MSI just launched a new laptop lineup for content creators: The Modern series (weird name, isn’t it?) powered by AMD’s new Ryzen 4000 (Renoir) processors will sell for just $649 for the barebones variant. It’s supposed to feature the entire 15W Ryzen 4000-U family, so the starting models with likely come with the Ryzen 3 4300U or at best the 4500U. According to sources, support will extend up to the Ryen 7 4800U with as much as 64GB of DDR4-3200 RAM across two channels.
Storage support, however, is limited to a single NVMe/SATA based SSD (possibly up to 2TB). The display is a 1080p (FHD) screen, most likely an IPS panel with high brightness and a single-color backlit keyboard. For connectivity, you get to choose between an 802.11 ac Wi-Fi + Bluetooth v5
802.11 or an ax Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth v5.1.
The speakers and the battery are the impressive bits: 2x 2W speakers and a 52Whr battery powered by a 65W adapter. All this comes in just a 1.3kg chassis with a thickness of 1.69cm. You can choose between two colors: Onyx Black or Bluestone. And yes, it does come with a Mic-in/Headphone-out Combo Jack. There are both Intel and AMD variants. The former consists of Comet Lake-U chips, a notably worse choice both in terms of the CPU as well as the iGPU. Despite that though, availability is much better for Intel models.
The AMD Ryzen variant is available at very few retailers for pre-order. Thankfully, they do cost less than their Intel counterparts ($649 vs $899 for Core i5-10210U|MX250 variants).
