When it comes to a gaming laptop, there are just a few good choices at the moment, including the ones from Asus, MSI, Alienware and Razer. Earlier this year, I reviewed the ASUS ROG G751JY-DH72X and it’s undoubtedly among the most powerful portable gaming rigs in 2015. However, it still has a few catches and those are why I am not using the Asus ROG at the moment.
In the last few weeks, I’ve been testing another gaming laptop, that is the MSI GS60 GHOST PRO-064. Let’s check it out.
Unboxing Video
Design
Inside the box, you can find the laptop, a protective sleeve, an AC/DC adapter, AC power cord and user manuals.
The MSI GS60 GHOST PRO-064 is probably the most good-looking gaming laptop ever. While most other rigs have a plastic body, the MSI features brushed black aluminum on the lid and keyboard cover. You can see some plastic on screen bezel and on the bottom but it won’t ruin the sleek design anyway. I see many people complain about the brushed aluminum surfaces because they can easily attract oily fingerprints. That’s true but you can easily clean the surfaces by using a microfiber cloth and Windex cleaner.
On top of the lid, there are MSI logo and the Dragon badge of the Gaming G Series. The badge will light up when you turn on the laptop.
On the right side, there are a USB 3.0 port with SuperCharger, an SD card reader, an HDMI port, a Mini-DisplayPort, an RJ-45 connector and a battery reset hole.
The left side locates a Kensington Lock hole, a power connector, two USB 3.0 ports, a Mic in and a headphone jack.
I love that MSI managed to build a full-sized keyboard on the portable laptop. Moreover, the keyboard has an awesome full color backlit LED lighting and it can be customized in the SteelSeries app. It is so enjoyable playing games in darkness as you can see the beautiful and colorful lighting of the keyboard.
Overall, I love the design and build quality of the MSI laptop. It is thin, solidly built and surprisingly lightweight.
Display & Audio
The MSI GS60 features a 15.6-inch Full HD eDP anti-glare screen. Although it doesn’t look as sleek as the MacBook Pro’s screen, I find the matte display much clearer and brighter under bright sunlight. It won’t affect visibility as much as the glossy screen. The screen has full-HD resolution only but the laptop supports external 4K display via HDMI.
Besides, you can a wide bar of speakers from Dynaudio above the keyboard section. The system is said to deliver a surround sound theatre experience with 4.1 channel speakers (the subwoofer is located on the bottom). In my test, this is obviously not the theatre experience but it is much better than the speakers on MacBook and Asus ROG laptops. I can hear a louder, warmer and clearer sound from the high-quality Dynaudio speakers.
Performance
The MSI laptop has a great performance running on Windows 8.1. In the last month, I’ve never seen it freeze or not respond to my actions. Everything runs smoothly just like I expected from the powerful machine. A cold boot to the login screen can be completed within 8 seconds.
The MSI uses the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M graphics card, it is not as powerful as the GTX 980M on my previous Asus ROG but it still performs really well. I played some heavy games like Saints Row, Assassin’s Creed Unity or Far Cry and it managed to deliver a smooth gameplay with frame rate of 40 to 60 FPS. You can check out the video below for more details.
Besides, I’m also impressed with its Dual Fan Thermal Cooling system. Inside the Dragon Gaming Center app, I set the system’s power management at Comfort mode. The mode provides enough power to play games and it won’t burn my GPU at the same time. The laptop is just slightly warm after hours of operating.
Battery Life
The 6-cell battery on the MSI could last just over 2 hours for normal use. Basically, I can check out some news, Facebook feed and watch some Youtube videos for 2 hours. And if I play games without plugging in the charger, the battery will die within 1 hour.
Conclusion
Pros
- Sleek design and good build quality
- Impressive performance
- Anti-glare screen
- Beautiful keyboard
Cons
- Average battery life.
- The screen hinge is not really stable.
The MSI GS60 Ghost Pro-64 is on sale on Amazon for less than $1,900. I highly recommend this laptop as it is a perfect combination of quality and price.
