You should be able to disable the dGPU if you have no need for it, within the BIOS, to improve battery life.
As for why I recommend it?
1) It has a thin, MacBook-esque aluminium chassis.
2) A choice of two biometrics - Fingerprint and Facial (the latter works with Howdy on Linux).
3) The processor is a 11th (Z16) or 12th Gen. (Z16P) Intel Core i9. The former uses 3200MHz DDR4 AND the latter uses DDR5.
4) They both sport a RTX 30 Series dGPU for creative work or gaming.
5) MSI has decent Linux support historically, for their laptops at least.
6) MSI laptops feature a "hidden BIOS" which exposes hundreds of options and toggles (from undervolting and over locking, to tuning PCIe slot power limits). This is quite helpful at times.
7) It has a panel that pretty much ticks all the boxes except HDR: a good resolution of QHD, high colour accuracy (∆E < 2), a high refresh rate (either 120Hz or 165Hz), as well as touch support.
8) It sports RGB keyboard backlighting, if that's your thing.
9) It has a great selection of ports, with one (Z16P) or two (Z16) Thunderbolt 4 ports and two USB [Type-A] 10GBps ports.
10) MSI laptops of this size usually sport two NVMe slots, for expansion. You could even use one slot for a Google Coral. Furthermore, the included NVMes from MSI that I've had have been "top-tier" in terms of throughput.
You should be able to disable the dGPU if you have no need for it, within the BIOS, to improve battery life.
As for why I recommend it?
1) It has a thin, MacBook-esque aluminium chassis.
2) A choice of two biometrics - Fingerprint and Facial (the latter works with Howdy on Linux).
3) The processor is a 11th (Z16) or 12th Gen. (Z16P) Intel Core i9. The former uses 3200MHz DDR4 AND the latter uses DDR5.
4) They both sport a RTX 30 Series dGPU for creative work or gaming.
5) MSI has decent Linux support historically, for their laptops at least.
6) MSI laptops feature a "hidden BIOS" which exposes hundreds of options and toggles (from undervolting and over locking, to tuning PCIe slot power limits). This is quite helpful at times.
7) It has a panel that pretty much ticks all the boxes except HDR: a good resolution of QHD, high colour accuracy (∆E < 2), a high refresh rate (either 120Hz or 165Hz), as well as touch support.
8) It sports RGB keyboard backlighting, if that's your thing.
9) It has a great selection of ports, with one (Z16P) or two (Z16) Thunderbolt 4 ports and two USB [Type-A] 10GBps ports.
10) MSI laptops of this size usually sport two NVMe slots, for expansion. You could even use one slot for a Google Coral. Furthermore, the included NVMes from MSI that I've had have been "top-tier" in terms of throughput.