MSI GS66 Stealth review: Razer is almost within reach

For years, Razer has set the standard for making gaming laptops that are compact, slim, and feel great to use. MSI wants to end that streak, and its new GS66 Stealth is actually a viable alternative, at least in terms of performance. You still have a little work to nail in the little design details.

The GS66 Stealth doesn’t achieve the fit and finish to take on the best, but at that point you still get a slick laptop that’s packed with powerful components and other features that usually come with a $ 2,349 gaming laptop ( as configured; this model starts at $ 1,499 and goes up to $ 2,999). It has a Thunderbolt 3 port for fast data transfer, and its display has a 300Hz refresh rate that takes full advantage of the Nvidia RTX 2070 Super Max-Q graphics to display your games with fast and smooth fidelity.

It is a slim and elegant machine from all angles, whether closed or open. It has one of the most generously sized trackpads I’ve ever used on a Windows laptop, similar to the Prestige 14. Focused on the creator of MSI. Compared to the GS65 Stealth Thin, this one neglects the copper accents and has a simpler and simpler design. general confident look. MSI does not deceive anyone with the results. Its all-black design with slim bezels around the display is similar to the Razer style, but the similarities end once we get to MSI’s awkward keyboard design that makes it difficult to perform functions and the bottom of its aluminum chassis to be flex with just a little pressure.

One of the most disappointing things about the GS66 Stealth is that, after using it for a week, going back to my DIY desktop computer made me realize that it is due to some updates. This laptop shook No Man’s Sky, keeping more than 120 frames per second at its highest graphics settings. This is not the most demanding title ever created, but it is constantly depleting CPU, GPU, and storage as it quickly loads assets when the player goes from planet to planet or when he jumps between galaxies. It’s common to see big drops in performance with this game, but it was a glorious experience here.

The RTX 2070 Super Max-Q, Intel’s Core i7-10875H, and 32GB of RAM prove to be a powerful combination of specs for gaming analytics, which is what you want when you buy a $ 2,349 laptop. In addition, its power makes good use of the 300Hz refresh rate TFT LCD panel. You won’t see more than 300 frames per second of performance in most modern games, but the support is there. You can expect most games to run above 60 frames per second at their highest settings, often well above 100 frames per second, and sometimes 200 frames per second if you were playing a less demanding game, such as Tetris effect or Rocket league. Viewing angles are affected, so looking at content from the side won’t look as good as looking at it head-on, but colors stand out and playing games at fast frame rate is always nice.

Grid view

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  The speakers are located on the left and right sides of the palm rest. Its performance is not worth mentioning.
  
  

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  What a great and lovely trackpad. MSI needed to make room for fans near the hinge of the machine, otherwise it probably wouldn’t have been so crushed.
  
  

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  The ports on the left side include a barrel charging port, Thunderbolt 3, HDMI, and USB Type-A 3.12 Gen 2 port.
  
  

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  On the right, there is a 3.5mm headphone and microphone combo port, USB-C 3.2 port, two USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 and Ethernet ports.
  
  

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  Note the Fn key wedged between the backslash and the control. For me, this location made the execution functions cumbersome and error-prone.
  
  

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  MSI managed to put a 720p camera, IR sensors and microphones on the lid. Camera quality isn’t great, but it does the job.
  
  

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  A look at one of the fans. MSI abandoned the copper nerves of the GS65 Stealth in favor of something simpler.
  
  

The good thing about this setup is that it requires few, if any, compromises for images with the native 1080p resolution of the display. I went through a number of other demanding titles, including Control and Red Dead Redemption 2. Control It supports ray tracing, and it was able to run the game with high graphics settings and high ray tracing of around 45 frames per second. With Nvidia DLSS turned on, which uses AI and reduces the rendering resolution of this game to achieve a faster frame rate with ray tracing features enabled, I saw an average of 75 frames per second, which is quite good. Red Dead Redemption 2 It’s another demanding game, and this laptop could hold 55 frames per second with no problems in its ultra-graphics settings (excluding locked sliders that can really affect performance on most systems).

The heat and noise that laptops make to address it is generally a common problem with gaming laptops, but the GS66 Stealth handles stress gracefully. It manages to remain silent relative to other machines that definitely sound like they’re about to fly, and its three fan outlets along the rear and right of the chassis really move a lot of air to stay cool when the system works correctly. Taxed The grill near the display hinge gets too hot to rest comfortably while gaming, but the machine generally keeps heat away from the rest of the laptop.

This setup handles the applications I trust to work and during after hours with ease, and everything is super fluid throughout the experience. At the same time, running 15 tabs from Microsoft Edge, Spotify, Slack, and Affinity Photo is no challenge, and 32GB of RAM is great if you want to be able to run a game without exiting apps. Battery life is usually a laughing matter with gaming laptops, but I’m impressed with the approximately five-hour screen time that the GS66 Stealth managed with all of my regular apps open and the screen slightly dimmed. It has a 99 Wh battery, which is the legal limit in terms of capacity, and it’s impressive that it fits in such a slim chassis.

If your workload is focused on video production in Adobe Premiere Pro, the GS66 Stealth is capable enough to quickly handle heavy work. It exported a five minute and 33 second 4K video in three minutes and 14 seconds, much faster than it takes to view the video. This is a gaming laptop, but based on the myriad of pre-installed apps focused on content creation, MSI wants to let you use its power however you want. It comes with AudioDirector, ColorDirector, Music Maker Jam, PhotoDirector 10 and PowerDirector 17 ready to use. The power is versatile as long as your workflow doesn’t require an SD card slot because you don’t have one.

Despite its power, its keyboard was the source of some productivity issues for me. The keys themselves have a generous amount of scrolling and are satisfactory for typing, but the MSI keyboard layout suffers from a grouped layout near the arrow keys that makes executing simple functions such as increasing screen brightness or the volume, in a task error. The Fn key that needs to be held down is half the width of the rest of the keys, and is wedged between the backslash and the control buttons. I would love for the arrow keys to get out of line to give more space for dedicated media and function keys, or just do what Razer did recently and make the arrow keys smaller. Also, MSI built the palm rest to be level with the keys, which seems like a harmless option, but its edge is right next to the space bar, further increasing the learning curve with this keyboard, since that feels like a key. You may get along, but my lip tripped me.

The latest with the keyboard: This keyboard’s RGB backlight is still managed via the SteelSeries Engine 3 app, but upon loading it said it couldn’t find a connected device. It wasn’t until I re-downloaded the app from the MSI support page that I got the backlight to work as intended.

The GS66 Stealth we tested is a fast gaming laptop, and it’s competitively priced for the Razer’s Blade 15, even undermining its more similar setup when it comes to packing on a faster refresh rate display, bigger battery, and more. RAM. It’s also not a bad deal on low-end setups, keeping attractive features like a Thunderbolt 3 port and a 144Hz refresh rate display on its more affordable $ 1,499 model. Despite some lingering design issues, the base is stronger and more powerful than ever. MSI’s design is the clear winner compared to the plethora of all-plastic gaming laptops in each configuration’s price range. For now, Razer is still the standard to beat, but MSI is getting terribly close.

Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge