I brought the MSI Stealth 16 Mercedes AMG edition laptop with me on holiday. It ruined gaming for me forever.

I got the chance to try out the MSI Stealth 16 Mercedes AMG Edition Gaming Laptop, and let me tell you, that was a mistake…

… it was too nice. 

Luxury Gaming Experience

I’ve been gaming and building PCs for… a long while (I predate GeForce, and that’s all I’ll say).

Nothing worries me more than using a piece of tech that’s too nice for too long, because I’ll end up wanting to upgrade and wreck my budget. 

So, I began to worry the moment I got the AMG edition laptop’s box. 

It was too nice, too well designed, and frankly, too elegant. 

Everything slid open smoothly, but those words, “Luxury gaming experience”, printed right on the front, had me pause for a moment. 

That’s often the prelude to much eye-rolling, but this was far from the case.

These 16-inch gaming laptops, in my experience, are huge, thick, and heavy, and usually decorated aggressively but with little utility. 

The Stealth 16, on the other hand, is not about that. 

Clean lines, with very neat lighting options, discrete selenite grey; it's as close to an elegant minimalist gaming PC I’ve seen. 

Is there RGB lighting? Yes.

Will it blind you and everyone you meet? Far from it. 

Will someone notice? Absolutely. 

It opens with one finger, which is not a must-have, but is another testament to thoughtful build quality. 

It even has the AMG logo subtly embossed on the front grill. 

Opening it reveals a per key addressable RGB keyboard, with a decent amount of travel for a laptop keyboard, and a generously sized mousepad. 

Black holes

But it also reveals my second regret: a gorgeous 16-inch OLED screen. 

I use a 13-inch MacBook most of the time for work, so the 16-inch screen is enormous. 

The OLED screen is bright, but with deep blacks. 

I used the laptop to try out the recently released “Starfield”, which involves a lot of flying around in space, transitioning from the ink blackness of space into the bright light of nearby suns. 

My own monitor does a decent job, but space, for me, is a deep grey rather than a true void black. 

I also played the most recent “Call of Duty” on it, and it was a changed experience when you have enemies emerging from deep shadow, with explosions lighting the night sky. 

A gaming experience on an AMG branded laptop wouldn’t be complete without playing some racing games as well.

I launched “Forza Horizon 5” on it, found my favourite Mercedes car (amongst those I had unlocked, not an AMG, unfortunately), and raced around a virtual Mexico. 

And no, lie, it’s surprisingly thrilling to open the laptop to play some games and the first thing you do is press the “Start Engine” button.

From sunny beaches to rainy jungles, and all types of terrain in between, the bright, colourful landscapes really showed off the screen’s capability. 

And with an i9 13th Gen Intel processor and a Nvidia RTX 4070, there was no worry about whether the laptop could play well at 4k. 

I simply started up a game and got to playing. 

Too easy

I was going to mention how I took the laptop on holiday, from Penang to Desaru, so I could game while at the beach, which I did, but simply: it was too easy. 

There wasn’t any challenge. At 1.9kg, the laptop is shockingly light for a 16-inch gaming laptop. 

It was simple to just slip it into my bag, and then head to the plane or car. 

I’ve been carrying to and from work for parts of the past week, an endeavour that involves about an hour of walking, and frankly, it was fine. 

For work and play

But the real prize here is carrying the laptop around at work. 

While the laptop is nice looking, its design allows it to pass off without comment at work… most of the time. 

I did show it to some of the guys in the video team, and they were positively salivating at its looks and specs. 

And that’s when I realised the other aspect of Stealth 16 that I had not considered. 

As someone who only games and doesn’t produce content, I hadn’t considered how good the laptop is as a work machine. 

The specs are good for gaming, but with 32GB of DDR5 RAM, it’s actually more than what a gamer typically needs, but is great for video production and similar workloads. 

Even the screen is more work friendly than you realise, because the 4k OLED displays text and video beautifully. 

But it also has a 16:10 aspect ratio, meaning that it's taller than most laptop monitors, giving more working space for documents or video timelines. 

And its generous port selection is a testament to this:

• 1 3.5mm audio port
• 1 USB A 
• 2 USB C (3.2)
• 1 ethernet port
• 1 HDMI port
• 1 Micro SD card slot

One of my colleagues subtly tried to call dibs on the laptop, should it return to the company tech pool after this article (I suspect we’ll have to return it, and it’ll break the hearts of the team). 

Good luck, have fun

So yeah, this laptop has ruined me. 

I can’t work anymore, my laptop screen is too small. 

Gaming on my own PC is sad because I only have an LCD screen. 

Even the keyboard on the Stealth 16 was too nice (and I should know, I typed this whole article on it), my laptop’s keys now feel flat and unresponsive. 

I guess it's time to start saving.

The MSI Stealth 16 Mercedes AMG is available exclusively from Harvey Norman for S$4,599.

This sponsored article by MSI has wrecked the author’s gaming and working experience, and how he has to go get a new monitor. 

Top image via Mothership