The MSI Prestige 13Evo has all the characteristics of a top ultra-portable work laptop. It's compact, and lightweight, with excellent battery life. Performance is good enough for productivity apps, and you'll get a host of security and privacy features. It also comes with plenty of connectors — no dongle required.

Weighing just 990g, the 13-inch MSI Prestige 13Evo is truly portable. It's ultra-thin with a compact footprint. But it also has the battery stamina to match its portability. MSI managed to fit a decent-sized 75 watt-hour battery in this sleek magnesium-aluminium alloy chassis. Unsurprisingly, the Prestige impressed in our usual video-loop test, clocking just over 9 hours of uptime with the display at maximum brightness. That's a fair bit better than the similarly-anorexic LG gram Style 16, though the LG does have a larger 16-inch screen. The screen itself is matte with good viewing angles, and a productivity-oriented 16:10 aspect ratio. I also like the Prestige's hinge — I could open the lid with one hand. And it also opens up to 180 degrees.

Any business laptop worth its salt will have integrated biometrics such as a fingerprint reader or facial recognition. The MSI Prestige 13Evo offers both options. Personally, I prefer facial recognition via the infrared webcam, which is fast, and has a physical privacy shutter. But this 1080p camera isn't the best for video calls, as videos appear quite noisy. The webcam also works with the preloaded Tobii Aware app, which tracks the user's presence and attention for security, privacy, digital wellbeing, and even power optimisation. For instance, the app blurs the screen to deter onlookers if the webcam notices that the user isn't looking at the display. Or dimming the screen if the user isn't in front of the laptop. You get the idea. It works as advertised, but the webcam is always turned on. I was constantly reminded of that by its blinking white light.

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The keys are on the smaller side — the directional keys are thin slivers — though the keyboard compensates somewhat with surprisingly good key travel. The touchpad is comfortably large. The ports, too, are spot-on despite the sleek form factor. The Prestige comes with two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB-A port, HDMI, microSD card reader, and a headphone jack. While you can charge the laptop via the Thunderbolt 4 ports, it also has a barrel plug connector for the included power brick. Performance is typical for a laptop with its 13th-gen Intel Core i7 chip and 16GB of memory. It scored 5,481 in PCMark 10, similar to the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon, which has identical specs. Note that the bottom of the MSI became fairly warm during our benchmarking, probably because it's just a wafer-thin layer of metal between the toasty notebook innards and your lap.

Overall, the MSI Prestige 13Evo is an excellent choice for road warriors who need a lightweight laptop with superb battery stamina. Its dual biometric options, along with its Tobii Aware security and privacy features help to bolster its credentials as a business and work machine. Not having to pack a dongle is also a plus point. The webcam, though, could be improved. At S$2,199, the MSI is also competitively priced for a premium ultra-portable laptop. For example, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon is around S$2,000, while the similarly portable Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED is S$2,399. It's available now from Lazada and Shopee.

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Note: Review unit provided by MSI.