Returned. MSI support horrible. Graphics card error persisted from day 1, my own research came up with it being a defective card and a known problem with this laptop. Returned and bought a different model from Best Buy, that one has a faulty bearing in the fan and the network adapter keeps going out. Now MSI wants us to send in for repair and are saying it could take up to 30 days. Not a fan of MSI so far.
Smokymotor
5
Comment
I stumbled across this laptop while looking at reviews on various sites via Google . I was surprised by its specs and lightweight design, so I added it to the list of potential purchases. I was prepared to spend over $1500 for something nice and this laptop is definitely worth the money. The screen is beautiful at 144HZ and it seems larger than it is, thanks to the thin bezel. The laptop doesnt look cheap, matte black with copper accents is simple and professional...but the build quality could be better. It feels a little flimsy but I dont plan on carrying it around with me all the time, so its not really an issue for me. The keyboard does feel sturdy though and the back lighting is really customizable as are the graphics, fans, and different profiles (battery/performance/etc.). The battery life seems to be pretty good for everyday tasks and the fans are quiet. Overall it was really nice to find a reasonably priced laptop that allows me to play games on ultra/high settings...that actually looks good and performs well. I think this laptop should definitely be at the top of your list.
jdeha8379
5
Comment
First off- I am in IT, and have very high expectations for laptops. I researched for almost a year before purchasing. I have been shopping on and off for the last year, and when I buy Motherboards or other major components, MSI is always my first choice when shopping. I obviously found this laptop first when I was looking for something light, small, and can handle anything I throw at it, while looking professional when doing it. I didnt want anything bulky or screaming "Gaming Laptop" as I do other things than just gaming like Video Editing, Photo Editing, web design, Virtualization, etc. as my wife calls it, "Nerd Stuffs". I did however look at the Razor, ROG, and the HP Omen, when making my decision to spend ~1600+ on a laptop. I will list Pros and Cons: PROS: The style, light, and overall thinness of this laptop. Its very light (4.65ish pounds), looks very sleek and thin, and when you have it sitting on your desk at work it doesnt look obnoxious like you are just sitting there saying "look at my gaming fancy laptop". The Keyboard is very clicky, and mechanical. It has a great layout and customizing the colors per key is pretty slick. When you hit the "FN" key for hotkeys, the hotkeys light up red and turn off all other key lights making it easy to see where they all are. The screen quality - 144hz 1080p IPS is very bright, crisp and clear. You would be surprised at how smooth window animations and game video actually are. The frame around is very thin and low profile. The POWER! - This laptop plays Mass Effect on the highest settings without even kicking the fans up, (i know its an old game) but it definitely kicks my prior GTX660 in the pants with graphics. Rendering videos is quick as well! I got the 1060 with 6gb memory. Computer boots up in about 5 seconds, cold bootup to desktop. Battery Life - With general working, emails, internet, etc the battery will easily last 5+ hours. I have not tested it gaming, as more than likely I will leave it plugged in when gaming anyways. USB3.1 is very quick pulling files back and forth - Bluetooth works great with my MX Master 2s Mouse. Lots of ports for video, USBC, Full Ethernet, etc. CONS- Honestly nothing major yet, but so far- FINGERPRINT Magnet! It is a nice sleek metal frame, but resting palms on it will definitely leave prints, you can see every place you touched it between wipe-downs. MSI did provide a nice Microfiber Cloth to keep it wiped up. The Stickers............. Seriously..... there is one large spec sticker that came right off, no big deal, but the PC MAG "brag" Sticker ---WOULD NOT COME OFF--- It took me about 15 minutes of carefully picking it off because it left so much residue that I ended up having to use goo gone to get it off, which I REALLY didnt want to do, but it was my only choice. It was totally crooked and I wasnt about to just leave it on. Bloatware - It honestly wasnt THAT bad like other reviewers stated, it does come with 60 days of Nortons latest crapware (first thing I removed) but most of the junk is the Windows 10 standard junk - not MSIs fault really. Laptop Speakers - The speakers are seriously nothing special. They do the job, but lets be real, if you are trying for amazing sound, youre going to be using headphones anyways. The onboard DAC is great with a lot of settings. Hard Drive partition map- The OS is on about 65% of the drive. Then there are 2 partitions from MSI for recovery and tools. I burned the disks and saved images of them to my External, and on my FileServer and dumped those partitions to give me ~97% of the drive. MSI has a program installed to walk you though the process. Overall- I really enjoy this laptop a lot. It was hard biting the bullet and buying, but worth every penny. It slips right in my backpack and can carry it around with me anywhere I go. It was perfect for me, and has yet to disappoint me yet performance wise. MSI definitely means it when they call it a "Stealth Thin" laptop. Some things for people to consider: When buying, think about how much files/games/etc you want to put on it. I bought the 256gb SSD, and definitely wish I got the bigger drive. Its not really a big deal though because I carry a 2tb Western Digital Passport so if I have a big project, I can store it there when I am not working on it; however games are HUGE. I believe Titanfall clocked in 50+ gb. If you already have a standard sized laptop backpack, this will fit it. Mine was bought at Wal-Mart for 40 bucks when I really needed one, and this slips right in. No need to buy anything special if you dont want to. Well, this was long winded, But I really hoped I helped all of you still reading make a great decision to buy this laptop.
Wenhui Huang
1
Comment
I bought this laptop after doing a ton of research on gaming laptops after deciding to replace my asus Im highly disappointed. It came to me with 1 stuck pixel that over the past couple days has turned into 4. It also has bad backlight bleeding. I got this laptop Saturday, its Tuesday now. Sending it for exchange as I seem to have a new stuck pixel each day and its brand new. I will write a better review only if the new one is better *I put something over the keyboard to make sure it wasnt just reflecting the keyboard light.
Kari N Armstrong
1
Comment
I bought this laptop to use at school, so that I could study as well as play games such as Far Cry 5 or Counter Strike. Looks great, works great, is lightweight and portable, and gets the job done. All that for about 5 months. At that point, the main CPU fan will fail, which, according to google, is an issue that plagues about half of these laptops. The laptop will continue working, but the fan will constantly make this rattling sound that isnt drowned out by earbuds, headphones, or even noise cancelling headphones. I live in a dorm on campus, and the people in the adjacent dorms have complained about the noise. So when I say it is loud, I mean LOUD loud. I opened the laptop up in order to tighten the screws, or see what was going on, but MSI doesnt give any indication that this voids the warranty, which seems like a pretty scummy business tactic. I learned this too late, so I had to drop another $150 to order MSIs custom laptop fan that only works for this laptop. I install it, and it works great. Not even 2 weeks later the EXACT same fan fails in the EXACT same way. Same rattling, same noise. So if you want something that will work great for one semester then become a paperweight, buy this. If not, which I suspect would fit the bill of you reading this right now, dont buy this. MSIs customer support is a joke too. I submitted several tickets with little to no effect. The one time I called them, I got told that it was my fault the computer broke in the first place, so, you know, really not too much going on for them at all. Im surprised that theyre allowed to operate in the US at all based on how sketchy their whole business model is. Dont buy this, or anything from MSI.
Declan Brown
4
Comment
SOOOOOO fast....like ...really fast. The specs speak for themselves so I will talk about user experience! Build: Very sleek design, the all-metal chasis is a great aesthetic and feel, although there are some sharp edges. Sound: Surprising quality and clarity, with a comfortable max volume that can easily be heard over ambient noise. Screen: Again the specs tell all, but on a note of personal preference, I love the fact that the screen takes up pretty much the entire foldable half of the laptop with less than a centimeter of bordering chasis. (This could put the LCD at greater risk of being damaged, however) Battery/stamina: Batteries keep getting better these days, and the GS65 is no exception. So far it has exceeded the battery life claimed by the manufacturer, lasting a good 20 minutes longer under heavy use. However, the one and only REAL complaint I have is that the all-metal chasis conducts the heat from the CPU/GPU too well. The poor fan system cant keep up with heavy use and the frame overheats and stays hot, so I may have to rig something to help it shed heat. All around: happy with purchase
Kayley
5
Comment
I had been searching for a portable workhorse for sometime before the MSI P65 (1070 Mx-Q, 500gb) caught my eye. Know that I am a Zbrush sculpture, FX artist, and game developer. I love this machine! I havent done a ton of gaming on it but it has rocked FFXIV and Black Desert like a champion for a couple hours at a time. Pros: - Sleek, professional, and beautiful design. - The multi monitor support works super well. - Thoughtful cooling design- this puppy can handle a LOT before it starts to get -too- hot (90-100C). The flipped motherboard was a great choice. - Dragon Centers "Cooler Boost" technology -nearly- eliminates the need for an external cooling fan (though if you care about your machine at all you will still get a cooling pad at least). - WORK. HORSE. This machine could handle 4k renders in Maya while editing texture maps in Photoshop. In fact, this machine eats Photoshop for breakfast and can run it behind virtually any other program- like Zbrush or Unreal for instance- without eating up too much processing power or RAM. (Naturally, you shouldnt leave RAM munching software running overnight or something. This machine likely wouldnt handle it well) . - Can handle a few-hour long Maya render. It cries a bit, but it can handle it. - The keys feel wonderful. The hotkeys on the keyboard are super helpful and function well. - The display is absolutely magnificent and MSIs "True Color" options really make a huge difference. Its like having a Macs display without having to own a crummy Mac machine. - The mousepad functions are wonderful. (Such as scrolling, zooming, ect... Though I dont use it for working.) - Finger-Print sign-in works great. Cons: - The Speaker sound quality is REALLY bad. However the sound card when using headphones makes up for it. - The battery is nothing to write home about. You will get 2-3 hours of work in tops before needing to charge (maybe 5 if youre just writing or web browsing). - Adding an additional SSD is TERRIFYING. Not impossible, just nerve-wracking (due to the fact that you have to flip the motherboard over to install the SSD without tearing a ribbon or messing something up). If you have never built a computer or disassembled one before, I recommend just buying a version of this machine with a bigger HD or using an external. I added an additional 1TB Samsung Evo to mine. - The casing scratches easy on the outside- be wary. (I earned a couple of small scratches when adding the extra SSD). - Watch your background processes, such as Adobe CC or Autodesk manager. This is still a laptop, not a desktop- and too many background processes tend to heat this badboy up easily and unnecessarily. I recommend having such processes disabled when you arent using them. Thoughts: A good portable work horse, just keep in mind that this thing is a laptop and not a desktop- and therefore cannot stay as cool while running several processes. If you need this computer to last you a few years then keep it cool! Buy a laptop cooler for it to sit on at least (I have been using this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NACVLWM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 for an extra cooler boost. It really works well). Good Luck, and Happy creating!
Drew Phillips
5
Comment
This laptop is absolutely phenomenal! The NVME SSD is super fast as intended, and graphics look amazing, the viewing angles are great, and the body itself is simply beautiful. The fans run quietly except when gaming which is expected. The battery life is pretty good as well. I bought this laptop for college as it will provide adequate battery life for everyday use while also giving the power to game when plugged in during the evening. Couldnt be happier with the product - kudos to MSI.
Masri
1
Comment
Day 2: it works well, beast at gaming. Gets super hot from the bottom (77c at max setting) and my RGB keys aren’t working well. I can’t disable or change colors, it’s just going crazy at this point. Okay: just received this 1 hour ago and opened it. Downloaded chrome on it, it had to restart. Now, I log in and the fans take off like a jet and I get stuck on a black screen... do they test their laptops before selling them? Lol
rzaman
2
Comment
So got this thing because I needed a windows laptop for some unity development and the macbook pro/imac I have wont cut it. First issue, while setting up I got to the fingerprint part of setup and it locked up. No biggie, just restarted and skipped that part and then did it after it booted up the first time and all was well. Get Unity and several other large programs loaded and do all of the updates from windows and now the fingerprint reader stops working. Begin the googling, try installing driver, deleting driver, updating driver, go to MSIs website download that driver and nothing works to get it back to operational. Look in device manager and it just has a exclamation point on it. So I try rolling back windows to previous state before updates, still nothing. Next step, I do a factory reset and choose the quick option. Wait 20 minutes and go through setup but fingerprint reader doesnt work still. It didnt even give me the option to set it up. Next step, do factory reset again but choose the longer (erase all data securely and overwrite it). This take about 1.5 hours, and I go through set up again. Its working...everything begins working. I just dont let windows update and load everything I need on it and create a restore point so I have a working machine. About midnight as Im installing the last item and logging into the last account I notice two things. First, my windows license is not activated, so I click on that and give it a go and it fails. Whatever, I could mess with that later and find the code in the book. Then I notice the final straw...a bunch of dead pixels in the center of the screen about four inches from the left. After all that setup I call it a night and called Amazon today. The got MSI on the phone who offered to have me send it in so they can replace the screen...its less than 24 hours old at this point. I opt to return to amazon instead. I really wanted to like it, but it was a nightmare for me with that particular machine. Maybe I just got a lemon. I gave it two stars because for the price you get a lot...a good graphics card, tons of RAM, decent SSD and its lightweight. The power port location was a bit awkward since it was on the right side in the middle (why?). Also the USBs werent in a very intuitive position. All these little things kept this from being a great laptop and the issues I personally had made this a complete waste of time.