Msi GS66 Review
okay so this is my review of the msi gs70 rings ample this guy for like what fell like two months but they told me to hold off on the review of it because they wanted to send a retail unit before I did any kind of performance evaluation on it so and I'm glad he did because there were some notable differences between that engineering sample and this thing so this is redesigned and revamped for this year it's completely new externally internally the whole thing is quite different the first thing that you'll notice is the color and kind of design of it this is it's all black is that picking up yeah okay yeah you can see it um last year's model and the year before at the g65 it had a gold trim around the edges which made it look different from everyone else's stuff but it didn't really live up to the whole stealth moniker because these devices are called GS 65 south and GS 66 stealth so this is a much more stealthy er look to it it's like all black matte black on the top I know on the inside now even the logo up on the front you'll see is like you can barely see it you got a there right you got to tilt it just just right for it to be visible so it's cool it's kind of muted now I much prefer this look the ports have also changed a little bit it's got two you species one of them supporting thumb both three three USB a s and Ethernet jack and the AC adapter still mounted on the side of the device so that can sometimes get in the way in terms of build quality this is a topic where I feel like I have to go a little bit more in depth when I did my original review of the GS 65 that was two years ago that was a device that was relatively unique right at the time a lot of companies out there were still making those big thick boy gaming laptops and the GS 65 was was new it was unique and was one of the early thin and light gaming devices out there and they did a really good job at the time for what that thing delivered nowadays there are a lot of good thin and light gaming laptops out there so the the bar has been raised in terms of quality and expectations for what a device like this should deliver to the consumer and this year I would say the GS 66 is good but not great so let's talk about build first it feels solid there's nothing I would complain in terms of its structural strength
like if you press on anywhere on the chassis it feels sturdier this year than the original G is 65 and the hinge on the laptop looks like it's been updated this looks to be like a better design but the finish of this device is a little lackluster so as an example on the front edge of this laptop there is a plastic trim that's kind of on the the bevel of the front edge and they put it there I'm assuming for comfort right so when you're typing or gaming your wrist is not sitting on like a hard or sharp metal edge but the fit and finish of this plastic trim isn't great the sides of it jut out a little so you can scratch yourself when you're using the device and the bottom panel doesn't feel finished like there's sharper edges along all of the bottom trim and it just feels less polished than out expect a device like this to be not to say that it's poorly made like not at all it's just that in comparison to what other companies are bringing in this kind of price range in that premium thin and light gaming laptop range this doesn't stick out as being like the best built device and I think a lot of it comes from the fact that it's still not a unibody design right this is still taking aluminum and folding the stuff to build the chassis the keyboard for the most part remains quite similar there's a little more travel on the keys and there's a few tweaks here and there like the bottom right function key has a control key attached to it now the mechanism is a little soft like I wouldn't call it spongy but it's not like a super snappy response the trackpad is big it's like a wide trackpad they had this last year on the GS 65 and it's got a glass surface it's a solid trackpad there's also two speaker cutouts like on the left and right of the keyboard deck and we'll get into it but there's actually speakers that are double-sided like there's speakers that project up and down at the same time so the best part of this laptop like the thing that I love the most about it is without a doubt the screen I've talked about this in a previous video where I just talked about how good the screen was it's a fantastic screen so it's a 300 Hertz refresh rate but the response time is close to three milliseconds and it's fast like it feels noticeably faster than most gaming laptop screens it's bright and has pretty good color accuracy I really like the screen I think this is its best feature and if I could just take this panel whatever they have driving it and just stuff it into any gaming laptop I would this would be my panel of choice for any gaming laptop this year the webcams up top and it supports Windows hello so you can login with just your face biometrics the other big changes on this device are on the inside so last year and the year before that they had a flipped motherboard so if you want to upgrade anything or replace anything because it was broken it was it was a nightmare it was really difficult this is this is a regular laptop you open it up and you have access to everything your to RAM slots your to SSDs your a Wi-Fi card you can repair and replace to your heart's content there's a big battery down here it's 99.9 watt hours it's literally the biggest I've seen in a laptop anything bigger than this and you'd be a criminal getting onto a plane but they added that like extra 0.9 to just maybe it was a bit of a you know like a spec war with other brands but it's it's the biggest and I'm getting around 7 hours of battery life the AC adapters 230 watts so it's a little bit bigger than the previous generations the speakers remember I was talking about those earlier there on the side beside the battery and a project out through those little cutouts on the keyboard deck as well as down below here they sound disappointingly mediocre I thought they would just I mean they sound better than the Gio 65 but they still sound like your standard gaming laptop speakers like what is with gaming laptops like why are you spending the energy and effort and all the resources to make a double-sided speaker why don't just get can't you just put like a regular good single sided speaker into these things come on alright the fans up top have been upgraded they're supposedly thinner fans but they move more air than the previous generation and the thermal performance is quite good it's not perfect like when you benchmark it hard you are going to hit some thermal limits I would say it's similar if not slightly better than the 2019 Gio 65 which was better than the 2018 model it doesn't support under volting again this is another tenth gen Intel chip that I've noticed doesn't support under volting some of the comments in my previous video were saying that it might be a precautionary thing from Intel in response to plunder volt but if that's actually the case and we don't have access to under volts in these 10th gen gaming laptop CPUs it's kind of weird like if you think about these thin devices that's a really nice tool to have to build to drop that voltage to lower temperatures a little bit if they remove that if that's actually gone permanently from any of the 10th gens that's gonna be that's gonna be tough right because I feel like a lot of the enthusiasts out there really like that ability to lower voltage but that's what we have here a pretty good thermal system that can probably be improved through reap acing it but not through under volting the gaming performance is quite good that 10th gen cpu combined with that RTX super max Q GPU push out some really nice frame rates combine that with the 300 Hertz three millisecond screen and you get one of the best gaming experiences you can possibly achieve on a laptop right now it is a really fast machine I will say though that in this day and age like you just can't get 300 frames per second on almost any game the one game I would say is like Counter Strike if you still play that but if you're if you're purchasing this laptop don't buy it for the refresh rate on the screen you can get it for the response time like the three millisecond response time is fantastic but you have to be playing some weird games be able to hit 300 frames per second or some regular games with just absolutely awful graphics now I want to close off this video with the conversation about the price this is a premium thin and lights gaming laptop so the pricing on this is always going to be expensive now two years ago when they came out with the GS 65 like the predecessor to this I feel if the price of that was expensive but fair like because no one else was making thin and light gaming laptops nowadays this is not as rare this is a formula that a lot of companies have adopted and a lot of companies are doing well so to see this thing priced at $1600 isn't too bad it's just that other companies have caught up so we're seeing brands now deliver something similar with better build quality and slightly better pricing but overall really good device especially for gamers that are looking for that competitive edge with that three millisecond screen it does make a difference for people that are looking for something that's super fast
like if you press on anywhere on the chassis it feels sturdier this year than the original G is 65 and the hinge on the laptop looks like it's been updated this looks to be like a better design but the finish of this device is a little lackluster so as an example on the front edge of this laptop there is a plastic trim that's kind of on the the bevel of the front edge and they put it there I'm assuming for comfort right so when you're typing or gaming your wrist is not sitting on like a hard or sharp metal edge but the fit and finish of this plastic trim isn't great the sides of it jut out a little so you can scratch yourself when you're using the device and the bottom panel doesn't feel finished like there's sharper edges along all of the bottom trim and it just feels less polished than out expect a device like this to be not to say that it's poorly made like not at all it's just that in comparison to what other companies are bringing in this kind of price range in that premium thin and light gaming laptop range this doesn't stick out as being like the best built device and I think a lot of it comes from the fact that it's still not a unibody design right this is still taking aluminum and folding the stuff to build the chassis the keyboard for the most part remains quite similar there's a little more travel on the keys and there's a few tweaks here and there like the bottom right function key has a control key attached to it now the mechanism is a little soft like I wouldn't call it spongy but it's not like a super snappy response the trackpad is big it's like a wide trackpad they had this last year on the GS 65 and it's got a glass surface it's a solid trackpad there's also two speaker cutouts like on the left and right of the keyboard deck and we'll get into it but there's actually speakers that are double-sided like there's speakers that project up and down at the same time so the best part of this laptop like the thing that I love the most about it is without a doubt the screen I've talked about this in a previous video where I just talked about how good the screen was it's a fantastic screen so it's a 300 Hertz refresh rate but the response time is close to three milliseconds and it's fast like it feels noticeably faster than most gaming laptop screens it's bright and has pretty good color accuracy I really like the screen I think this is its best feature and if I could just take this panel whatever they have driving it and just stuff it into any gaming laptop I would this would be my panel of choice for any gaming laptop this year the webcams up top and it supports Windows hello so you can login with just your face biometrics the other big changes on this device are on the inside so last year and the year before that they had a flipped motherboard so if you want to upgrade anything or replace anything because it was broken it was it was a nightmare it was really difficult this is this is a regular laptop you open it up and you have access to everything your to RAM slots your to SSDs your a Wi-Fi card you can repair and replace to your heart's content there's a big battery down here it's 99.9 watt hours it's literally the biggest I've seen in a laptop anything bigger than this and you'd be a criminal getting onto a plane but they added that like extra 0.9 to just maybe it was a bit of a you know like a spec war with other brands but it's it's the biggest and I'm getting around 7 hours of battery life the AC adapters 230 watts so it's a little bit bigger than the previous generations the speakers remember I was talking about those earlier there on the side beside the battery and a project out through those little cutouts on the keyboard deck as well as down below here they sound disappointingly mediocre I thought they would just I mean they sound better than the Gio 65 but they still sound like your standard gaming laptop speakers like what is with gaming laptops like why are you spending the energy and effort and all the resources to make a double-sided speaker why don't just get can't you just put like a regular good single sided speaker into these things come on alright the fans up top have been upgraded they're supposedly thinner fans but they move more air than the previous generation and the thermal performance is quite good it's not perfect like when you benchmark it hard you are going to hit some thermal limits I would say it's similar if not slightly better than the 2019 Gio 65 which was better than the 2018 model it doesn't support under volting again this is another tenth gen Intel chip that I've noticed doesn't support under volting some of the comments in my previous video were saying that it might be a precautionary thing from Intel in response to plunder volt but if that's actually the case and we don't have access to under volts in these 10th gen gaming laptop CPUs it's kind of weird like if you think about these thin devices that's a really nice tool to have to build to drop that voltage to lower temperatures a little bit if they remove that if that's actually gone permanently from any of the 10th gens that's gonna be that's gonna be tough right because I feel like a lot of the enthusiasts out there really like that ability to lower voltage but that's what we have here a pretty good thermal system that can probably be improved through reap acing it but not through under volting the gaming performance is quite good that 10th gen cpu combined with that RTX super max Q GPU push out some really nice frame rates combine that with the 300 Hertz three millisecond screen and you get one of the best gaming experiences you can possibly achieve on a laptop right now it is a really fast machine I will say though that in this day and age like you just can't get 300 frames per second on almost any game the one game I would say is like Counter Strike if you still play that but if you're if you're purchasing this laptop don't buy it for the refresh rate on the screen you can get it for the response time like the three millisecond response time is fantastic but you have to be playing some weird games be able to hit 300 frames per second or some regular games with just absolutely awful graphics now I want to close off this video with the conversation about the price this is a premium thin and lights gaming laptop so the pricing on this is always going to be expensive now two years ago when they came out with the GS 65 like the predecessor to this I feel if the price of that was expensive but fair like because no one else was making thin and light gaming laptops nowadays this is not as rare this is a formula that a lot of companies have adopted and a lot of companies are doing well so to see this thing priced at $1600 isn't too bad it's just that other companies have caught up so we're seeing brands now deliver something similar with better build quality and slightly better pricing but overall really good device especially for gamers that are looking for that competitive edge with that three millisecond screen it does make a difference for people that are looking for something that's super fast
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