ZDNET Key Points
- The MSI Creator 16 AI Studio Available now, starting at $3,999 for the Intel Core Ultra 9, 64GB memory, 2TB SSD configuration.
- MSI has jumped on the AI bandwagon with a massive laptop that has enough power to create anything you can imagine.
- At this price point, it’s hard to justify, especially when competitors often offer similar specs and features for less.
MSI has been making high-powered, high-priced laptops for years, often with extremely impressive designs and specs. Creator 16 AI Studioone of the company’s latest laptops is no exception. Starting at $3,999, this machine has everything a creative needs to get their work done, including a Mini-LED display, the latest Intel processors, discrete graphics, and more RAM and storage than you’ll ever know what to do with.
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This is a good choice for those who are ready to embrace AI, as it comes with an Intel NPU to handle AI-generated tasks locally and powers MSI’s own AI engine, which tries to optimize performance based on what you’re doing. But given the high price and bulky design, it’s clear that this isn’t going to be the best laptop for everyone.
At least in terms of design, you’ll have to accept that this is a pretty beefy machine. Not only does it have a large 16-inch display, but the magnesium-aluminum chassis is even larger to accommodate all that raw power. The Creator 16 AI Studio weighs nearly 4.5 pounds and is three-quarters of an inch thick, so you’ll probably need some room in your backpack if you plan on traveling with it.
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Luckily, MSI designed it not just to Look difficult but to To be also difficult. Creator 16 AI Studio is MIL-STD-810H military standard It’s been tested to military-grade drop resistance, so you can bang it around and it’ll be fine. The company has also put a lot of effort into 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.
Open the laptop, and you’re greeted with a gorgeous display. MSI sent me the 16-inch Mini-LED version with 4K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate, and it’s fantastic. It’s bright and easy to see outdoors, colors are accurate, it can be configured for color grading, and it’s incredibly responsive thanks to the fast refresh rate (I’m obsessed with this display, in case you didn’t know).
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I also really like the keyboard. The keys have plenty of travel for comfort during long typing sessions, and aren’t too loud but still give you a satisfying “click!” with each keystroke. I also appreciate the even backlighting, which doesn’t leak much.
After using the Creator 16 AI Studio on a daily basis, it’s hard to find a workflow that it can’t handle. My review unit came with an Intel 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 processing raw 4K video footage with ease, this laptop has plenty of power for creatives who need something reliably fast.
MSI uses its AI engine to optimize the Creator 16 AI Studio’s performance depending on the tasks you’re running. I left this feature enabled throughout my review period, but it was never clear whether it made a difference. Sure, I could watch the CPU and GPU clock speeds ramp up and down, but it didn’t save me any battery life (we’ll get to that later).
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One feature I used was AI Noise Cancellation Pro, which reduces ambient noise when listening to music or during video calls. It worked well during my testing and helped me focus on the sounds coming from my laptop.
The more conventional AI aspect of Creator 16 AI Studio is MSI AI Artist, which lets you create images locally on your laptop with a few simple prompts. We’re all familiar with how it works by now: tell it what type of image you want, what style you want, and it’ll come up with a few examples. It doesn’t work any better or worse than other AI image generators I’ve tried, but it’s a great feature if you’re feeling uninspired and need something to get your creative juices flowing.
Last but not least, this laptop also comes with Microsoft’s Copilot, along with a dedicated Copilot key on the keyboard. This is the fastest way to ask complex questions, create text, or summarize documents on Windows, and it’s especially useful now that it integrates directly with Office apps. MSI is using it to justify the use of “AI” in this laptop’s name, and that’s perfectly fine since so many laptops do the same thing.
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Of course, this laptop isn’t perfect. Like many powerful laptops of this size, battery life is abysmal. Despite the 99.9Wh battery (the largest size allowed on an airplane in the US), I was only able to get 4-5 hours of work before it ran out. If you plan on taking it anywhere, you’ll need to remember to bring the large 240W power adapter, which only adds weight to your bag.
The speakers are also disappointing. Just playing a song on the speakers makes you want to grab your headphones. The speakers are not good, even for a laptop.
One final note: why no full-size SD card slot? I know some creators use microSD cards, and this laptop would fit them. But I’m not one of those people, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who says my workflow relies on traditional SD cards rather than their micro SD counterparts. Since this is a creator-focused laptop, it would have been nice if MSI had included such a slot.
ZDNET Buying Advice
The Creator 16 AI Studio is a solid laptop built for those who want a lot of power and want to experiment 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 XPS 16 from Dell, which has similar specs but costs a thousand dollars less.
Those laptops, while not a perfect one-to-one comparison, have many of the same features as this one, can still handle your creative work, and often last longer on a charge. This laptop is aimed at people with a very specific use case: you need a real monster to handle your workload, and money is no object.
For those people, this laptop will serve you well. For everyone else, it’s best to look for more affordable machines or wait for a more powerful machine. ARM-based Windows laptops.
