Enhance Your Creative Workflow With MSI Creator Z16P

Honestly, MSI has been coming out with great laptops one after the other and the one we have here today is no exception. This is the MSI Creator Z16P and if you’re looking for a laptop to enhance your creative workflow and even more, this might just perhaps be what you’re looking for.

Now we believe that everyone can understand that specifications are of utmost importance when it comes to a laptop that’s meant for professional work, and yes, we agree as well. But a laptop is a laptop after all. To a certain extent, you would want something that you’re happy with design-wise since it’s something you would bring around every so often. So let’s start from there, the design.

Unlike most of MSI’s other offerings, the Creator series really takes minimalism to the next level and it adds that dash of professionalism to it as well. In fact, Tech Meets Aesthetic is the tagline and indeed, we have to agree.

The Creator Z16P comes in this subtle but clean looking Lunar Gray colour and the entire chassis is made out of CNC-ed aluminium. The anodization is smooth on both the lid cover and the bottom which helps with fingerprints, or rather the lack thereof, while the sides feature a nice polished chamfer that adds that little bit of accent to make it stand out ever so slightly. Overall, it's just a beautiful looking laptop that wouldn’t look out of place anywhere.

But open up the display, and this is where things get even better.

So it’s a 16-inch IPS display in a 16:10 aspect ratio, supports up to QHD+ resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 running up to 165Hz, 100% DCI-P3 color coverage with a Delta E<2, a max peak brightness of 1,000 nits and is Calman Verified. The result of that is just simply fantastic. This is really a display that can provide you with what you really need for professional work especially if you’re working in the creative field. Though more on that later. Because apart from the display, performance is really what you need, so let’s talk specs.

We’re looking at the latest 12th-Gen Intel Core i9-12900H, a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, alongside 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of PCIe Gen4 SSD storage. These specifications are no joke. It’s really meant for professionals and so with that said, let’s get straight into the performance metrics!

Using MSI Center Pro, you’ll be able to access different performance profiles and for our tests, we mainly focused on three. The default Smart mode which we honestly just recommend sticking to, the High Performance mode as well as the High Performance mode with Cooler Boost turned on.

So let’s start with Cinebench R23 and in the Smart Mode, that Core i9 was able to score 14,000 and basically 1,700 in Multi-Core and Single-Core respectively. In the High Performance mode, that increased to 16,852 and 1,810 respectively and the score stayed relatively within the margin of error with Cooler Boost turned on. We then ran our usual 4K renders using DaVinci Resolve and in any of the modes, they all rendered faster than real time for a 10 minute 4K project. Of particular note, the Smart and High Performance profiles performed pretty much the same while with Cooler Boost turned on, that render time does drop significantly, down to just 6 and a half minutes thereabouts.

Talking about 3D Mark Time Spy, that Core i9 and RTX 3080 Ti combo was able to yield roughly 9,420 on the Smart Profile and 9,757 and 10,224 for the High Performance and Cooler Boost profile respectively. In Fire Strike, it would be 14,024, 21,358 and 23,864 for the different modes respectively.

Last but not least, we have the famous BMW render on blender and for the Smart profile, it managed it in 2 minutes and 40 seconds while in the High Performance profile, that drops to 2 minutes 21 seconds and in Cooler Boost, just a tad further at 2 minutes and 14 seconds.

As you can tell, this laptop really performs and no surprises considering the hardware it contains. It really is a beast of a machine. But now back to that display because this plays hand in hand with the hardware powering it. In professional applications like video editing with DaVinci Resolve, you can really expect performance to be superb. We could easily playback 4K footages in real time on the timeline and that’s even with added effects and a LUT applied, alongside some adjustments to the audio. It plays back and rarely skips a beat, if ever.

To add on, thanks to the great display, not only do you have more space for the application to make use of, it is really colour accurate as well which makes this great for colour correction too. Many people might know that Resolve is just fantastic when it comes to colours and with this display, you can be rest assured that what you’re editing, is indeed what would come out at the end of the day.

To add on, the display is also touch capable and even supports the new MSI pen. If you fancy some creative work on the go but yet retain that familiar sense of pen and paper, this might just be what you want.

In any case, even outside of work, this is also going to be a fantastic display for just about anything and perhaps the best for consuming content on Netflix and more. It really is just great. With all that said, a laptop is still a laptop and so it has to deliver in many other areas as well. Now there aren’t many ports but MSI has made sure that what’s important is kept.

There’s a single Type-C port that supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 and DisplayPort output and another Type-C port that supports Thunderbolt 4 with DisplayPort output and Power Delivery, as well as the 3.5mm combo jack. On the other side, you’ll still get a standard Type-A USB 3.2 Gen2 and a full-size SD Card Reader.

There’s also a large 90Whr battery inside that can easily get you about 6 hours of general use, which might not sound like the best, but considering the hardware you’re getting, is actually pretty decent. So if you have this laptop out and about, perhaps on a business trip or something alike and you need to get some serious work done, this can really do it.

Overall, MSI has done a great job with this laptop and it does honestly deliver on its promise on what it’s supposed to be. You’re getting a great build quality that also looks great, you’re getting a fantastic display, you’re getting the highest-end performance available on the market today. And that’s added with the fact that it still has a decent amount of ports, a great keyboard and trackpad to work on and much more.

This is really a well-thought out laptop and we really do like it. On that note however, it does command quite the premium price so if you’re even looking at getting this, definitely do take that into consideration.

In any case however, we’re really liking what MSI has been doing for their laptops thus far and the latest Creator Z16P is simply adding on to that list. But what about you? What are your thoughts on this laptop, do let us know in the comments down below.

Pssst! There's an ongoing sale for the MSI Creator Z16P here in Singapore right now at S$6,499. If you're seriously considering this very laptop, perhaps now is the best time to grab one!