Form Factor & Build QualityBoth machines share a similar footprint, but there are some notable ergonomic differences:Trackpad: MSI's is centered, while Lenovo's is offset left. Preference may vary.MSI Fans: Slightly whinier under load, but the system runs cooler overall.Pen: MSI includes the pen in the box... Lenovo charges extra.Build: MSI’s fit and finish is solid, with clever hinge design that slightly elevates the laptop for better airflow.Screen: MSI wins here. It's brighter, slightly warmer tone, and excellent clarity. Some reviews knock the large bottom bezel, but it’s clearly intentional and part of the hinge-lift design.SpeakersLenovo wins easily. MSI’s speakers are thin and underwhelming. They'll do in a pinch, but Lenovo's are significantly fuller and louder.Software & UpdatesLenovo Vantage is miles ahead. It handles driver, firmware, and BIOS updates with minimal user intervention.MSI relies on manual driver downloads from its website. BIOS updates require old-school flashing via USB, which is functional but not consumer-friendly.Initial Setup ExperienceLenovo’s setup is smoother and less time consuming.MSI required a lot more manual effort, verifying and installing updates. This meant a day or two of off and on tinkering versus a few hours on Lenovo.PerformanceMSI AI 365:Cinebench R23 Multi-core: ~18,090Single-core: ~1,983–2,000Single-core runs at ~24W and spikes cores over 5GHz, so it's likely maxed out.Lenovo 12700H:Multi-core: ~9,700Single-core: ~1,737Performance has degraded over time, and is below online averages (typically 13,000–15,000), likely due to sustained throttling and limited power delivery.Thermals, Power & Fan BehaviorMSI:Holds steady temps in the 65–72°C range during loads.Idle wattage is impressively low (~5W).Power draw under full load can hit 50W with no thermal runaway.The fan is quieter overall, in that it doesn't spin up as often, and while it has a "wheesh" tone when it does, you won’t hear it over a basic laptop cooler stand.Lenovo:Idles efficiently (also ~5–6W), but under load it quickly spikes to 100°C, triggers throttling, and can’t maintain sustained performance.Fan has a more "whoosh" character and stays active more often. I like the sound of the Lenovo fan better.Cooling SolutionLenovo likely has the better-engineered cooling system, but it’s simply not enough for the 12700H + Arc combo.MSI runs warm on the left side of the keyboard (where the CPU sits), but it’s nowhere near "hot" — and performs much better overall.Final VerdictIf you're comfortable managing your own updates via the MSI support site, the MSI Summit AI 365 is a fantastic machine. It’s easily twice as fast as what it replaces, with excellent build quality, efficient thermals, and standout performance from the Ryzen AI 9 365.It's not perfect... the fans are less impressive, and the software update experience lags far behind Lenovo's Vantage platform, but the hardware/price makes up for it.Bottom Line:The Summit AI 365 is one of the best price to performance laptops currently available with the new Ryzen AI chips. Even ASUS’s Zenbook with the AI 9 370 can't match its performance due to inferior thermals. MSI nailed the balance here... if they improve their software experience, they'll be a top contender for SMB and prosumer users alike.PS: The new Ryzen CPU's can have very different performance characteristics depending on manufacturer tuning. Asus, as mentioned earlier, tends to lean into the thin + light + battery style. MSI on the other hand went for a more balanced approach, with more robust form factor and increased performance.

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UPDATE after a couple of months.Some issues have come up and I'm dropping to two stars.First - the touchpad. It's absolutely horrible. At first I thought I was just getting used to it, but it skips, or it doesn't respond at all, or it's over-sensitive. Clicks on it are spongy and have very bad haptic feedback. It's so bad I am carrying an external mouse with me. It's an Elan; I contacted MSI for a driver (what is listed on their site for touchpad for this laptop isn't actually a touchpad driver) and they told me there isn't one. Other laptop brands do supply Elan touchpad drivers; I tried several from Lenovo and others, and none work on this MSI laptop. So MSI, if you're reading this... you need to get a Lenovo Ideapad and check its touchpad and driver, it's a billion times better than what you put in this laptop.Second - power and boot. Every time I pressed the power button to turn it on in the morning, the keyboard would light up, and then, after a few seconds... everything would go dark and the laptop would stay off. I would press the power button again, and then it would normally come on. But boot was also quite slow for such a new laptop.After going all through the Windows power settings (that's another horror show now in Win11 but that's Microsoft's fault, not MSI's) as well as getting the latest BIOS update off MSI's site and installing it, all with no luck, I finally decided to go into the BIOS settings. There is a Fast Boot setting which was enabled. I disabled it, rebooted, and.... it now boots much faster (ironic!). Since I changed that, the power button has also been working the first time. Not sure what all this means, except MSI's BIOS may not work right with Windows 11's power settings.It has also failed to load Windows completely a couple of times, instead giving me a bright white screen and sitting there frozen like that, so I had to hard reboot it. First time that happened (after the return period, of course...) was pretty scary - I thought my new laptop had just bricked! Phew, a hard boot got it working again.Third, the screen. It is far too saturated, the colors are bad. I have tried to adjust and calibrate it, and here again, MSI and AMD have not done a good job. The AMD graphics software loaded on this from the factory fails every time you try to run it, with a message to install the latest version from the Microsoft store. OK cool, go into Microsoft store, load up the AMD app, and... it tells you the latest version is already installed on your computer. Yet another bad user experience piece.Trying to adjust the screen with the built-in color profiles and the scattered Windows 11 controls is another frustrating waste of time. I finally somehow got the colors to be less gruesomely over-saturated (green icons looked like they were radioactive) but this laptop should not come out of box with an over-saturated screen and only an unfixable error message from the factory-loaded AMD software.Since buying this laptop, I also bought a Lenovo Ideapad for another family member. I wish I had bought that laptop for myself instead of this MSI, but now that the return period has passed, I'll do what I can with the MSI. Still, while I wanted to try a "smaller" vendor, I think I would not do so again. Not sure how much of all this is because it's an AMD instead of an Intel platform inside.ORIGINAL REVIEWI bought the MSI Summit A16 AI+ (2024) 16” QHD+ 165Hz 2-in-1 Touchscreen Laptop: AMD Ryzen AI 9-365. I was looking for a powerful laptop with a large screen at a reasonable cost. I am not much of a gamer; this laptop is for work. Now that I have worked with it for a week, I would 100% buy it again and recommend it to others.- Packaging and contents - A+The laptop is very well packaged. It arrived in a double box inside the Amazon shipping box. The laptop itself was enclosed in a plastic fiber envelope. The accessories were securely packed. The laptop box was very well designed and opened easily.- Screen - A+The screen is spectacular! It's very bright and clear. It's matte and does not reflect light sources too badly. It's a touch screen, but I don't use that very much. Still, nice to have.The resolution is QHD+. I would have preferred a UHD+, but this screen is so good that I'm fine with it now. Setting display scale down to 100% provides tons of screen real estate.The hinge is very solid. This laptop opens up as a 2-in-1. Just opening the laptop to normal operating screen angle takes advantage of the hinge to slightly elevate the back of the keyboard, adding a nice little slope for typing as well as enabling more airflow under the laptop.- Keyboard - AThe keyboard is excellent. Great key travel and feel - this is subjective, but I have big fingers and type a little harder, and the keyboard feels really great for me. I was a little worried about the numpad on the right making the main keyboard off-center, but it's not bad at all. The numpad keys are a bit compressed, so if you're always numpadding, you'll likely want an external one.The only occasional "oops" is that because the arrow keys are pretty small, I occasionally hit the "fn" key to the left of the left arrow. Still, that's mostly me going fast and because I have big fingers. Not a big deal; overall MSI did a very good job fitting all the keys.The keyboard layout is pretty typical. Two things stand out: there is a Copilot button (so this is one of the new "Copilot" PCs), and the power button is at the top right of the keyboard. I like this a lot, because this way, there is no chance of the laptop accidentally powering on while I'm traveling when the power button gets bumped in my bag. (Had this happen a number of times with a previous laptop...)- Mouse pad - A-The mousepad is centered on the laptop body. Other laptops with numpads have the mousepad shoved to the left, presumably to remain centered under the main keyboard. I prefer this way, so I don't have to move my right hand farther left and kink my wrist.Feel and operation is generally very good. The mousepad is very large and smooth. A few times, it has seemed to "lose" tracking for a few seconds as the mouse cursor disappears on screen and moving my hand around the mousepad does nothing, but it quickly starts working again.Also, it would be nice if MSI provided a configuration utility to allow adjusting the size of the right-click area. I seem to get a right-click more often than I want.- Ports - AThe laptop has two USB-C ports on the left side toward the back. Either accepts power!There is one HDMI, one USB-A, one micro-SD, and one 3.5mm headphone jack on the right side.There is no wired network jack, but few laptops short of mobile workstations seem to have those anymore. I hooked this laptop up to a docking station, and the laptop saw it right away and was able to use the docking station's wired network. My docking station connects via USB-C and provides power, so I only need one connection to the laptop.- Performance - A+I have not yet really pushed this laptop. During installations and routine use so far, it has performed admirably with no noticeable lags (I really like my computers to be very fast). I will be curious to see how its NPU and the system overall perform as I start doing technical work on it.Occasionally the cooling fans come on. They are audible, but not disruptively so. As I start working more heavily with it, I may try an active cooling pad, but so far the fans have not been annoying.Note: I am not a gamer. This laptop ships with a Radeon built-in GPU, not some high-end gaming or design GPU. That's not what I needed, and that would have raised the price.- Customization - AThe laptop ships with MSI software that lets you configure various aspects of system performance, including AI performance. I have not yet done too much with this, but it's waiting.- Bloatware - B+Only one "bloatware" was installed on the laptop, Norton software. It quickly uninstalled and recommended a reboot, which I did. Other than that, the laptop shipped "clean" except for the MSI software, which I left in place.- Build Quality - A+The laptop is very solidly built. There is no creak or flex as I manipulate it and carry it around. Pretty impressive, considering how thin and large it is.In Summary: an excellent, well-built laptop from an impressive Tier-2 brand at a very reasonable price for what you get.