MSI - Stealth 15M 15.6" 144hz Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i7 - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 - 1TB SSD - 16GB - Black

I purchased this laptop before i knew a thing about pc gaming. They really try to sell newcomers with the “11th gen intel i7”. Bottom line? The CPU is not great. Don’t get me wrong, this is a good gaming machine that can run most games well over the standard. But find a laptop with a better CPU even if it’s $100-$200 more it’s worth it. I have many performance problems on several games because the cpu simply can’t keep up with the gpu. As strange as it sounds, cranking up your graphics settings can fix many if these issues (sometimes) but it’s really not worth the headache, and the cpu will probably be completely obsolete in the next few years. Leaving you with a laptop that has a very capable GPU, but a worthless CPU. Keep in mind that some games will run better than others, so look into what games you like, and what they require. RDR2 for example runs great on this laptop, some frame drops down to about 50 in larger areas on Ultra-High settings, that’s nothing to complain about. Rainbow Six Siege on the other hand, runs at a nice 130-144 fps on max settings UNTIL it randomly drops down to 25-55 fps for several seconds 1-3 times per play session.

I'm going to start this review off with how this laptop performs with VR, since I see lots of unanswered questions about VR and ports not being connected to the dGPU. If VR or port connectivity does not concern you, feel free to move to the third paragraph. One of the biggest concerns with VR on a laptop is the ports being connected directly to the dGPU, in this case the RTX 3060. There is no way to tell this before buying, so it's simply a matter or luck or reading on other reviews. I bought the laptop hoping the ports would be connected to the dGPU, and one of them is, enough to play VR! Problem is, it's the USB C 3.2 port that acts as a DisplayPort connector. The Thunderbolt 4 and HDMI ports will connect your VR headset or display to the integrated Intel Xe Graphics and the headset will perform poor. As long as you buy an adapter that works with your headset and connect it to the USB-C 3.2 port, your headset should work fine. I tried this using my friend's Oculus Rift S and everything worked with an adapter. If you have an Oculus Quest 2, that already uses USB-C so you're set without adapters. Performance wise this laptop handles like a champ, so no worries there. It is worth noting that Oculus gave a warning that the GPU I was using was not supported with both headsets. This is because the RTX 30 series has not been added to the supported GPU list according to Oculus Support, so you can just ignore that. I attached a picture below for reference as to which ports connect to which GPU. VR aside, almost everything else about this laptop is wonderful. The first thing I want to note is the design, which I feel is a wonderful selling point. This laptop was designed to be ultralight, and wow it's so much lighter then my previous thin gaming laptop! Even picking it up with one hand, the laptop is super light and requires no effort at all to lift up. The laptop didn't skimp on materials either. The all-aluminum build feels sturdy and nice to the touch, with a smooth, premium texture. The keyboard has the same aluminum texture to it and feels wonderful to type on. The keys are fast and responsive in gaming, and give nice feedback when typing long documents or essays. The RGB lighting on the keyboard is single zone, meaning all the keys are the same color. You can set the laptop to toggle between colors or stay steady. The screen folds back 180 degrees, and even has a button to flip the screen upside down should you need it. Overall zero complaints here, couldn't be happier. Performance wise, this laptop handles great. Games like Final Fantasy XV run in 4K no problem, RTX Minecraft holds a constant 60 FPS with high rendering distance, and in VR games like The Climb 2 and Boneworks run smoothly. On the designer side of things, Blender and Abode After Effects both handle very well on this laptop. Rendering speeds are pretty much on par with my old RTX 2070 Super Max-Q I was using before I bought this laptop. If you're looking for a faster GPU and not a lighter laptop, you might want to consider another option with a RTX 3070 or better. The only thing I have to complain about here is the fans. The fans get a little loud, and have a little bit of coil while, but if I put the laptop under the desk when connected to my external monitor, I can't really hear them much. On the table right in front of me, however, when they start spinning, I can hear the coil whine. It's not too loud, but loud enough to hear. It's a sacrifice I am willing to make seeing how small the laptop is however. The display on the laptop looks great. Colors are accurate, no light bleeding, and the 144Hz display looks smooth. Coming from a 300 Hz laptop, I can't really see the difference, and the 144 Hz is better for the battery, so that works for me. The battery on this laptop is pretty impressive for a gaming laptop, although people coming from a normal laptop like a Macbook or no dGPU Windows laptop might be a little underwhelmed. On average, I get about 6 hours on "Best Performance" mode, and 8 hours on "Better Battery" mode when doing school work like Word documents and web browsing, zoom meetings, the usual school stuff. When gaming, less graphic intense games get around 3-4 hours of battery life, while high graphic games will see the battery drain in 2 hours or less. Since gaming laptops usually can't access their full power on battery anyways, the battery when playing high graphic games doesn't really matter. Some final thoughts on the laptop below -The speakers are okay. Nothing mind blowing, but they aren't bad either. I use headphones mostly, but when I'm playing music through the speakers in my dorm room, it fills the room easily while sounding nice. -The Intel Xe Graphics on this computer, and any other computer that uses Xe, don't always play nice with older apps. Trying to boot an old RPG Maker VX game in full screen will constantly kick you out of full screen if you use the Xe graphics, but works with the RTX 3060 perfectly fine. Also, trying to run some games on the Xe causes rendering issues. If you're having issues with these on any Xe laptop, switch to your dGPU and things will work fine. Hopefully Intel can fix some of these through a driver update. -The bluetooth driver that came with the laptop worked a little wonky and the built in Windows Update and Dragon Center wouldn't find the new driver. Went to Intel myself and downloaded the new driver, Bluetooth has worked fine since. Overall, I am extremely happy with the laptop and will for sure keep enjoying it for years to come. The only thing I would like to see fixed in a newer laptop is quieter fans. If you're looking for an ultra lightweight and fast gaming laptop, don't hesitate. This is the one.

Really light, slim, sleek laptop. Chassis seems good enough. IPS screen had a good color. Very portable and easy to carry. It's pretty quick overall to turn on as well, maybe less than 5 seconds to boot up. As the other reviews have mentioned, the fan is fairly active and would turn on while browsing the web, but I personally didn’t mind it. The laptop did sometimes get warm without doing any gaming too (just idling on a web browser or something). The temperature and fan software the laptop comes with (Dragon Center) let me keep an eye on things and there is a silent fan mode, though I didn’t try it out. RTX graphics card is pretty powerful. I ran APEX legends with high graphics and got a consistent 100+ FPS. What’s dragging down the rating was that I received a defective keyboard. Some keys on the keyboard were a bit stuck, and they would actually jam. After examining the jam, keys would actually come off. See my photo. I managed to put the keys back on, but after 3 days of use I ended up returning the laptop in person after buying it online, since this shouldn’t be an issue plaguing a $1,500 laptop. Unfortunately, I couldn’t exchange so the deal I utilized while buying the laptop is gone. Best Buy customer service however gave me a full refund. Other issues: I came from an MSI GP60 2PE that’s 7 years old, and I think it has a higher maximum volume and better bass than this laptop. Also, the key to turn off the backlight was not working at all (it could have been due to the defective keyboard). The keyboard build itself didn't feel very strong either. It’s safe to say that I’ll be looking for another laptop in this holiday season.

Overall, after about a month of use, I have no complaints about this computer. I think that for any gaming laptop you should get some gimmicky 'cooling stand' because it is very helpful to lift the base and get better air flow. I have one and my cpu/gpu rarely go north of 90 degrees on fairly heavy gaming. I also have 0 qualms about the 'silent' mode for 3 hour lectures in class; no fan noise and the battery last for about that time, maybe another 30 minutes after (though I keep the on battery charge at only 80% to not overdo it 24/7), so battery could maybe last up to 5 hours on silent mode while taking notes Everyone wants to play pc minecraft. Running the vanilla ray tracing pack this computer can get decent chunk rendering (12-16) on ray tracing while maintaining about 45fps with little to no issue and only maxing at about 85-90 degrees which, for a laptop, is pretty good. Not bad for rtx, but with rtx off this can run 70-100 chunk at 144fps no problem and I haven't noticed enough heat to warrant checking. I was hesitant at first seeing as how there are other gaming laptops which may be marginally better on price (gf 65, a 3060 for about 1000$) or better on performance for price (one of the asus), but as a full time student who casually games at high settings (used to a ps5, really), I would say this is a great dual threat. No one in class is going to look over and know you have a gaming laptop, and if you need a study break this can pump out some fun game play pretty well. Overall, I would say you will have little buyer's remorse over this for the price. Fits really well in a lot of scenarios, but is not the 'best in class' for anything, but those best in class often lack other areas to a significant degree, but this computer is pretty much good or better in every category of what an average person, who likes high quality gaming, would need.

Looking for a new laptop was a bit of a pain. The more you try and compare one to another, you think you have it and then realize you are missing something you need. This is one of the only units out there that checked all of my boxes. 11th gen processor, 3060 GPU, 16 GB, 1TB SSD, Thunderbolt ports, micro SD slot, front camera and usb ports. The main thing I do is video editing with Power Director 365. Last night I had my first chance to produce a 35 min HD video. My old laptop took roughly 55 min to do a 35 min simple video. It now took only 14 min. The touch pad is more sensitive than my old one so I will have to get used to it. Just an fyi you can change the color of the backlight on the keyboard or turn it off in the dragon center. So far I am very happy with my decision. One more thing some of the reviews of older Stealth 15 mentioned a loud fan. They may have updated it because I could barley hear it when it was producing last night.

So im not going to lie and say im some super spy h4cker man or anything but i can yell you this. This laptop is a beast, at least as far as ive owned anyway. It runs Halo Infinite multiplayer on max settings just fine (idk fps because i just stopped being a console peasant) with no lag. The cirsor pad is a littl small and it only has a 75% keyboard which is fine because i bought a keyborad with it. Idk the difference between the rtx 3060, 2090 or gtx 960 but im like 85% certain that bigger numbers equal more gooder or whatnot. I bought this laptop instead of paying my rent but 10/10 would regret this purchase again

It is unfathomable how terrible this computer is, I have never, in my life made such a regrettable purchase. I have had this computer for about 7 months now, and had issues out of the box. For reference, here is what I use my PC for: -Class: I am a college student -Coding: pretty low-demand programs -Gaming: I play Rainbow 6, CSGO, Overwatch, Elden Ring and Minecraft on this. A wide variety of hardware demand- they ALL had issues CONS: -Battery life is terrible, I never get above 2 hours just when coding or surfing the web. Gaming? I would get maybe 20 minutes. The battery is already failing, it does not hold charge while plugged in and gaming. -Overheats: Takes about 5 min to overheat on Rainbow 6 and maybe 30 on CSGO. I had to buy an external fan to keep it cool. -Cannot go to sleep: Not sure if this is hardware or software, but after about 3 months I could no longer let the PC enter sleep mode, otherwise everything would crash when I launched anything. -Customer service: terrible. they just emailed me links to the MSI site to update the BIOS or drivers, things I had already done. The only option was to send it to them which I can not do as a computer science student. Very uninterested in actually helping. -Graphics cards: overclock easily. cannot play Rainbow 6 without constant issues, the cards switch between integrated and high end randomly. Games freeze and I have had the graphics cards overclock just using chrome. I have tried many things to fix this. Heavier games like Elden ring and rainbow 6 have constant frame fluctuation. Should not happen with a 3060. Issues persist on low graphic settings. -Speakers: very weak, cannot use this for any group movie nights or anything. -Random issues: there is a new problem with my PC each week. Sometimes it is slow on startup, sometimes the CPU is overclocking, just this week my whole system has started freezing up at random moments. I've done a pretty thorough malware check and my system is at low risk for that anyway. These issues happened out of box. -F12: there is a button, on the keyboard, that's ONLY purpose is to flip your screen 180 degrees. Why? this isn't touch screen, the lid does not fold back, it has NO purpose except manually lagging the whole machine for a few seconds as it struggles to change the display. Pros: -lightweight? pretty easy to carry around and throw in a backpack. -Runs light game alright: things like minecraft and overwatch run alright for the most part. Occasional frame drops but they are ok. But if this is all you want to play you do not need a PC this kitted out. -cook an egg: you could safety scramble eggs on this thing Overall: there are so many problems with this thing, it is never functioning properly. I bought this for around $1600 but I feel like I got a chromebook. Absolutely do not buy this and based on the customer service alone I would avoid MSI altogether.

I just got this laptop today. I picked it up at the store, and I installed all of the software I decided I would need. After, I took a break and ran some games that worked wonderfully with the 3060 inside it. Additionally, I love that there are so many port options that allow me to forgo having to use a hub for ports (it is a bit disappointing that there was no ethernet port, but an ethernet usb cable was included). Overall, I can say that it was a very solid purchase that will be able to handle everything I need to do.