Thin, Powerful Gaming Laptop - MSI GS63VR Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,635 words · ~8 min read
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there are really only two kinds of gaming laptops that I get personally
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excited about the massive power hungry
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mind-blowingly fast superar class ones
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like this dual GTX 1080 monster from Sager that I reviewed recently and the
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lightweight thin but still potent class
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that seems to have emerged as a direct response to the original razor blade
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back in 2013 and this one is part of the
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ladder family meet the MS I gs63
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VR freshbooks is the super simple invoicing solution that lets you get
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organized save time and get paid faster
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click now at the link in the video description to try it for
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free okay specification time the gs63 VR
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as MSI not so subtly implied right in
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the name name Rock a VR ready Enthusiast grade configuration including an Intel
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Core i7 6700hq quad core processor 16
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gigs of ddr4 memory a 128 gig NVMe SSD
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and a GeForce GTX 1060 with 6 gigs of
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gddr5 vram and as expected they crammed
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all of this into the same chassis as the gs63 vr's
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gtx970m equipped predecessor that means
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a 1080p 60 HZ IPS display whose deep
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black levels look good but fail to help it stand out from the crowd with any wow
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features like touch higher refresh rates or g-sync a large speaker grill with a
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bottom mounted subwoofer that both sound decidedly okay and a 720p 30fps webcam
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that falls squarely in an exceptional
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territory let's talk iio now and I'll be making a lot of comparisons here to my
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daily driver Razer Blade the gs63 VR has
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a bigger screen so it's both larger
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though not as much as you might think thanks to its smaller bezels and thicker
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than the razor blade but while this
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slightly greater Z height means that MSI can't take sexy pictures of it next to
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dimes it does allow it to have a built-in Ethernet port that's one less
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accessory to buy and carry around to go along with its otherwise also fairly
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complete load out including standalone hemic 2 powered headphone and microphone
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jacks three USB 3 5 GB ports an SD card
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reader and killer gbit Ethernet on the left with a power button USB 2 weird
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right USB type-c Thunderbolt HDMI 2.0
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and mini DisplayPort 1.2 on the right
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which I guess leads to my first complaint I get that MSI is dedicating
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pretty much the entire back third of this notebook to cooling vents but the
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effect that this has on mousing space is not a desirable one the power brick
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thankfully terminates in a right angle connector but if you were to plug in oh
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I don't know an external Thunderbolt drive or an external monitor of some
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sort expecting to use the included keyboard you'd likely find yourself
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pretty annoyed by how much room you have for your mouse which leads then to
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complaint number two the gs63 vr's power
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brick delivers 10% more power than Razor's brick while being way bigger
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this isn't important on massive gaming Beasts where I generally don't even
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mention them unless they come with two or something like that but it's the kind
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of thing for a machine that you expect to carry around every day maybe in a
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briefcase that actually matters because
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the must carry accessories are part of the whole package and since I'm on a bit
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of a complaint rooll here let's talk bloat wear why is windzip on here Norton
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really and what the hell is m Magics
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there was so much junk preloaded on this thing that I had no idea to whom my
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super angry letter about the 100% CPU
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usage reporting bug should be addressed I thought maybe the culprit was the
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killer networking Suite but removing that didn't help the Windows 10
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anniversary update didn't help and even after a factory reset the behavior
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persisted so I emailed the manufacturer turns out it is a feature of dragon
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Suite that fools Windows intentionally to keep it from entering a lower power
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state to speed up data transfers over SATA m.2 and USB IO that should be
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disabled by default and come with a warning when you turn it on because I
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spent about an hour tearing my hair out trying to fix it anyway though the good
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news is that was a simple software toggle and the rest of that stuff can be
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fixed with a good oldfashioned ad remove programs Purge so I'm going to get back
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into the hardware now the keyboard is RGB with three lighting zones and and
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steel series engine software to handle your macro and key rebinding needs
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having a number pad again is awesome but I'm still going to give the keyboard a b
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it is quiet but I personally prefer a sharper tactile bump even so though with
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a little less deck flex and function up
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down arrow reassigned to page up and page down instead of brightness up and
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brightness down I would increase that to a B+ with the touchpad falling into a
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pretty similar category two-handed operation works like a charm and the
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surface feels good but I really don't like their acceleration algorithm and
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the Elan software doesn't offer much in the way of tuning options out of the box
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let's move on to Performance when Luke said at the GTX 10 series notebook GPU
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launch event that he was disappointed they wouldn't let him Benchmark the 1060
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which he thought was the most interesting of the bunch I think he nailed it my points of comparison for
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this video since this is my first 10 series single GPU notebook are the GTX
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970m in my daily driver blade 14 the
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last gen thin gaming GPU of choice and
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the GTX 980 desktop version in MSI's
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gt72s anniversary edition and the
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performance here blows me away and it should do the same to you that in a
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single generation we've cut the difference between this and this in half
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and this is all while showing off some very impressive thermal performance it's
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hard to say how much of this is thanks to the GTX 1060 until I get some more
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samples and how much is thanks to MSI's approach to cooling which you can see
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with our internal shot has them really taking advantage of the extra area
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inside the gs63 VR with three fans and
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many heat pipes on an unusual upside down motherboard configuration but it
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works and MSI even managed to squeeze
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user upgradable sodum slots in there they aren't easy to get at but they're
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in there so this machine machine is quieter than most and much cooler to the
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touch than any other thin and light gaming machine that I've used yet the
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weird mole skin covering on the bottom actually seems to help too it slows heat
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transfer to your skin when you have it resting on your lap it's kind of a nice touch and the positives keep coming
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battery life ain't too shabby either 1 and a half hours while running Crisis 3
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is nothing to sneeze at considering I didn't even crank the brightness down so
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bottom line then while MSI's gs63 VR
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might not be the thinnest or the smallest thin and light gaming machine
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it utilizes its extra size very well to deliver more IO including Thunderbolt 3
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a bigger display beefy Cooling and a number pad for folks who work as well as
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play and thanks to its magnesium lithium alloy chassis it's slightly lighter even
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than the razor blade that is to say if we ignore the obnoxious power brick
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while also costing less I'm not a huge fan of the 120 gig SSD the 1 TB hard
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drive config in this particular unit larger ssds not only hold more but they
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also perform better substantially better like I noticed it but throw a bigger SSD
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in there and the gs63 VR is a really solid platform that will make a lot of
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Gamers happy but you know what isn't bloat wear
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LTT so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
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