Meet the MSI Commercial 14 (starts at $899; $1,129 as tested), the company’s latest rethink of its business laptop lineup, this time aiming for government and institutional buyers. This 14-incher provides decent value with its powerful Intel Core H-series processor and a standard three-year warranty. The MSI Commercial 14 also pushes an eco-friendly story, with recycled materials for added peace of mind or meeting ESG targets. However, middling battery life, an average screen, and a cramped keyboard put the Commercial 14 behind the Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 for our favorite entry-level business laptop.
MSI's Latest Take on Business Laptops
The Commercial 14 is available through vendors like Amazon or built-to-order directly from MSI. Business-specific features that differentiate the Commercial 14 from the company’s prosumer-focused Prestige series include Intel vPro remote management, a SmartCard reader, and an increased focus on sustainability. MSI says 10% of the laptop is made with recycled material, 80% of the laptop is recyclable, and 90% of the packaging is recycled. The laptop also carries EPEAT 2.0 Silver and Energy Star 8.0 ratings.
The Commercial 14’s straight lines and gray color scheme don’t add up to visual excitement, but the industrial look works in the office and where standing out wouldn’t be desirable. The lid and base of the chassis are aluminum, while the palm rest is mostly recycled plastic. The chassis and lid seem quite sturdy, barely flexing under my fingertips.
At 0.73 by 12.4 by 9.3 inches (HWD), the Commercial 14 is similar in size to the Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 (0.7 by 12.3 by 8.6 inches) though heavier, at 3.31 versus 3.11 pounds, respectively. The Acer Swift Go 14 is thinner and lighter (0.59 by 12.3 by 8.6 inches and 2.91 pounds), though that model is primarily a consumer-focused laptop.
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Physical connectivity starts with one Thunderbolt 4 port, a USB 3.2 Type-A port, a 3.5mm universal audio jack, and the power jack on the left edge. You'll find a cable lock slot on the right and a SmartCard reader (an essential security feature for some government and enterprise use cases) on the front.
MSI also has rear-facing ports, including HDMI 2.1 video output, two more USB-A 3.2 ports (a total of three), and an Ethernet jack. This less-common port placement is ideal for keeping cables out of your mousing area. The large cooling vent takes care of the Commercial 14’s powerful Core H-class CPU, the same type of chip you’d find in a gaming laptop. The fans were generally well-behaved in my testing, barely audible at idle and only mildly so under load. Internally, the laptop contains an Intel Wi-Fi 6E card with Bluetooth 5.3.
Using the MSI Commercial 14: Peaks and Valleys
The Commercial 14’s sturdy build quality inspired me to take it everywhere despite it not being the lightest laptop around. Similarly priced consumer laptops such as the Acer Swift Go 14 are lighter, but an ultraportable (sub-three-pound) business-first laptop would cost a lot more. (The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 4 comes to mind.)
My major complaint with this laptop is that its keyboard is slightly undersize, with keys not as tall as they should be considering the deck space available. Despite the feeling that my fingertips were creeping over the top edges of the keys, I still managed an excellent (for me) 119 words per minute with 99% accuracy in the MonkeyType online typing test. The keys do have enjoyable feedback and shine with three levels of high-contrast white backlighting. The power button at the top right doubles as a fingerprint reader. Below, the touchpad provides an expansive surface and tactile clicks.
The Commercial 14’s screen has the expected specifications for an entry-level business laptop. Its 1,920-by-1,200-pixel resolution provides ample space for viewing documents side-by-side, the IPS panel technology has decent viewing angles, and the anti-glare coating keeps reflections down. The screen's colors are rather muted, and its top brightness isn’t impressive, though neither would prevent you from getting work done. A touch option would have been a welcome addition.
This laptop's speakers are actually decent for a business model. Their downward-firing nature sacrifices some clarity, but the sound is reasonably full, and I can hear some bass thump when playing Vertical Horizon’s “Everything You Want.” A Realtek audio setup app is included, but it doesn’t have an equalizer.
The webcam on the Commercial 14 has a fuzzy 720p resolution, which by all rights should be 1080p at this point. That's a curious shortfall for an all-business laptop that will likely spend an inordinate amount of time fielding Zoom calls. At least the webcam setup includes a sliding privacy shutter. Three microphones help with AI noise cancellation, so using this laptop for voice calls in a noisy place (perhaps while traveling) should be possible.
Software-wise, Windows 11 Pro is installed free of unwanted software. The major included app is MSI Center, which provides system updates, support access, and recovery options. It also has carryover features from MSI’s gaming line, including a Fn- and- Windows key swap option as well as the ability to disable the Windows key. The keyboard backlighting is also configurable to stay always on or activate automatically. For business customers, MSI also has an Enterprise Support Tool with BIOS/power control and monitoring. (It wasn’t on our review model, so I didn’t get to try it.)
Testing the MSI Commercial 14: An Office Powerhouse
Our $1,129 MSI Commercial 14 review unit from Amazon features an Intel Core i7-13700H processor (14 cores, 5.0GHz turbo), Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB solid-state drive.
MSI custom builds the Commercial 14 for B2B buyers, which starts at approximately $899 with a Core i5 processor. Many aspects of the laptop are customizable, including features such as Near-Field Communication (NFC) or a smartcard reader. (Our unit has both.)
MSI’s pricing seems fair for this model considering its powerful components and standard three-year warranty. Lenovo’s ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 costs about the same with a Core i7 inside, albeit a less powerful U-series chip, and the model I found on Lenovo.com had only a one-year warranty.
I've lined up the MSI Commercial 14 to compare with the aforementioned Acer Swift Go 14, the Asus ZenBook 14X OLED, the HP Pavilion Plus 14, and the Editors' Choice-winning ThinkPad E14 Gen 5. The MSI and the ThinkPad are the only true business-class models, but the others could certainly be used for office duty, especially at small businesses.
The MSI’s Intel Core i7 H-class CPU should help it score well in our benchmarks. The ZenBook featured the same CPU, the HP an eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 U-series, and the ThinkPad a Core i7 U-series. Only the Acer had the newer Core Ultra 7, which MSI said should be available in the Commercial 14 in April 2024.
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.
Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The Commercial 14’s PCMark score was well above the 4,000 points we look for as a sign of decent productivity in everyday apps like Microsoft Office. Its top score in the storage test is also notable. Powerful performance continued in the CPU tests, where the Commercial 14 took the top honors in Cinebench, HandBrake, and Photoshop. The ThinkPad E14 and its Core U-series CPU weren’t even close. Impressively, the MSI usually topped the Acer and its Core Ultra chip.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
We test the graphics inside all laptops and desktops with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
To further measure GPUs, we also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, which are rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.
The Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics built into the Commercial 14’s Core i7 CPU are usable for everyday use but not much else, so forget about gaming if you had any expectations for that, to begin with. The Acer’s new Arc GPU proved the fastest of the group, distantly followed by the HP’s AMD Radeon.
Battery and Display Tests
We test each laptop and tablet's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
To gauge display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
Edging past the 10-hour mark isn’t enough to stand out in this tier, but long enough to last a workday off of the outlet. Regardless, the ThinkPad E14 outlasted the Commercial 14 by an hour and 45 minutes, and we tested that model with its smaller battery option.
The Commercial 14’s screen had about the same color coverage and brightness as the ThinkPad E14’s. It’s average at best. The Swift Go 14 proved much brighter, and the Acer, Asus, and HP were light-years ahead in color coverage.
Verdict: New Biz Player Is a Decent Value, But Needs Refinement
MSI’s new business laptop line comes with slightly fewer pros than cons on the final tally. The Commercial 14's powerful performance, three-year warranty, high-quality sustainable build, and broad connectivity all help it deliver lots of value. However, we think MSI needs to include a larger keyboard and a better webcam the next time around. It also didn’t impress in our battery life test, though it still lasts long enough for this class. Finally, for the price, the laptop could do with a slightly sharper or deeper-color display. With that, the Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 remains our favorite budget- and- small-business laptop, but the Commercial 14 deserves a look for its superior processing power, and for the option to work with MSI to custom-configure a Commercial for your organization's exact needs.
MSI’s Commercial 14 business laptop is a fast performer that's sustainably built, but it could use a more spacious keyboard and a more colorful screen.
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