MSI GS60 GHOST PRO 4K GAMING LAPTOP REVIEW
The MSI has updated the GS60 by gearing it up with a new Skylake processor. 4K gaming privilege has been reserved for desktop PCs for the past several years, but the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 4K has defeated this limitation as it comes with 4K display. With a petite design and stellar specs, hides a monster of a gaming laptop. This 4K VR ready gaming laptop is highly portable and surprisingly powerful gaming laptop which is capable of exceeding expectations in nearly every category you think of.
Design:
In this 4K, VR ready gaming laptop, the MSI uses the same magnesium alloy for most parts and plastic for the rest. The brushed look of lid adorns with a replaceable glowing MSI dragon badge. The bezel is plastic as there is no touchscreen and the lid is super thin. Weighing 4.2lbs, this 4K, VR ready gaming laptop falls easily into the “ultra-sleek” category. With its hard, clean angles, this gaming laptop is homage to old laptops with enough style added to keep it feeling new.
Under the lid is a SteelSeries keyboard where the keys lie in a recessed portion of the palm rest. The keyboard is backlit by a chroma-schemed LED array which you can configure to display any color or combination of colors in wave and breathing patterns or just remain static.
The upper vents located with power button level the top. There are multiple passive vents and small and large rubber feet are scattered all over the underside. The rubber feet prevent slipping or scratching the bottom.
Connectivity:
Plentiful connectivity options are provided by the GS60 4K, VR ready gaming laptop. Around the right side of the system, there is an SD card reader, Mini-DisplayPot, HDMI 1.4, Ethernet and also a USB Super Pot. The brand claims that the port is of its own design. It is valuable offering three amps of juice, the ability to daisy-chain a pair of 4K monitors and high-speed data transfer.
At the left side of the VR ready gaming laptop, there are two separate 3.5mm jacks for headphone and microphone, AC power, a pair of USB 3.0 ports and a slot for lock. Another nice addition is USB Type-C that is not found in a lot of gaming laptops.
Keyboard and trackpad:
The GS60 VR ready gaming laptop has a SteelSeries brand full layout keyboard. The keys are properly sized and well spaced. For this sized gaming laptop, the travel on the keys is ideal and feedback really couldn’t be much better. The Windows key is placed on the other side of the spacebar and the delete key is located above the number pad.
The keyboard also provides backlighting options. You can have 4 different illumination levels and can change the color of three different zones. For different color profiles, there are 4 different hotkeys you can program. You can also set color effects of your choice.
The trackpad of this VR ready gaming laptop is a clickpad style trackpad with integrated buttons on the lower left and right corners.
Display:
The MSI GS60 gaming laptop is equipped with a native resolution of 3840 ×2160 pixels and high-resolution 4K display. Samsung has provided the IPS panel which has a glossy surface. With Windows 10 the 4K screen leaves a good impression. Unfortunately, the MSI GS60 VR ready gaming laptop has not changed in terms of poor contrast ratio and low luminance. The average brightness is just 200 nits which is 30nits lower than the old model.
Speakers:
The GS60 gaming laptop has good sounding speakers. With the audio software from Nahimic, you can adjust the sound but it still lacks rich bass and certain presence. The speakers could be a bit loud.
Processor:
The MSI GS60 gaming laptop is equipped with Core i7-6700HQ which is based on Intel’s Skylake architecture. The CPU has four cores having a nominal clock of 2600MHz but via Turbo Boost, the cores can reach up to 3.5GHz.
Software:
The MSI has included in GS60 gaming laptop heaps of extra software in their default load outs, from SteelSeries Engine to configure your keyboard LEDs to programs like Norton’s Security Suite.
Hardware and Performance:
The main highlights of this gaming laptop are high powered GPU and CPU they managed to fit under the hood. It is equipped with an i7-6700HQ CPU and Nvidia GTX 970M. On the GPU, MSI also offers other options such as lower powered 965M.
The MSI GS60 gaming laptop also features a 1TB 7200rpm HDD and 128GB M.2 SSD. The M.2 slot is SATA so your R/W speeds are limited to SATA III. It also provides a second empty M.2 slot that you can utilize to put the drivers in a RAID configuration and to upgrade. The SSD included in this gaming laptop is quite fast and might be enough on its own for most people.
If you have more than 128GB of games and programs, space might be an issue. The MSI also included the recovery partition on HDD enabling you to maximize the use of SSD. If you require the extra high speed space, some configurations also include a second 128GB SSD in RAID0.
GPU Performance:
The MSI GS60 gaming laptop comes with a powerful chip from Nvidia. The high end graphics card GeForce GTX 970M can handle smooth gameplay in modern games. The GS60 gaming laptop uses 3GB VRAM that runs at a base clock of 924MHz, which via GPU Boost can be increased to 1038MHz.
Battery:
Gaming laptops usually are known for their mediocre battery runtimes because of their high power consumption. The old GS60 gaming laptop also had not so good battery life but this model uses a different battery as compared to the old model. The lithium ion battery has now a capacity of only 47 instead of 52Wh.
Pros:
Light weight
High system performance
Individual keyboard illumination
Cons:
Limited maintainability
Meager runtime
Pulsating fans
The MSI offers a slim and a nicely designed gaming laptop in form of MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 4K Gaming Laptop. The current version of this gaming laptop features a USB 3.1 and DDR4-RAM. However, the main highlighting component is Skylake Processor which manages solid overall results.