MSI GS70 2OD-Stealth 17.3 inch Laptop Review

The MSI GS70 2OD-Stealth is one of the most impressive laptops that we have tested in 2013. It can handle a myriad of tasks without a hitch, including gaming, heavy duty 3D rendering and video encoding.

Initial impressions are certainly positive. The design is going to appeal to a wide audience of people who hate lugging around a thick heavy 17 inch laptop. As we mentioned earlier in the review, the uniform front to back super thin chassis puts us in mind of the now-discontinued 17 inch MacBook Pro, which we loved.

In regards to MSI GS70 Stealth performance, we were exceptionally impressed with the processing capabilities. The powerful Intel Core i7 4700HQ processor is right at the top of the mobile performance chart and the score in Cinebench R11.5 is actually higher than the reference clocked 8 core AMD FX8350 desktop processor. This is remarkable and showcases current generation Haswell performance.

One of our main sticking points with the MSI GE40-2OC Dragon Eyes laptop that we reviewed back in June was the painfully slow 5,400 rpm mechanical hard drive. Thankfully MSI have adopted two mSATA drives in the GS70 Stealth, and configured them in RAID 0. This means the GS70 Stealth boots to a workable state in around 8 seconds and our testing highlighted sequential read performance around 1000 MB/s. In the real world you are never waiting for this machine to save a file, or load a program. Adobe Photoshop CS6 for instance was ready to use in around 2 seconds.

Gaming performance is also commendable, The Nvidia GTX765M is able to power many of the latest Direct X 11 games at the native panel resolution of 1920×1080. That said, if you want to maximise the settings and use high levels of anti aliasing then it might run out of steam with more demanding titles. This is why Nvidia sell the GTX770m and GTX780m however.

Noise levels are maintained well and the machine is audible but never that intrusive – negatively it does get hot under gaming load so good air circulation is a must. On a positive note, it didn't thermally throttle during our tests.

The screen is quite good, and the Steelseries keyboard is one of the best we have used to date, although not quite as good as the one adopted in the Lenovo ThinkPad range.

If you are in the market for a well designed high grade gaming laptop then the MSI GS70 Stealth is certainly worth of our Must Have Award. At £1,699.99 inc vat from Overclockers UK it offers excellent value for money.

Pros:

• lovely thin chassis design.
• adjustable backlit keyboard.
• good screen.
• excellent keyboard.
• Haswell processor is a powerhouse.
• class leading SSD performance.
• decent battery life.
• Nvidia GTX765M is capable.

Cons:

• onboard sound is average.
• gets hot.
• not the cleanest software install.

Kitguru says: We love this laptop, it certainly faces challenges from Alienware, but at the price, it is hard to beat.

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