PC World - USA (2020-04)

APRIL 2020 PCWorld 67

the most part, it doesn’t really matter which

laptop you pick for the job, as just about any

modern laptop will do the job.

We did, for kicks, throw in the score from

the laptop when set to its painfully slow Super

Battery mode. The score of 2,086 just barely

30GB 1080p file using the Android Tablet
preset. It’s a taxing, multi-threaded test which
can take an hour to finish on many laptops.
That’s long enough that any Turbo Boost
capabilities usually are burned off early, as the
laptop settles down for a long marathon run.
As you can see, the Prestige 14’s
performance depends very much on which
mode you’re in. On its default of Balanced,
performance is in the neighborhood of
quad-core CPUs from Intel and AMD. Set it to
High Performance, it actually outpaces the
similarly equipped (by CPU) Dell XPS 13 7390
by a few minutes. So yes, performance of the
CPU can be quite impressive when it’s
working alone.
For the record: Set to Super Battery, the
MSI Prestige 14 took 12,472 seconds, or
about 207 minutes, to complete the encode.

DOES IT EVEN MATTER HOW
FAST IT IS?
One thing that you should always keep in mind
when buying a PC is to pick the right tool for
the job. If you have the need for a 6-core CPU
and GTX 1650 GPU in a 2.8-pound laptop,
rock on. But if all you really do is open up a few
Chrome tabs, Word, and Outlook, and watch
Netflix, do you really need a 6-core CPU and
GTX 1650? Probably not.
One good measure we have for that is
PCMark 8’s work test, which simulates
everyday productivity tasks. A score of 2,000
or more indicates your PC is up to the job. For

For the most part, if all you do is lift Outlook,

PowerPoint and Chrome—almost any modern

laptop is nearly indistinguishable from another to

the normal person.

Dell XPS 2-in-1 7390 Perf Mode

Core i7-1065G7

HP Spectre x360 13 5th gen

Core i7-1065G7

HP Spectre x360 13 2019

Core i7-8565U

Dell XPS 13 7390Core i7-10710U

MPerformSI Prestige 14 ance

Core i7-10710U

Dell XPS 15 7590Core i9-9980HK

Dell XPS 13 9380Core i7-8565U

MDefaultSI Prestige 14

Core i7-10710U

HuawX Proei MateBook

Core i7-8550U

Dell Inspiron 15 7000

Core i7-8565U

MLaptop 3 15”icrosoft Surface

Ryzen 7 3580U

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

3,907

3,326

3,632

3,205

3,807

3,303

3,338

3,109

3,046

3,039

3,017

PCMark 8 Work 2.0

Conventional

Native resolution