msi.com
