MSI is officially starting pre-orders for the MSI Bravo 15 and Bravo 17, the company's latest affordable gaming laptops packed with an AMD Ryzen CPU and Radeon GPU.

Both laptops are available to pre-order at Newegg today, with the MSI Bravo 15 starting at $929 and the MSI Bravo 17 starting at $1,099.

MSI Bravo 15, Bravo 17 specs and design

In terms of specs, the Bravo 15 can pack up to a Ryzen 7 4800H processor, an AMD Radeon RX5500M GPU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. The Bravo 17 boasts similar specs, but it can get an additional 1TB 7,200-rpm HDD stacked on top of the SSD.

(Image credit: MSI)

The Bravo 15 (4.1 pounds, 14.1 x 10 x 0.9 inches) and Bravo 17 (5.1 pounds, 15.6 x 10.2 x 0.9 inches) are both relatively light and slim. They have the same black, plastic design slathered with a brushed-faux aluminum paint job. The lid features a blacked-out thunderbird logo, which looks neat, but red-colored keyboard keys make these laptops look cheap (never color your keys red).

The Bravo 15 is outfitted with three USB Type-A ports, two USB Type-C ports, an RJ45 Ethernet port, a security lock slot, a headphone jack and an HDMI port, while the Bravo 17 loses one USB Type-C port in favor of a separate microphone port. That seems like an uneven trade.

MSI Bravo 15, Bravo 17 display and keyboard

Apart from having different screen sizes, 15.6-inch versus 17.3-inch, the Bravo 15 and Bravo 17 pack similar displays, which feature a 1920 x 1080 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate accompanied by AMD FreeSync technology.

(Image credit: MSI)

Moving onto the keyboard, not only are the keys super-red but they also feature single-zone backlighting. It's unclear what color it is, but if it's red, well, that's just gross to just think about. What is interesting is the placement of the keyboard. It's placed down much further than traditional notebooks, as the touchpad is touching the front lip of the deck.

MSI Bravo 15, Bravo 17 battery life

While MSI hasn't made any battery life claims, it divulged that the machine has a 51Whr battery, which isn't very promising. But we've seen AMD do some crazy things with battery life recently, so who knows.

Outlook

Hopefully with AMD's latest chips, MSI can bounce back from the MSI Alpha 15, which was toting around older components that couldn't quite match up to the competition. We're excited to get these laptops in for testing and see what they're capable of. Stay tuned for our full review and benchmarks of the Bravo 15 and Bravo 17.