Saturday 20 September 2014

MSI GS60-2PE-060UK

MSI GS60-2PE-060UK

The GS60 is the thinnest and lightest full-on gaming laptop we’ve ever seen, tipping the scales at under 2kg (1.96kg), with a chassis that’s 20mm thick at its broadest point. This slim, light laptop is made from a magnesium-lithium alloy – a material that MSI says was first used on NASA’s Saturn V rocket. The metal is black and brushed, and there’s subtle backlighting across the keyboard, power button and logos. It’s a greatlooking machine, even if it won’t attract attention in the same way as larger laptops with larger designs, such as the Alienware 17.

Importantly, though, MSI hasn’t skimped on the internals despite the slim dimensions. The key component is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 870M – a GPU with 1,344 stream processors, 3GB of GDDR5 memory at its disposal and a core base clock of 941MHz. It isn’t as powerful as the Alienware 17’s GTX 880M, but it should still be able to handle today’s games at great settings.

Meanwhile, processing power comes from a Core i7-4700HQ. It’s a 2.4GHz, quad-core chip that’s found inside many gaming laptops, and it has a top Turbo speed of 3.4GHz. The CPU is partnered with 8GB of RAM, and MSI has also strapped together two 128GB SSDs in a RAID 0 array that results in 237GB of usable space, while a 1TB hard drive handles larger-scale data storage.

The chassis serves up plenty of features too. On the inside, there’s dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth 4, while the outer edges serve up HDMI and mini-DisplayPort connectors and three USB 3 ports, alongside an SD card slot and two audio jacks.

The GS60 is undoubtedly a slim, light and good-looking laptop with some surprisingly powerful kit inside it, but its svelte figure comes with downsides.

For example, the build quality is inconsistent; the 4mm-thin screen has a little give in its metal edges, and the panel on the underside of the laptop has lots of give too – the strongest part of this machine is the wrist-rest.

There’s no easy way to get inside the GS60 either. More than 12 screws hold the base in place, and the component-filled side of the motherboard faces the keyboard, so none of the internal parts is accessible without some serious work. Only the hard disk is easy to reach.

On the plus side, MSI uses SteelSeries hardware for its gaming laptops, and the GS60’s typing gear impressed us. There was little give in the keyboard’s base, and the buttons hammer down with speed and consistency, while the touchpad buttons are similarly snappy.

The GTX 870M helped the MSI to rattle through our Ultraquality Battlefield 4 benchmark to a minimum frame rate of 28fps, with an average of 34fps. Comparatively, the Alienware 17 with its GeForce GTX 880M hit a faster minimum of 36fps, but the Asus G550JK with its GTX 850M could only manage an unplayable 15fps.

That pattern was repeated in BioShock Infinite. The MSI’s minimum of 43fps minimum is behind the Alienware’s 52fps, but it’s still comfortably smooth, and again, ahead of the Asus, which could only manage an unplayable 24fps. Crysis 3 at Very High settings was the only game where the MSI faltered – its minimum fell to a stuttering 23fps. The MSI only managed a playable frame rate in Crysis 3 when we dropped to High quality, where it returned a comfortably smooth minimum of 33fps.

It’s quick in general Windows apps too. In our Media Benchmarks, the GS60’s overall score of 1,981 points was just 17 points behind the Alienware, and ahead of the Asus’ 1,830. The pair of SSDs also ripped through our storage benchmarks to return sequential read and write results of 1,012MB/sec and 367MB/sec, and this system has a subten-second boot time too. What’s more, the GS60’s drives use M.2 connections, so there’s no danger of them saturating the SATA 6Gbps bus’ bandwidth. Meanwhile, the GS60’s 15.6in screen offers a standard 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, along with a matt finish, great viewing angles and decent performance. The contrast ratio of 1,019:1 is better than both the Asus and Alienware laptops’ screens, and it has a stunning
black level of just 0.32cd/m2 – lower than the competition, and enough to render black shades with plenty of inky depth. It scarcely matters that the MSI’s 326cd/m2 brightness level can’t match rivals – it’s ample, and the contrast ensures that there’s depth and variation across the scale.

Colour accuracy is good too, with an average delta E of 2.16 and an sRGB coverage level of 93.6 per cent. Both figures beat the Alienware, and the Asus only just beats the MSI with its delta E. Our only criticism is the 8,181K colour temperature, which is on the cold side, but it’s otherwise a great screen.

The panel is paired with good audio kit as well. The speakers are loud enough, the bass has surprising punch and the high end is light and snappy. The MSI has a couple of problems though. The first, battery life, isn’t unusual for gaming laptops. The MSI GS60 lasted for three hours while handling mundane work tasks and just over an hour while gaming. That isn’t brilliant, but it’s enough to do some work on an average train journey, and maybe a little gaming away from the mains too.

The GS60’s other issue is a bigger deal. During Prime95 stress tests, the CPU topped out at 90°C, where it began to throttle, with the GPU hitting a maximum of 85°C. Both figures are short of each chip’s thermal limits, but much of that heat made its way to the GS60’s exterior. The back half of the base panel was too hot for us to touch after a few minutes of stress testing, which made it impossible to use on our laps. The fan noise is distracting too, being a little louder than the larger, cooler Alienware.

Despite its thin and light chassis, the GS60 can still rattle through top-end games at their highest settings, and it also impressed with its screen quality, great keyboard and keen price, which is a great deal for the hardware inside.

The slimmed-down dimensions of the chassis have drawbacks though – the MSI’s cooling ability, noise output and battery life leave plenty to be desired.

The low price and slim chassis make the GS60 very tempting as a portable gaming rig, but we’d advise investing in a laptop cooler to fit underneath it if you’re going to regularly push it to the limit.

SPECIFICATIONS:
CPU 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-4700HQ
Memory 8GB 1,600MHz DDR3
Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX 870M 3GB GDDR5
Sound On-board
Screen size 15.6in 1,920 x 1,080
Hard disk 2 x 128GB Kingston SSDs in RAID 0; 1TB hard disk
Weight 1.96kg
Ports 3 x USB 3, HDMI 1.4, mini-DisplayPort 1.2, 2 x audio, SDXC card slot
Dimensions (mm) 390 x 266 x 20 (W x D x H)
Operating system Windows 8.1 64-bit
Warranty One-year return to base

VERDICT: Enviable power inside a slim, light and sturdy exterior, but the impressive dimensions also mean it gets quite hot and noisy.