MSI has joined the Coffee Lake laptop birthday celebration with a state-of-the-art gaming laptop designed to take on the likes of the Razer Blade, Gigabyte Aero 15X, and Asus ROG Zephyrus. This laptop’s arrival has been hotly anticipated as it brings new inner hardware along side a full refresh of MSI's gaming line construct and layout.

The MSI GS65 Stealth Thin is the successor to the corporation's preceding slender gaming computer, the GS63, which we’ve looked at previously. The GS63 layout was in use for more than one generations and now it's been upgraded in many areas. It nonetheless uses a 15.6-inch 1080p show, but we’re now looking at slimmer bezels and an improve to a 144Hz refresh charge.

Hardware-wise you get usual high-quit laptop internals for 2018. The CPU is Intel’s Core i7-8750H that we’ve tested previously, and the GPU is the GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q. There’s additionally 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD in my evaluate unit, even though that mixture can range depending on the region and what you want.

MSI simply wasn’t happy with Gigabyte claiming all of the accolades for its narrow bezel gaming laptop, the Aero 15X, so that they too have taken the slender bezel approach here. The GS65’s bezels aren’t pretty as slender as we see with the Aero 15X, but they are a good deal slimmer than on the GS63, and crucially MSI has performed this without giving us a nostril-imaginative and prescient webcam. As you could see the pinnacle bezel is slightly thicker than the sides, and in there MSI has controlled to healthy in a webcam.

With slimmer bezels comes a smaller pc, and comparing dimensions well-knownshows the GS65 to have a slightly smaller footprint than its predecessor. About 22mm has been shaved off the width with a similar depth, all even as preserving the identical 17.9mm thickness. These aren’t big discounts but each bit allows and continues the pc as portable as viable. Plus it’s still fairly light at just 4.1 lbs (1.88kg).

I always appreciated the GS63 layout but this new GS65 Stealth Thin is really a category above. It’s by some distance the quality searching MSI pc ever, with an terrific metal shell and diffused yet attractive gold highlights around the lid, trackpad, vents and extra. Almost each region of this slim chassis has been delicate; it now exudes top class quality. Small touches like simplifying the brand on the lid and getting rid of different ‘gamer’ factors have worked wonders, and if you put off the stressful stickers under the keyboard, the minimalist design only will become greater astounding.

The key element with this GS65 layout is despite opting for a brilliant metal chassis, MSI hasn’t compromised the cooling solution. There are nonetheless a ton of vents in this gadget, along with the perimeters, rear, top and bottom. We’ve seen with laptops like the Razer Blade that a metal layout is right but it can limit the cooler quite notably, but this doesn’t seem like the case with the GS65.

Despite a sizeable amount of aspect area going to cooling vents, there are lots of ports on this laptop. Three USB three.zero Type-A ports, Thunderbolt three USB-C, Ethernet, HDMI 2.0, Mini-DisplayPort and two audio jacks. Unfortunately there’s no SD card slot, which would have been handy for professionals, however I am happy MSI moved the placement of the power button back to a more practical place above the keyboard.

Speaking of the keyboard, MSI has used their widespread SteelSeries layout with in keeping with-key RGB LED backlighting. Notably, there’s no numpad at the GS65, which I tend to assume should include a 15-inch pc. The Aero 15X, for instance, does manipulate to cram a numpad right into a similar chassis. Not a big deal for game enthusiasts though, it’s often a nitpick.

The travel distance from this keyboard is alternatively unimpressive. MSI has opted for an ultrabook-style switch with a shallow, rubbery response. I choose a more clicky design and I understand it’s possible with a laptop keyboard, however the restrained about of space MSI has allocated to the intensity of those switches has no question limited this keyboard’s performance. On the other hand, the trackpad may be very responsive and an development on the vintage ELAN days, although more often than not you’ll need to use a right mouse for gaming.

Removing the lowest panel of the GS65 exhibits… a flipped motherboard, unfortunately. While you can see the battery and cooling components to a small extent, any get admission to to the RAM and m.2 slots within reason hard as you have to put off the complete motherboard and cooling meeting first. There are numerous small, fragile connectors along the way, so it’s not some thing I’d propose for the casual person. However in case you do cross down that path, you may find a spare m.2 slot and a spare DIMM slot.

Interestingly, MSI has used a triple-fan cooling layout, with a unmarried cooler on the left for the CPU, and a twin fan cooler for the GPU at the proper. The extra fan for the GPU is a bit precise, though the heatsink design isn’t some thing normal and affords a good amount of finned vicinity. Certainly plenty greater than the Aero 15X.

Before heading into performance I did need to touch at the display. As I stated earlier it’s a 1080p 144Hz display, and at the same time as it doesn’t include G-Sync, I do admire the excessive refresh fee; I desire this will become fashionable in gaming laptops.

Like with the bezel size, it’s clear that MSI are focused on the Aero 15X with this display’s calibration. While no longer X-Rite Pantone licensed, the GS65’s show is a great deal more accurate than any MSI laptop I’ve reviewed inside the beyond. It’s no longer perfect, but a median CCT of 6804K is decent, to go together with common deltaEs of 2.2 in greyscale, 2.22 in saturation and a pair of.73 in ColorChecker. For the pleasant results these figures must be beneath 2.0 at the least, however considering beyond efforts this is a respectable development.

Unfortunately, possibly because of tighter calibration, brightness and evaluation are unimpressive. Reaching simply 248 nits of top brightness isn't first rate, and neither is a sub one thousand:1 contrast ratio. Both of those regions are handily overwhelmed by way of the Aero 15X which packs a similar show and rather superior calibration.