The Cheapest 14” Gaming Laptop? MSI Cyborg 14 Review

14 inch gaming laptops are nice and portable,  but the problem is they can get expensive. It costs more to cram a bunch of hardware into  a smaller space, that’s just how tech works. But this is where MSI’s Cyborg 14 comes in, a lower end more budget friendly  14 inch gaming laptop option. But of course, a lower price means  we should expect compromises. Which is why I bought the Cyborg  14, to see if it’s worth buying, and to find out what sacrifices have  been made for the lower price tag. But

first, this part of the video is sponsored by  the Ugreen Revodok Pro 210, a 10 in 1 USB C hub. From just one Type-C connection you get  access to two Type-C ports, one with 100 watts of power delivery, 3 Type-A ports, Micro  and regular SD card slots, gigabit ethernet, and two HDMI ports, allowing you to connect  2 monitors at 4K 60Hz or 1 at 8K 30Hz. Or if you need more ports, the Ugreen  Revodok Pro 313 13 in 1 also has audio, a 4th Type-A port, and DisplayPort  for connecting up to 3 monito

rs! Check them out and Ugreen's whole range  of docks and chargers with the link below. Back to the Cyborg 14. It has a black plastic  finish with translucent blue accenting all over. There’s some flex to the keyboard  and screen when pushing hard, but it feels sturdy during normal use with  only very minor screen wobble when typing. I appreciated the large rubber feet underneath, they do a great job of  stopping it sliding on my desk. The hinge feels smooth to open and close, and  the front of

the lid sticks out quite a bit, making it super easy to open with your finger.  The screen only goes back 120 degrees, less compared to most other laptops, but  it’s still easily viewable at a desk. Overall build quality isn’t as nice compared to the more expensive 14” gaming  laptops, but it’s not bad either. It’s quite similar in width and depth compared  to other 14” gaming laptops out there, but the Cyborg is a little thicker at the back. It still feels quite portable  though, at 1.6kg or 3.

6lb, increasing to 2.1kg or 4.6lb with the  relatively small 120 watt charger included. My Cyborg 14 has a 10 Core Intel CPU and  Nvidia’s RTX 4050 graphics with a 14 inch 144Hz screen. It’s also available  with higher tier RTX 4060 graphics, you can check options and prices  with the link under the video. The keyboard has 1 zone of blue  backlighting with clear WASD keys and power button. All keys and  secondary functions get lit up, and you can change between 3 levels of  key brightness with t

he F8 shortcut. Typing on the keyboard felt surprisingly good, I really liked the clicky feel. The smaller  arrow keys were annoying to press though. The touchpad is fairly big and  works well too, no problems there. The power button is right  next to delete and backspace, but an accidental press doesn’t do  anything. You have to hold it down for quite a while before Windows  asks if you want to shut down. The left side has a Kensington lock  at the back, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port and an audio

combo jack. The right  side has another 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, a faster 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, an HDMI  2.1 output and the power input at the back. There’s a gigabit ethernet port on the  back. This is the only 14 inch gaming laptop with an ethernet port, which is  one of the benefits of being thicker. Unfortunately the Type-C port cannot  be used to charge the laptop, but it does have DisplayPort support  so you can connect a monitor. And the Type-C port also connects directly to  the Nvidia d

iscrete graphics, bypassing optimus. HDMI on the other hand connects to  the integrated graphics instead. We confirmed it could run a 4K screen at 8-Bit 60Hz. If you swap to the integrated graphics  only mode, the software warns that HDMI might stop working. MSI’s higher tier  laptops have the HDMI connecting to the Nvidia discrete graphics. But that’s not the  case here, so I’m guessing the software just isn’t aware of the device it’s being run on  and it just says the same thing regardless. Be

cause I confirmed the HDMI output still works  perfectly fine on the integrated graphics mode, as you would expect. But it’s the Type-C port that  stops working, as that connects to the Nvidia GPU. Getting inside requires removing 8 Phillips head  screws, all the same length. It’s not too hard to open, but it definitely needed pry tools.  I’ll leave a link to these ones I use below. Inside we’ve got the battery down the front,  two DDR5 memory slots above in the middle, the single PCIe Gen 4 sto

rage slot to the  left, and Wi-Fi 6E card on the far left. Wi-Fi speed was above average and a  good result. As far as 14 inch gaming laptops go, the Cyborg is only beaten  by ASUS’s more expensive Zephyrus G14. The speeds from the installed 512 gig PCIe  Gen 4 SSD were decent. There’s room for a double sided M.2 drive, but you might need  to remove or modify the included thermal pad. Despite being on the more budget friendly end of  the spectrum, the Cyborg 14 still has two memory slots for upg

rades. Only MSI’s Stealth 14 and  Razer’s far more expensive Blade 14 from 2023 onwards offer that. The Stealth 14 scores the  same here, while the Blade lost half a point for its uncommon TR5 screws. Most other 14 inch  laptops either have soldered memory or storage. The speakers are found down the front  on the left and right corners. They’re fairly loud but don’t sound that  good. They’re tinny without bass, and there’s a little wrist rest  vibration with music playing. The latencymon results

weren’t amazing, but still better compared to a lot of more  expensive laptops we tested last year. The Cyborg 14 is powered  by a 3-Cell 53.5Wh battery. Display power saver is enabled by default, which  automatically lowers the screen’s refresh rate to 60Hz when you unplug the charger to save  power. This is why the screen flashes black, and it goes back to 144Hz when you plug back in. Battery life was ok considering  the smaller size of the battery, lasting for over 5 hours in the YouTube vid

eo  playback test. Almost the same as MSI’s higher tier Stealth 14 with a larger battery, and close  to a number of more powerful gaming laptops with bigger batteries. The 14” gaming laptops with  AMD processors generally last much longer though. Let’s check out thermals next. The Cyborg 14 only  has 1 fan, with heatpipes shared between the CPU and GPU. There are plenty of holes underneath for  air intake, and air gets exhausted out the back and on the left side, so no hot air on your  mouse han

d. As long as you’re right handed. The MSI Center software allows us to  change between different performance modes, which from lowest to highest are silent,  balanced and extreme performance. Extreme performance mode gives you the option to overclock  the GPU, but there’s no overclock enabled by default, so we haven’t tested with one. The fan  speed tab lets you enable cooler boost mode, which sets the fan to full speed, or you  can customize the fan curve in advanced. You can also max the fan

out at any time  with the function and up arrow key shortcut. The internal temps were fine when just sitting  there idle. The rest of the results are from combined CPU and GPU stress tests which aim  to represent a worst case full load scenario. The internal temps are all running cool in  this workload, regardless of the performance mode in use. Closing the lid didn’t change the  temperature, so no problems if you want to dock the laptop. The cooling pad I test with, linked  below, was able to l

ower temps by about 5 degrees Celsius. You can get a similar dip by setting  the fans to full speed, but that’s louder too. The clock speeds were more or less the same with  or without the cooling pad and fans maxed out, and that’s because thermals were nowhere near  being a limit in this workload. Clock speeds lowered a bit with the lid closed for some reason,  which was strange considering the temps were fine, and that the CPU was still hitting the same  24 watt power limit in all but silent m

odes. Nvidia’s RTX 4050 graphics can  max out at 90 to 100 watts, but MSI’s Cyborg 14 limits GPU power to just 45  watts. Considering how cool the temperatures are, they probably could have increased these power  limits a bit to offer improved performance, granted that may also require a  larger charger with more juice. The power limits in balanced mode are the same as  extreme mode, so in a game you might as well play in balanced mode to keep the fans quieter. The  FPS difference was only minor

in Cyberpunk 2077, and still close to 60 FPS at 1080p  high settings without DLSS or frame generation. But we’ll see how this  compares with other laptops soon. The CPU can use more power if the  GPU is idle, like in Cinebench, and performance was better in  the higher modes, as expected. Multicore CPU performance isn’t as good  compared to the other 14 inch laptops tested over the last year, but single core  performance was comparable. To be fair, the Cyborg 14 should also be cheaper too, thou

gh  as we’ll see later, that depends on sales. CPU Performance lowers if we unplug the  charger and instead run off of battery power. Single core performance didn’t  change much, but the dip in multicore score puts it further behind now. That  said, there are far more expensive laptops scoring similarly in this test, so the  Cyborg shouldn’t be too embarrassed.. Most laptops I test are in the low 30 degrees  Celsius range on the keyboard at idle, and most of it was fine, but it was a little  war

mer in the middle. It’s fairly warm in the middle with the stress tests running in silent  mode, but it’s only right in the center. It’s similar in the higher balanced mode, but the  middle doesn’t feel too hot because the hot points are in between the keycaps. Extreme  mode with the fans on auto was much the same, but the WASD area and wrist rest is cold if  you’re gaming. Setting the fans to full speed lowered the temps a little, but the fan  is fairly loud now, let’s have a listen. The fan wa

s audible at idle, but it was fairly  quiet. The fan speeds up in the higher performance modes, as expected. Setting the fan to full  speed is quite loud, and definitely not required considering the temps were still cold without  it. Using a cooling pad allowed the fan to run quieter, while still lowering the temperature  just as much as setting the fan to full speed. Alright, we really need to talk about the screen,  because this is one of the first areas that gets cut in a lower end more budge

t friendly  gaming laptop. But the Cyborg 14 surprised me! The colors were decent. Not  amazing for content creation, but plenty for gaming and better compared to most  other lower end budget focussed gaming laptops. The screen gets quite bright too, just  shy of 500 nits at full brightness. This actually puts it ahead of most  other more expensive 14 inch options, only beaten by Razer’s far more premium Blade 14. Backlight bleed was only very minor  and not noticeable during normal use, but thi

s will vary between laptops. Screen response time wasn’t bad at all either.  For a 144Hz screen we want transitions to occur within the 6.94ms refresh window,  and on average we’re not far off this. Yeah, it’s not quite as fast compared to the  more expensive 14” gaming laptops out there, but it’s more than twice as fast compared  to a few larger budget friendly options. This is a decent result and won’t be  a problem for most people when gaming. The total system latency is the amount of time  b

etween a mouse click and when a gunshot fire appears on the screen in Counter-Strike 2. It’s  a decent result here too, not as good as this year’s G14, but better than the Legion Slim 5  14 inch and MSI Stealth 14 with higher specs. Unfortunately the Cyborg 14  does not have a MUX switch, you only get the option to swap to the  integrated graphics to help save battery, which requires a reboot. Honestly, this isn’t  that big of a deal since the CASO update anyway, and it’s definitely not what’s h

olding this laptop  back, as we’ll see shortly in the game benchmarks. There’s a 720p camera above the screen, but  there’s no IR for Windows Hello face unlock. Here’s how the camera and  microphones look and sound, and this is what it sounds like  while typing on the keyboard. Now let’s find out how well MSI’s  Cyborg 14 performs in games. We’ve tested with these settings for best results. Cyberpunk 2077 was tested with our own custom test  run, and I’ve got the Cyborg 14 shown by the red highl

ight. At 1080p it’s matching Alienware’s  far more premium x14 with RTX 3060 graphics from a couple of years ago, and it’s also about  the same as MSI’s GF63, a larger but even cheaper laptop. The full powered 4050 laptops, like  Acer’s nitro 5 or HP’s Victus were able to reach a 25% higher average frame rate, because the  Cyborg 14’s GPU power is limited to just 45 watts. Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the  game’s benchmark. Again at 1080p it’s near that older Alienware x14 with RTX 3060

graphics  and a little ahead of MSI’s cheaper GF63 with same 45 watt RTX 4050 graphics. The higher  powered 4050 laptops were 15% ahead this time, but you could also boost performance even further  on all of them by turning on DLSS. Meanwhile the RTX 4060 in a more premium laptop like Lenovo’s  Legion Slim 5 was 35% faster than the Cyborg 14. It’s a similar sort of deal in Control.  This game still ran above 60 FPS with the highest setting preset, so not a bad result, it’s just that other lapto

ps with the same  GPU but worse CPU were up to 34% faster. Here are the 3DMark results for those that find  them useful, now for some content creator tests. Like the game tests, the results are  lower compared to other similarly specced laptops due to the laptop’s  lower CPU and GPU power limits. MSI’s advanced BIOS provides you with almost  unlimited customization once you enter the usual cheat code to access it. There’s just one problem.  This laptop doesn’t have a right control key, because t

hey’ve replaced it with Microsoft’s new  dedicated copilot key, so you also have to press and hold the function key then hold down copilot  as control. Making it a five key shortcut now. Once you can get in, you can change things  from power limits, temperature limits, and way more. This is something MSI  does better compared to any other brand, and is an awesome resource if  you like tuning your system. Linux support was tested with an Ubuntu 23.10  live CD. By default the keyboard, touchpad, c

amera, speakers, ethernet and Wi-Fi all worked.  Keyboard shortcuts for adjusting volume, keyboard brightness, screen brightness, and turning  on max fans all worked, an excellent result. Pricing and availability will change over time,  so check the link below the video for updates and current sales. And if the Cyborg 14 does  have a good sale, we’ll be sure to add it to our gaminglaptop.deals website. We update that  everyday to include all of the latest sales, so make sure that you check it ou

t regularly  to save money on your next gaming laptop. At the time of recording, the higher  tier configuration with RTX 4060 goes for $1100 USD, but it’s currently out of stock, so again you’ll have to check the  links below the video for updates. Honestly that’s not great, considering on our  gaminglaptop.deals website, link below, we have last year’s ASUS Zephyrus G14 for $100 less on  sale with the same GPU with more than double the GPU power limit - so better gaming performance,  in other w

ords, and with more premium features. Of course the Cyborg 14 will probably  be cheaper once it goes on sale too, it only just launched. But yeah, right now  at the time of launch it’s not looking that competitive compared to last year’s cheaper  options. So I suspect it might not be too long before it starts going on sale,  it’s just going to need it to compete. Ultimately, assuming a competitive  price, I think that MSI have made a pretty competitive lower  end 14 inch gaming laptop. The scree

n is fairly good, you  get upgradeable RAM and storage, the keyboard and touchpad are decent,  and I’m pretty sure it’s the only 14 inch gaming model with an ethernet port. Which  I know is make or break for some people. More premium features like  a G-Sync, Type-C charging, and MUX switch are missing, as they  increase the cost - but to be fair, the MUX switch isn’t as useful as it used  to be since the CASO update anyway. If you don’t know what I’m talking about I’ll leave  a link to that CASO

video in the description. The main downside is just the lower CPU and  GPU power limits. Despite the 1 fan cooler, temperatures remained fairly cool in a combined  CPU and GPU stress test. But that’s due to the lower power limits. The point is there is  thermal headroom available in this thing. I think that MSI could pretty easily increase  the power limits which would result in higher FPS in games. They just might need to give it  a slightly bigger 180 watt charger instead of 120 watt. And if

I was to put my tin foil hat  on I’d say that MSI might not want the Cyborg 14 sales to start cannibalizing their  higher tier Stealth 14. Which does have a higher 90 watt GPU power limit, double the  Cyborg. But who knows, I’m just speculating. If you’ve made it this far but decided that you  want a better 14 inch gaming laptop then check this video out next where I’ve gone in depth  with ASUS’s latest Zephyrus G14. It does cost more money, but on the other hand it is better in  most regards, s

o I’ll see you in that one next!