MSI has won me back with the new Stealth 16 AI+ (2026)

The MSI Stealth has a whole new look for 2026. No longer is the Stealth an ultrathin shiny black box, but rather it features a more robust thermal system and a new modern design with subtle pinstriping and MSI branding on the charcoal aluminum cover.

I’ve been a fan of MSI’s Stealth line for years, since I love a good thin and light gaming laptop. Unfortunately, the Stealth models have had their ups and downs over the last decade, and the last few years have been the most volatile as MSI has pivoted from targeting hardcore gamers on the go to a more content creator-focused audience. The pricing on the Stealth has also vacillated from being a premium, ultraslim gaming laptop to a thicker, more reasonably priced option, though this year’s model is returning to that slim, premium aesthetic.While I can appreciate the subtle touches of the new Stealth and the increased thermal capacity, and thus better performance, I find myself a bit torn on the new design. The revamped Stealth may be more powerful and fit in better as a professional or student laptop, but it's lost some of its charm and portability in the bargain.

My MSI Stealth 16 AI+ (2026) review will help you decide if this is the best gaming laptop for you and whether or not the benefits of the new design are worth the sacrifice.

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ (2026): Cheat sheet

• What is it? The MSI Stealth 16 AI+ (2026) ditches the classic gaming aesthetic of previous years in favor of a new, sleek chassis with better thermals.
• Who is it for? Gamers or content creators who need a portable laptop with powerful Nvidia discrete graphics performance.
• What does it cost? The starting configuration costs $2,699 and is available at Best Buy.
• What do we like? The redesigned chassis has a more premium feel than prior models, the Intel Panther Lake CPU provides great general performance and solid battery life, with a vivid OLED display for fantastic visuals.
• What don’t we like: The Stealth lost some of its portability with the more powerful cooling system, and the RTX 5060 model is very expensive for a base configuration.

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ (2026): Specs

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ (2026): The Ups

The Stealth 16 AI+ gets plenty right as a premium, portable, 16-inch gaming laptop. It’s got a streamlined, understated modern design, powerful CPU and GPU performance, great general use battery life, and a stunning OLED display.

Slick, modern design

The Stealth has a sturdy, all-aluminum chassis. While the new aluminum coating still picks up fingerprints, it’s not quite as much of a fingerprint magnet as previous Stealth models. However, you will probably want to keep a cleaning cloth on hand for smudges.

Ultimately, the new chassis not only feels like a premium laptop, it also looks like one with rounded corners, subtle detailing, and an almost MacBook-like clean keyboard deck.

The Stealth’s keyboard is a 4-zone RGB keyboard that can be controlled in MSI center to fit your personal vibe. The typing experience on the Stealth is pretty fantastic for a slim gaming laptop, offering decent key travel without any mushy-membrane feel. Paired with the oversized in Enlarge Touchpad and plenty of IO ports, it's hard to find fault with the overall user experience of the Stealth.

Vivid display and powerful audio

The display has gotten a glossy OLED overhaul, offering vivid color and over 350-nits of brightness, which makes up for one of the main drawbacks of last year’s Stealth model which offered an underwhelming amount of vibrancy, particularly while gaming. This year’s Stealth 16 AI+ not only offers an OLED panel’s near-infinite contrast ratio, but features super-saturated color that makes gaming or streaming video on the Stealth a proper delight.

The sound system has also been upgraded to a 2x2W speaker and 2x2W woofer setup which offers crisp, clean audio that’s powerful enough to be heard even while gaming under heavy load.

Respectable CPU and GPU performance

The Stealth is also no slouch when it comes to performance, thanks to its Intel Core Ultra 9 386H Panther Lake CPU. The Stealth isn’t just great at multitasking but can handle some serious photo and video editing too thanks to its discrete Nvidia RTX 5060 GPU.

Not only does the Stealth hit a respectable 15,170 multicore average on Geekbench 6.7, it also encoded the 4K edition of Tears of Steel into a 1080p format in just 3 minutes and 31 seconds. While not breaking any records for performance, it does pack a solid punch even when compared to some of our favorite gaming laptops like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025).

As for gaming performance, the Stealth is pretty comparable to other RTX 5060 gaming laptops, offering fantastic performance at 1080p, while it can struggle at higher resolutions on more graphically intense games like Black Myth: Wukong or Cyberpunk 2077 where the Stealth struggles to scrape past 30fps. But for older or well-optimized titles like Borderlands 3 or Far Cry 6, the RTX 5060’s raw performance is more than sufficient without even accounting for all of Nvidia’s GPU software optimization tools.

And, as an Nvidia RTX 50-series laptop, the Stealth gets the benefits of Nvidia’s DLSS 4.5, meaning you can enable up to 6x frame generation for smoother performance at higher resolutions. And that means you can run Doom: The Dark Ages on High or even Nightmare level at 1600p without dropping frames or getting fragged by the hordes of darkness. As long as you’re willing to accept that some of your pixels are AI pixels.

Surprisingly good battery life

While the Stealth’s battery life wouldn’t hold a candle to your average consumer laptop, as far as gaming laptops go, getting 10 hours and 49 minutes of web surfing battery life on our battery benchmark is pretty impressive.

Of course, that battery life does deplete pretty quickly when gaming, as the Stealth lasted just 1 hour and 55 minutes on the PCMark 10 gaming battery life benchmark. However, that’s still enough to beat the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) and Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10.

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ (2026): The Downs

The MSI Stealth 16 AI+ isn’t the perfect laptop, however. It lost a bit of its identity as a gaming laptop in the redesign, and it isn’t quite as thin as MSI claims. However, its biggest problem is one facing all computer hardware these days: its price tag.

A high starting price and steep upgrade costs

The Stealth’s biggest drawback isn’t even entirely MSI’s fault. Thanks to the current memory and storage shortages due to the supply chain demands of AI data centers, all gaming hardware is significantly more expensive than it used to be. And at least for the starting configuration of the Stealth, the $2,699 price tag feels properly earned. The slick, modern design, improved build quality, vivid OLED display, upgraded audio system, and powerful components help take some of the sting out of the sticker shock.

However, upgrades get even more expensive as you add GPU power. Though, interestingly enough, the RTX 5070 model ($3,199) is more expensive than the RTX 5070Ti version ($3,099). Which basically makes the RTX 5070 Stealth a poor deal. The top-line RTX 5080 model retails for $3,899, and that increased cost is entirely down to the GPU.

All of the Stealth models come with the same 32GB DDR5 7200MHz memory, 1TB NVMe SSD Gen 4 storage, and 16-inch, 240Hz OLED display. And that really does make the RTX 5060 version the best bargain, with the RTX 5070Ti coming in as the best balance of performance to price, if you need more GPU power than the RTX 5060 can offer.

Is it really the “slimmest” Stealth ever?

MSI touts the Stealth 16 AI+ as the “thinnest Stealth ever” at its thinnest point. And that is technically correct. At just 0.65 inches at its thinnest, the new Stealth is definitely one of the slimmer gaming laptops on the market.

However, that Z-height takes a big jump to 0.79 near the back hinge. While this offers improved airflow for better thermals and thus smoother performance, it does make the new stealth feel a bit chunkier than even last year’s model which was actually thicker (0.85 inches) by a good margin.

And, while this may be dredging up ancient history, MSI has had thinner Stealth models overall than the new Stealth 16 AI+. My old MSI Stealth GS63VR from 2016 was 0.69 inches thick all around. The GS63VR was also just 4.2 pounds, so a hair or two lighter than the current model.

So MSI is technically kind of correct with the new Stealth branding, but the statement has a big asterisk for a reason. However, the Stealth 16 AI+ is far less flimsy than my old GS63 model, and that alone makes the change worth it. Add on all the performance benefits of that improved airflow, and it's hard to argue with MSI’s design choices this time around.

MSI Stealth 16 AI+ (2026): Verdict

For all of my complaints about the Stealth’s design being a tiny bit chunkier than my museum piece of a GTX 1060 model, the benefits of that elevated hinge can be felt in the gaming and multitasking performance offered by the RTX 5060 model. So the change is definitely worth it from a pure numbers standpoint, and the build quality on the new Stealth 16 AI+ is absolutely worth the thicker Z-height.

Ultimately, the Stealth 16 AI+ is one of the better thin gaming laptops, offering a nearly complete package as far as performance, battery life, build quality, design, display, and audio are concerned. The only thing holding the Stealth back from perfection is its steep price tag and pricey upgrades, which aren’t entirely in MSI’s control. So if you need a gaming laptop to take with you on business trips, to class, or perhaps to take into the office, the MSI Stealth 16 AI+ is a fantastic choice. Assuming you can afford it.