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MSI has again teamed up with SteelSeries to create the keyboard for the GE63 RGB. It’s essentially a standard chiclet style layout and each key offers 2mm of travel with an activation force of 71 grams.
For us UK folk, the US-style Enter and Shift keys are a bit of a nuisance – especially if you regularly switch back and forth between a desktop and laptop – but you at least get proper UK labelling for things like the £ symbol.
Also notable is that you do get a numpad, which isn’t necessarily a given on a 15-inch machine.
The overall typing experience is good, though not our favourite either in terms of feel or layout. Most irksome, though, is the aforementioned backlighting. Two things, in particular were a little annoying. One was the light leaking from the sides of the keys, which was still a bit distracting even when the light level is low.
The other was that for fans of plain old white backlighting, this tri-colour backlighting doesn’t do a great job of combining to create white. It very definitely looks like three different colours being smooshed together.
As for the trackpad, it’s of the fixed variety with separate buttons, rather than the whole pad depressing. It’s nice and large and provides accurate tracking.
The screen, meanwhile, is very good. Its 120Hz refresh rate and 1080p resolution are ideal for a wide variety of games, providing the performance required for competitive matches and the sharpness you want for more engrossing games.
Out of the box colour accuracy and general performance is good too. A colour temperature of 6654K is very close to the ideal of 6500K while a contrast of 992:1 is just about as good as TN displays get. A gamma of 2.37 is also close enough to the ideal of 2.2.
The only caveats are that maximum brightness is a touch low, at 317nits. That’s enough for a monitor but for a laptop that’s more likely to find itself in a particularly bright environment, we’d like to see just a touch more.
The use of a TN screen means viewing angles aren't great.
The other factor is of course the viewing angles of TN. The shift in contrast and colour that you get when viewing the display from anything other than straight on are all the more noticeable on a laptop, where you’re likely to be using it at more awkward angles. This is less a concern for gaming – where you’re likely to be sat at a desk or table – but more for watching video and general browsing when lying on a bed, squashed into an aeroplane seat, and so on.
On the audio side, you get a pair of speakers and a sub-woofer with a total power of 6W. They sound pretty decent too. There’s definitely a bit more power and definition than you’ll find on most smaller or cheaper laptops, so its a good inclusion from MSI.
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