MSI GS75 Stealth Review: A miniature gaming monster

I've never been a fan of gaming laptops.

To me, a laptop needs to be portable — small enough to slide into a backpack and light enough that I don't discover it's in that location. Further, I like simple-looking machines. I'd take the design of a MacBook over whatever laptop with garish lighting and other contemporary features. And of course, the within has to exist packed with powerful components and long battery life.

Gaming laptops nigh always deliver on the performance part, but they neglect in every other regard.

Worse, gaming laptops come up at a premium price tag. It never fabricated sense to me — why pay more for a PC that volition have junior performance due to stricter thermal throttling and 'portable' components designed for laptops that don't piece of work as well as their desktop equivalents?

However, MSI wants to modify that with its new GS75 Stealth laptop, and I accept to say, I am impressed. The Taiwanese technology company went and did it. It fabricated a well-designed gaming laptop with excellent performance. Unfortunately, the GS75 isn't perfect, and information technology still costs a lot.

The best-looking gaming laptop I've ever seen

From the moment I first cracked open shipping packaging, this laptop impressed me. Everything about the pattern of the GS75 Stealth, from the box to the figurer itself, was thoughtful and intelligent.

This is non your run-of-the-mill gaming machine, bedazzled in bright colours and exuberant LED arrays.

Instead, you get an all-aluminum body anodized black with gold-coloured accents on the hinge, effectually the logo and even in the fan port on the side of the automobile. It looks abrupt, and I'd have no problem opening it in a meeting with my boss.

That said, the GS75 isn't a lightweight reckoner by any means. It weighs in at about 5lbs (two.25kg) and is rather large at 26cm x 39.6cm ten 1.9cm. I could barely fit it in my backpack, and one time I got it in, there wasn't much room for annihilation else.

One other consequence with the weight was that the laptop seemed to struggle with its mass. If I picked it up with one manus in the center, I could see the chassis angle slightly nether strain — not ideal in any estimator, merely especially not in ane with parts equally expensive every bit those within the GS75.

The power brick that comes with it is monstrous equally well. When all packed up, this matter is a dorsum-billow, merely hardly the worst offender when it comes to gaming laptops.

The Sealth sports a 17.3-inch, 1920 10 1080 pixel resolution display with a 144hz refresh charge per unit and narrow bezels on three out of the iv sides. The lesser bezel is thicker because of the hinges — adequate, save for MSI'south determined merits that the Stealth has 4-side thin bezels. Colours are practiced, simply non slap-up, making the display more than than usable. It also gets incredibly bright.

Abandon the keyboard, and y'all'll be happier

Below the display is the keyboard, which features RGB backlighting and a distinctly 'gamer' font that looks terrible. Backlighting is always welcome, and color options are a bonus.

MSI did this right and added thoughtful features like when the user holds down the function fundamental, just the requisite keys, like the volume controls, lite upward. This makes it piece of cake to spot keyboard shortcuts. The laptop besides comes loaded with software to control the RGB backlighting with a variety of preset or custom-made patterns, but when trying it out, I managed to turn off the backlighting entirely and was never able to turn information technology back on. The experience was somewhat indicative of the unabridged software package, but more on that later.

MSI notes the keyboard is a gaming keyboard from SteelSeries and it does feel nice. Keys clicked nicely and had excellent travel for a laptop keyboard, plus information technology had a number pad. I would have used it without complaint salvage for two glaring issues.

The first was the positioning of the keyboard. MSI followed a popular — and in my stance, infuriating — tendency with gaming laptops, and bumped the keyboard most three inches abroad from the hinge and towards the middle of the device to make infinite for fans and the cooling system. Most laptops accept the keyboard about a half-inch from the hinge.

As someone who types a lot, the keyboard placement apace became unbearable. It felt incorrect when typing at a table or desk, and using the Stealth on my lap felt off-balance because I had to slide the computer farther back than usual to blazon.

The second issue was the trackpad. Because of the keyboard placement, the trackpad was squished awkwardly down towards the bottom of the motorcar. It was quite brusque, and MSI tried to alleviate that by making the trackpad wider. It was a expert effort, simply ultimately it fabricated things worse, as the wider trackpad got in the way of my palms when typing.

It's a shame, really, as both the keyboard and the trackpad were excellent. Had they been placed normally, there wouldn't have been an upshot.

Of course, this is a problem easily avoided — simply connect a keyboard and mouse. Unfortunately, that goes against having a portable reckoner in the start identify.

Information technology's what's on the inside that really matters

Of form, the within of the GS75 is every bit important, if not more pregnant, than the looks on the exterior.

Specs:

- - Display: 17.3-inch 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution FHD brandish at 144Hz refresh rate
  - Processor: 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8750H at two.2GHz
  - Memory: up to 32GB of RAM
  - Storage: 256GB, 512GB included, with three total M.2 SSD slots
  - Dimensions: 26cm x 39.6cm x one.9cm
  - Weight: 2.25kg
  - Camera: Hd web photographic camera, 30FPS at 720p
  - Bone: Windows 10 Home or Windows ten Professional
  - Battery: 82Whrs, iv cells lithium polymer battery
  - Connectivity: Wi-Fi: 802.11ac, Bluetooth: BT V5
  - Ports: 1x USB Type-C Thunderbolt, 1x USB Type-C, 3x USB Type A, 1x Ethernet, 1x HDMI (4K @ 60Hz) 1x micro SD
  - Graphics: Nvidia Geforce RTX 2060 with 6GB VRAM, RTX 2070 Max-Q with 8GB VRAM or RTX 2080 Max-q with 8GB VRAM

It'due south worth noting that my version of the GS75 has an RTX 2070, the i7-8750H, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

Do all those numbers add upward?

That's a lot of numbers, but practically, what do they mean? Well, this thing is a beast. I ran it through a few benchmarks to measure CPU and GPU performance, then used information technology to play the almost graphically intense game I have in my library, Battlefield V (BFV).

Benchmarks first; the GS75 put out some solid numbers. I kicked things off with Cinebench R15 to exam the CPU. I ran both the multi-thread and single-thread tests, as many existent-world workloads yet just use unmarried-threads.

My review unit of measurement accomplished a Cinebench score of one,104 for multi-thread and 168 for unmarried-thread, putting information technology correct in line with competing laptops running 8th Gen Intel CPUs.

As for the GPU, I ran the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark. The RTX 2070 inside the GS75 ran excellently, nabbing a score of 2,159 with an average FPS of 85.7, a minimum FPS of 30.2 and a maximum of 178 FPS in the Ultra quality Directly Ten xi test at 1080p. Plus, it did and then without cracking 70°C.

While those stats certainly speak to the power of the GS75 and it's components, they don't tell the whole story — benchmarks seldom do.

With that in listen, I went for a quick romp in BFV to see how everything held upwards. With the graphics locked to the Ultra setting, the Stealth claimed a solid average of 70 to 80 FPS. It did spike up as high as 100 FPS when the action slowed downwards, and there were a few moments of stuttering down to 50 FPS, only overall it ran excellently.

The simply real issue was that the fans ramped up to go along things absurd, and while successful, they were so loud I couldn't hear the game through the laptop's less-than-stellar speakers.

I also relied on the GS75 equally my piece of work laptop for a few weeks during the review and operation was consistently good. My typical workday involves running tens of browser tabs and Photoshop all while streaming music and the Stealth never broke a sweat.

Preloaded software is a miserable experience

Windows laptops have had one ongoing issue for some time: preloaded bloatware. It's a prevalent problem, one that fifty-fifty affects Microsoft'southward own Surface line.

Information technology's something I could forgive if information technology wasn't so pervasive and abrasive. MSI, unfortunately, is one of the worst offenders here. The GS75 comes loaded with software and programs, many with practiced intentions, but they lead to a confusing and poor experience for me.

The main issue was that MSI engaged in a diversity of partnerships to assemble components of the laptop, and virtually every function had some form of controller app. For some, that's a proficient thing. These apps offer lots of customization options to creepo out the all-time performance. For almost, they'll be a nuisance.

When I first booted up the GS75, I began my routine, first-start maintenance: uninstalling all the bloat. Withal, it'southward hard to tell what's important and what's not. For case, one of the apps I contemplated deleting was simply labelled 'Killer.' However, I after learned it was really the command panel for tweaking the Wi-Fi and Ethernet hardware for optimal network performance.

I never used information technology during my review, relieve opening it once to see what it did. Outside of providing some network monitoring services, the only discernable characteristic was that it turned on 'Gamefast,' although the app didn't explain what that really means. Worse, Googling the app provided no consensus on what Killer did or whether it was benign. The simply helpful information I found on it was that leaving it or removing information technology could both cause headaches for the user.

Killer wasn't the only poor software on the laptop. I already mentioned the issues with the RGB lighting controls, merely MSI'south own 'DragonCenter' app for tweaking performance and ability-saving options wasn't great either. The first time I launched it, a iii-dimensional, Clippy-like dragon character appeared and asked me questions most how I used my calculator so information technology could adapt my settings accordingly. When I finished answering, it vanished without making any noticeable alter. Further, I establish I never had to brand tweaks using the software as things ran well from the start.

I'm certain some enthusiasts out there could find uses for these software extras. Beyond pinging me with update notifications every time I turned the laptop on, they didn't practice much for me.