Hands-On: MSI GS70 Stealth Gaming Laptop

MSI’s newest gaming laptop to land in the Philippines, the MSI GS70, comes with a dashing SteelSeries backlit keyboard. It carries the latest generation Intel chip and the best possible hardware MSI can muster.

MSI certainly went to great lengths to make the GS70 their nicest-looking and most powerful gaming laptop. The large 17.3-inch matte display looks very stunning at a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels (works great with playing hi-def games and movies).

The body is made up of aluminum chassis, right from the lid all the way to the interior of the keyboard and palm rest. This adds more flare to the slim profile of the laptop.

The brushed-metal finish surrounds the metal cover which minimizes smudges around the body. Aside from the MSI logo on the lid, there’s also another dragon-inspired emblem just below it, probably signifying the Gaming G Series of the device in MSI’s line-up. There’s even a suede-type fabic that lines part of the bottom end of the laptop.

All the connectivity ports are found on both sides of the device — on the right side are 2 USB 3.0 ports, the SD card reader and the power port; on the left side are 2 more USB 3.0 ports, dual mini Display ports, HDMI port, LAN port and 3 audio ports.

What also got our interest was the full-sized keyboard which was designed in collaboration with SteelSeries. The rounded, island-type keys are very comfortable, has enough travel and spacing from each other.

As a gaming keyboard, SteelSeries placed its signature design, or bling, into the unit. The back-lighting feels like some gimmick at times but it does add to the gaming pleasure, especially when under low-light conditions. It’s not a first, and we’ve already seen it with the likes of Alienware laptops before, yet it does strike a good first impression.

We have to say though, the multi-color configuration of the backlit keyboard makes it look like there’s a carnival running in there.

MSI GS70 specs:
17.3-inch full HD 1080p display @ 1920×1080 pixels, Anti-Glare
Intel Core i7-4700HQ 2.4GHz
Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M 2GB GDDR5
Intel HD 4600 Graphics
16GB DDR3 RAM
256GB SSD + 750GB HHD
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
HDMI port
4 x USB 3.0 port
2 x mini Display port
Windows 8.1
6-cell Li-Ion battery

The Haswell chip also comes with an Intel HD 4600 graphics which can be used to prolong battery life and when not used in gaming. If you want more power, the discreet graphics can take over (Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M) to provide all the muscle you need.

As for storage, MSI placed a 256GB SSD drive (that’s two 128GB SSD on Raid 0) into the combo with another 750GB of HDD, addressing both performance and drive capacity at the same time. We got a PassMark score of 3,980.8 on the unit and 19,068 on 3DMark06.

Battery life is another issue though but that’s to be expected of a gaming laptop, we can hardly get a decent play time of about 3 hours or so on a single full charge. You’ll always have to find an outlet if you want to keep playing a little longer.

Over-all, it’s a pretty good gaming laptop — large, full HD display, powerful CPU and GPU, great combo between an SSD and a HDD, plus that colorful backlit keyboard from SteelSeries.

The MSI GS70 has a suggested retail price of Php99,995USD 1,704INR 144,453EUR 1,623CNY 12,409 and is offered in stores for Php8,333USD 142INR 12,038EUR 135CNY 1,034/month at 0% interest for 12 months.