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00:00Hey guys, I'm Tom of Tech Chap and this is the new MSI Creator Z16, or Z16 for everyone
00:10outside the UK.
00:11And it feels a little bit like MSI made this just for me.
00:16So MSI sent me one of the very first models of the Z16 in the UK and together with Nvidia
00:21are very kindly sponsoring this video but as always, all opinions are 100% my own, the
00:27good and the bad.
00:29So the Z16 is essentially a crossover.
00:32Not like one of these, which no one likes.
00:35This is the good kind.
00:36It's kind of like a gaming laptop meets a premium workstation.
00:40Which is exactly what I want as a creator.
00:43I know I hate that word as well.
00:45But it's true.
00:46I want the performance of a gaming laptop but also with a high quality screen, good
00:50range of connectivity, decent battery life, all those extra sort of bells and whistles
00:55and also in a subtle but premium styling that's also reasonably portable.
01:00And this ticks pretty much all those boxes.
01:04I should say though that as you can see I'm actually running Windows 11 on this, although
01:08out of the box it ships with Windows 10, which is where I did all my testing for this.
01:13But because I've actually switched to it as my main laptop, I've upgraded to the public
01:17beta of Windows 11 just because I quite like using it.
01:20So that's what I've got going on right here.
01:23So let me give you the walkthrough.
01:25And for gamers, we have an RTX 3060 in here, that's a 65 watt TGP variant, as well as the
01:32latest 11th Gen Intel i9 processor, plus a 120 hertz refresh screen, per-key RGB keyboard
01:39and also impressively good cooling, which maintains performance throughout.
01:44Plus you can upgrade the RAM and storage yourself if you want to take it to the next level.
01:49But then, for us creators slash professionals, we have this absolutely gorgeous screen, which
01:54MSI are calling their True Pixel display.
01:58It's nothing fancy, it's no OLED or mini-LED, it's just an LED LCD, but it is a top-notch
02:04screen.
02:05And we're getting a Quad HD Plus resolution, so that's 2560 by 1600, which makes this a
02:1016 by 10 aspect ratio.
02:13They're calling it the, what was that, Golden Ratio, 16 by 10, the marketing suggests things
02:18like Fibonacci's Sequence and Renaissance Art.
02:22Marketing waffle aside, this is, I think, the best aspect ratio.
02:25Although feel free to disagree, do you prefer 3 by 2 or your regular 16 by 9?
02:30Let me know which you think is the best in the comments.
02:33And so, it's a terrific screen, and also a touchscreen, which may be helpful for doing
02:38some electronic signatures, or if you want to pair this with a stylus or a pen, then
02:42you can get some proper doodling action going on.
02:46It's also impressively colour accurate, measuring 100% of the sRGB and 99% of the DCI-P3 gamuts,
02:54so this is ideal for video editors.
02:56However, you can't escape just how reflective this is, which is fine if you've got a nice
03:01blacked out background, as this lady's staring you down, but as soon as you bring it into
03:06any kind of lighting or even put your own face in front of it in a normal environment,
03:11it gets a bit distracting.
03:12This is very, very glossy, which does help the colours pop a bit more, it feels a bit
03:17more vibrant, more contrasty.
03:18I don't know, I'm kind of on the fence.
03:20Do you prefer matte or glossy?
03:22I think when it comes to gaming, matte is the way forward, but then the glossy's kind
03:25of nice for, you know, creative workloads.
03:28It's a balance, I'm not sure.
03:30What I was really surprised by, though, is the speakers.
03:33They are very, very good on this.
03:35Genuinely punchy, with a surprisingly wide soundstage.
03:42And then inside, powering everything, we have a big 90Wh battery, so we're looking
03:52at about 6 hours of light use, or about 2 if you're editing a 4K video in Premiere
03:56Pro on high performance mode.
03:59We also get a pretty solid range of ports, including two Thunderbolt 4 Type-Cs and a
04:04couple of Type-As as well, the latest 3.2 Gen 2.
04:08Also a micro SD card reader, which is fine, I'd rather have a full-size SD if possible,
04:13and also a headphone and mic jack.
04:15And it's all in a chassis that's just 2.2kg, which isn't bad at all for a 16-inch laptop,
04:21because for context, the slightly larger XPS 17 is 200g heavier than this, and the Razer
04:28Blade 17 is half a kilogram heavier than this.
04:31Yes, they're a little bit bigger, but in its category, in its class, this is one of the
04:35lightest performance laptops you can get.
04:38So you will feel it in your backpack, but it is definitely a good travel companion as
04:42well.
04:43So we're getting an all-aluminium chassis, this is in Lunar Grey, and we also have this
04:48MSI Dragon logo laser-etched into the lid, and as you can see, there's this big exhaust
04:52fan at the top of the keyboard.
04:54It's not the speaker grill, they're downward-firing speakers at the front.
04:58But I do have a couple of niggles, for example, the bezels are quite chunky, especially this
05:03chin at the bottom, so next to something like the XPS 17, it doesn't look quite as
05:07futuristic.
05:08Also, why do we have a separate fingerprint here, couldn't they build it maybe into the
05:13power button, like we see on some models?
05:16And also, as we are down here, the trackpad is fine, it's Microsoft Precision, so it's
05:20nice and responsive, but I do feel like maybe they could have made it a bit bigger, utilised
05:25the space a bit more.
05:26And also, it presses in quite a long way, particularly on this lower right, it's not
05:31quite even, and so you can actually get your finger under the lip of the body a little
05:35bit.
05:36So, not my favourite, but it's certainly functional.
05:38You know, there's nothing to the side of the keyboard here, perhaps they could have squeezed
05:42in a numpad, that would have been nice.
05:44But it is a classy laptop, and it would look just as good at the office, maybe without
05:48the rainbow RGB keys though, or at home in your gaming setup.
05:52So the Z16 is an NVIDIA Studio certified laptop, which means MSI have worked with NVIDIA to
05:58pick the best components and test it with the broadest range of creative apps.
06:02So whether you spend your life in the Adobe suite, like me, or you're developing, say,
06:07in the Unreal Engine, or rendering in 3DS Max, it's all been tested and NVIDIA have
06:12certified the Z16.
06:14And of course, having an RTX 3000 series card, the 3016 here, we have all the gaming benefits
06:20of ray tracing, DLSS AI upscaling, NVIDIA Reflex, which reduces latency, and also NVIDIA
06:26Broadcast, improving the quality of your streams, whether you're on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Twitch,
06:32and it's handy for blurring or switching backgrounds, and reducing ambient noise.
06:37So obviously this isn't the only crossover creator laptop on the market, most of the
06:41big brands have something like this.
06:43But as far as I know, this is the only laptop that has a 16 by 10 high refresh display on
06:49a creator laptop like this.
06:51So that does make it stand out, as does the price actually, which I'll come back to at
06:54the end.
06:55It is very expensive, but it's either on par or actually a little bit cheaper than
06:59its rivals.
07:00But I've made you wait long enough, let's talk about performance.
07:03And the Z16 comes in two specs.
07:05They both have the 3060, but then either an i7 with a full HD plus screen, or an i9 and
07:11quad HD plus screen, and I've got the higher end model here, although only with 16 gigs
07:15of RAM, but it can be specced with 32, or as I say, you can upgrade it yourself.
07:20And while so far I've been waffling on about how you can use a gaming laptop's performance
07:25for everything else, this is still a capable gaming laptop.
07:29At full HD with high settings, we're getting triple digits in all of my games on test,
07:34well except for Cyberpunk, but that's still a decent 51.
07:37Now of course, NVIDIA's DLSS technology helps out here in games that support it, and
07:42that's just one of the benefits of having an RTX card in here, and overall the 3060
07:46is a properly solid gaming card at 1080p.
07:50And we're near enough maxing out that 120Hz refresh in these AAA games at high settings.
07:55But then, at the same time, this 8-core i9 and 3060 combo gives me a smooth 4K editing
08:02timeline in Premiere Pro.
08:03I mostly still use proxies because I shoot 10-bit 422, but scrubbing through footage
08:09and rendering is nice and fast as you'd expect.
08:12And thanks to the dedicated NVENC encoder on the GPU, a 10-minute 4K project takes me
08:18about 8 minutes to render using the 3060, compared to a whopping 52 minutes using only
08:24the CPU.
08:26And that's the power of RTX GPU acceleration.
08:29Plus the AI smarts of the card speeds up features like auto-reframe and scene detection in Premiere
08:34Pro or, say, speed warp in DaVinci Resolve.
08:38So for my workflows in Premiere Pro and Lightroom and a bit of Photoshop, and also a little bit
08:42of gaming maybe in the evening, this does the job.
08:46So if you do pick one of these up and you jump into the GeForce Experience, you will
08:50see that by default we have NVIDIA's Studio drivers downloaded.
08:54These are slightly better optimized for a wider range of apps, or if you want the absolute
08:59latest game drivers, then you can still switch to the game-ready drivers.
09:04Now you might also be able to see that we have this Whisper mode, which is 2.0 now because
09:08we've got the 3000 series cards.
09:10Not every RTX laptop has that.
09:13It's up to the manufacturer whether they include it, and we do get it with this.
09:16So you can turn that on, select different acoustic profiles, and that will limit, well,
09:20the sound coming out of it.
09:22But one of the best things about this, which I found out in my testing, is that it doesn't
09:26get very loud.
09:27I've never actually needed to use Whisper mode because even under load, you can hear
09:31the fans, but it's reasonably quiet actually.
09:33So it's doing a really good job.
09:35The only downside really is it gets quite toasty at the top here.
09:39So this is a fan exhaust, not the speakers, which are actually downward firing at the
09:43front.
09:44This gets quite warm.
09:45I measured sort of mid-high 50 degrees Celsius, so keep your hands away from that.
09:49Although I have found when I was doing some touchscreen stuff and my palm rested there,
09:53it was a bit uncomfortable.
09:54Generally, though, it's not been a problem.
09:56The keyboard and the touchpad itself never got uncomfortably warm.
10:00But yeah, just stay clear of this area.
10:02Now the webcam isn't amazing.
10:04I've seen better.
10:05I've seen worse.
10:06It is on the top bezel, so it's in a good location.
10:09I think it sounds okay.
10:10A little bit soft, a little bit noisy.
10:12Of course, you can use NVIDIA Broadcast to sharpen it up and remove the background.
10:17This has just been shot with the camera app for some raw footage from the webcam.
10:23It's okay.
10:24Does the job.
10:25That's about it.
10:26So that is the Z16.
10:27And I know what you're thinking.
10:28Great stuff.
10:29How much?
10:30Well, it starts from about £1,900 and goes up to £2,600.
10:34Honestly, that base spec is probably the best choice.
10:36And of course, you can always upgrade the RAM and SSD yourself later if you want to.
10:41And if you do fancy checking this out for yourself, I will leave links in the description
10:44below.
10:45I'm using this now as my main laptop, at least until MSI takes it away from me because it
10:50is just a review sample.
10:51But I've had a really good time with this.
10:53It's not perfect.
10:54I think if they maybe trim the bezels, sort of sorted out that trackpad a little bit,
10:58and also maybe offered a 3070, perhaps with a 4K screen, that could be nice.
11:02But beyond that, there isn't really much to criticise and I think MSI's done a really
11:06good job with this.
11:07So hopefully you enjoyed the video.
11:09Let me know what you make of this in the comments.
11:11And also, let's say you did have £2,500 or £3,000 to spend on a laptop right now.
11:16What would you buy?
11:17Let me know.
11:18Thank you so much for watching, guys.
11:19And I'll see you next time right here on The Tech Jam.