there are really only two kinds of gaming laptops that I get personally
excited about the massive power hungry
mind-blowingly fast superar class ones
like this dual GTX 1080 monster from Sager that I reviewed recently and the
lightweight thin but still potent class
that seems to have emerged as a direct response to the original razor blade
back in 2013 and this one is part of the
ladder family meet the MS I gs63
VR freshbooks is the super simple invoicing solution that lets you get
organized save time and get paid faster
click now at the link in the video description to try it for
free okay specification time the gs63 VR
as MSI not so subtly implied right in
the name name Rock a VR ready Enthusiast grade configuration including an Intel
Core i7 6700hq quad core processor 16
gigs of ddr4 memory a 128 gig NVMe SSD
and a GeForce GTX 1060 with 6 gigs of
gddr5 vram and as expected they crammed
all of this into the same chassis as the gs63 vr's
gtx970m equipped predecessor that means
a 1080p 60 HZ IPS display whose deep
black levels look good but fail to help it stand out from the crowd with any wow
features like touch higher refresh rates or g-sync a large speaker grill with a
bottom mounted subwoofer that both sound decidedly okay and a 720p 30fps webcam
that falls squarely in an exceptional
territory let's talk iio now and I'll be making a lot of comparisons here to my
daily driver Razer Blade the gs63 VR has
a bigger screen so it's both larger
though not as much as you might think thanks to its smaller bezels and thicker
than the razor blade but while this
slightly greater Z height means that MSI can't take sexy pictures of it next to
dimes it does allow it to have a built-in Ethernet port that's one less
accessory to buy and carry around to go along with its otherwise also fairly
complete load out including standalone hemic 2 powered headphone and microphone
jacks three USB 3 5 GB ports an SD card
reader and killer gbit Ethernet on the left with a power button USB 2 weird
right USB type-c Thunderbolt HDMI 2.0
and mini DisplayPort 1.2 on the right
which I guess leads to my first complaint I get that MSI is dedicating
pretty much the entire back third of this notebook to cooling vents but the
effect that this has on mousing space is not a desirable one the power brick
thankfully terminates in a right angle connector but if you were to plug in oh
I don't know an external Thunderbolt drive or an external monitor of some
sort expecting to use the included keyboard you'd likely find yourself
pretty annoyed by how much room you have for your mouse which leads then to
complaint number two the gs63 vr's power
brick delivers 10% more power than Razor's brick while being way bigger
this isn't important on massive gaming Beasts where I generally don't even
mention them unless they come with two or something like that but it's the kind
of thing for a machine that you expect to carry around every day maybe in a
briefcase that actually matters because
the must carry accessories are part of the whole package and since I'm on a bit
of a complaint rooll here let's talk bloat wear why is windzip on here Norton
really and what the hell is m Magics
there was so much junk preloaded on this thing that I had no idea to whom my
super angry letter about the 100% CPU
usage reporting bug should be addressed I thought maybe the culprit was the
killer networking Suite but removing that didn't help the Windows 10
anniversary update didn't help and even after a factory reset the behavior
persisted so I emailed the manufacturer turns out it is a feature of dragon
Suite that fools Windows intentionally to keep it from entering a lower power
state to speed up data transfers over SATA m.2 and USB IO that should be
disabled by default and come with a warning when you turn it on because I
spent about an hour tearing my hair out trying to fix it anyway though the good
news is that was a simple software toggle and the rest of that stuff can be
fixed with a good oldfashioned ad remove programs Purge so I'm going to get back
into the hardware now the keyboard is RGB with three lighting zones and and
steel series engine software to handle your macro and key rebinding needs
having a number pad again is awesome but I'm still going to give the keyboard a b
it is quiet but I personally prefer a sharper tactile bump even so though with
a little less deck flex and function up
down arrow reassigned to page up and page down instead of brightness up and
brightness down I would increase that to a B+ with the touchpad falling into a
pretty similar category two-handed operation works like a charm and the
surface feels good but I really don't like their acceleration algorithm and
the Elan software doesn't offer much in the way of tuning options out of the box
let's move on to Performance when Luke said at the GTX 10 series notebook GPU
launch event that he was disappointed they wouldn't let him Benchmark the 1060
which he thought was the most interesting of the bunch I think he nailed it my points of comparison for
this video since this is my first 10 series single GPU notebook are the GTX
970m in my daily driver blade 14 the
last gen thin gaming GPU of choice and
the GTX 980 desktop version in MSI's
gt72s anniversary edition and the
performance here blows me away and it should do the same to you that in a
single generation we've cut the difference between this and this in half
and this is all while showing off some very impressive thermal performance it's
hard to say how much of this is thanks to the GTX 1060 until I get some more
samples and how much is thanks to MSI's approach to cooling which you can see
with our internal shot has them really taking advantage of the extra area
inside the gs63 VR with three fans and
many heat pipes on an unusual upside down motherboard configuration but it
works and MSI even managed to squeeze
user upgradable sodum slots in there they aren't easy to get at but they're
in there so this machine machine is quieter than most and much cooler to the
touch than any other thin and light gaming machine that I've used yet the
weird mole skin covering on the bottom actually seems to help too it slows heat
transfer to your skin when you have it resting on your lap it's kind of a nice touch and the positives keep coming
battery life ain't too shabby either 1 and a half hours while running Crisis 3
is nothing to sneeze at considering I didn't even crank the brightness down so
bottom line then while MSI's gs63 VR
might not be the thinnest or the smallest thin and light gaming machine
it utilizes its extra size very well to deliver more IO including Thunderbolt 3
a bigger display beefy Cooling and a number pad for folks who work as well as
play and thanks to its magnesium lithium alloy chassis it's slightly lighter even
than the razor blade that is to say if we ignore the obnoxious power brick
while also costing less I'm not a huge fan of the 120 gig SSD the 1 TB hard
drive config in this particular unit larger ssds not only hold more but they
also perform better substantially better like I noticed it but throw a bigger SSD
in there and the gs63 VR is a really solid platform that will make a lot of
Gamers happy but you know what isn't bloat wear
tunnel bear tunnel bear is the simple VPN application that makes it easy to
browse privately and enjoy a more open internet with tunnel bear turned on your
Wi-Fi connection is secured and your online activity is kept private from
your internet provider advertisers and basically anyone looking to track you or
profit from your data tunnel bear has a top rated privacy policy and does not
log your activity and most importantly it is easy to use with a 500 megabyte
free trial with no credit card required so you can see if it's right for you so
check it out at the link in the video description and if you choose to get a
year of unlimited data you can save 10%
by going to Tunnel bear.com
LTT so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in
the video description also linked in the description is our merch store which has
cool shirts like this one and our community Forum which you should totally join now that you're done doing all that
stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button in the top right corner to check out our
latest video over on Channel Super Fun