It is a challenge to prepare a material meeting two conflicting criteria absorbing hydrogen strongly enough to reach a stable thermodynamic state and desorbing hydrogen at moderate temperature with a fast reaction rate. With the guide of the Mg-La-Ni phase diagram, microwave sintering (MS) was successfully applied to preparing Mg-La-Ni ternary hydrogen storage alloys from the powder mixture of Mg, La and Ni. Their phase structures, morphologies and hydrogen absorption and desorption (A/D) properties have been studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), pressure-composition-isotherm (PCI) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The metal hydride of 70 Mg-9.72 La-20.28 Ni (wt pct) has the best comprehensive hydriding and dehydriding (HID) properties, which can absorb 4.1 wt.% H-2 in 600 s and desorb 3.9 wt.% H-2 in 1500 s at 573 K. The DSC results reveal its onset temperatures of hydrogen A/D are the lowest among all the samples, which are 671.4 and 600.9 K. Its activation energy of dehydriding reaction is 113.5 kJ/mol H-2, which is the smallest among all the samples. Also, Chou model was used to analyze the reaction kinetic mechanism. Copyright (C) 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.