MSI announces two new convertible business laptops

MSI, a company best known for bold and flashy gaming laptops, has announced two additions to its new Summit Series business line. The Summit E13 Flip Evo and Summit E16 Flip are convertible notebooks powered by Intel’s Tiger Lake processors.

The big news is that the new Flips come with 16:10 displays. MSI says the new aspect ratio will provide 10 percent more visible screen space than a similarly sized 16:9 screen. That’s a good sign for business users — it means less scrolling and more room to multitask. Both models are also compatible with MSI’s proprietary MPP 2.0 stylus (the MSI pen), which the company says has 4,096 pressure levels.

Like the rest of the Summit Series, the two models include a number of features designed for remote meetings. These include a “noise-reduction” camera (with a physical shutter as well as a keyboard kill switch), and audio noise cancellation. MSI claims the notebooks will get 20 hours of battery life, which would certainly be a step up from the five-hour lifespan I got out of the Summit B15.

The E13 Flip Evo is, as its name implies, certified through Intel’s Evo program. This means it’s met Intel’s various standards for top-performing Tiger Lake laptops, including responsive performance, quick boot time, all-day battery life, and other modern amenities like Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 6. MSI claims it “performs 10% higher than other 2-in-1 laptops of the same tier.” (I’ll have to test that claim for myself when I get my hands on a unit, of course.)

The E16 Flip looks to be more of a workstation device. MSI says it will include “the latest Nvidia graphics card” to lend a hand with content-creation tasks. It also comes with four microphones for conference calls.

Models support Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, as well as PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD storage.

Pricing and availability are still to be announced. The current Summit E13 Flip costs $1,599.99, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see these two models somewhere above that range.