Customer Ratings & Reviews

Pros: Great build quality Nice travel on the keyboard Perfect travel size OK battery life Nice Screen Cons: SSD Speed- So the Best Buy model does not have an nvme drive, it has a SanDisk 512 GB m.2 SSD, which I do understand keeps the price down and is not really a bad drive. The drive is set up as two main partitions, one 280 GB partition for the C drive, a 175 GB partition for a data drive and a partition for recovery. I have already ordered a Samsung 970 Pro to replace the main drive and I’m just going to use the current drive as my data drive. Upgradeability- So along with the SSD upgrade I have to hit a point on the ability to upgrade storage and memory on this thing. If you are planning on upgrading anything on here be aware that you have to take the whole motherboard out to do it increasing the chance that something might get broke in the process. Heat- This thing gets hot quick. I understand that this is a small form factor laptop with a 6 core CPU, but I think that they could have used a better quality thermal compound to get the temps a bit lower. I know of people who have re-pasted their GPU/CPU and have enjoyed usually at a minimum 10C lower temps. I use Blender a lot and the first time I rendered something the CPU thermal throttled within a couple seconds. Granted I mostly use the GPU for final rendering, but I do use the CPU for viewport rendering. I have made some adjustments to the fan curves to mitigate some of the temps but they still get up there. Overall I think this is a great laptop. I use it mostly for productivity programs like Blender, Photoshop, Illustrator and Fusion 360 but I do game on it and I’m very impressed with the performance in such a small package. On Fallout 4 with the Geforce Experience presets I can get between 70 to 100 FPS. The screen on this thing is amazing and I’m glad that MSI decided to dump G-Sync for a 144Hz panel, this gives it the ability to use graphics switching to use the integrated graphics greatly increasing battery life. The color range is really good since it is a IPS panel and the refresh rate makes everything so snappy, even when not gaming.

I spent a long while looking for that holy trinity of gaming laptops: thin, powerful, and good battery life. I finally narrowed my choices down to this laptop or the Asus M501, but I decided on the MSI because I was more iffy of the Asus overall. My last laptop was probably twice as heavy and had been worn out so badly that the moment it was unplugged, it would die, so this is quite a step up. Unboxing the laptop and setting it up, I was very impressed and found myself wanting to figure out all the quirks and features this thing has. Pros: Extremely thin and light! I was very happy with the size, which is considerably smaller than my previous HP Pavilion, and probably half the weight. However, despite being light, the weight is proportioned perfectly. When using one hand to open the laptop, the bottom is heavy enough to not be lifted up with the screen. Design! Not going to lie, the gold bezel is pretty snazzy. It's sleek and looks even spiffier than a MacBook. I also prefer the gold MSI dragon emblem to a backlit one. Specs! This is my first gaming laptop, and it plays all of the titles I want without any issue. I'm not super picky about all the details, but it's a quality setup. You can play probably just about any of your favorite games on standard or even highest settings no problem! Speed! This is a beast of a laptop. Maybe it's because I haven't gotten a new laptop in a while, but from a complete shutdown to completely on, it's maybe 10-20 seconds. That's quick in my personal experience. Everything goes from black and dead to 100% in a very short amount of time! Settings! You can easily adjust most of your settings from Dragon Center; fans, color/display, keyboard. FN will also highlight some easy, quick selections like keyboard colors, opening Dragon Center, disable trackpad, screen display, webcam, etc. Cons-There really isn’t much, cooling isn’t bad but I have seen the idle temp in the mid 50s on the CPU. I don’t know how bad or good this is but wish it was a little cooler on idle. Overall Highly recommend this laptop to friends and customers!

Here is what I love about the GS65 Stealth. It's fast. It rendered a Revit file at best quality in 1h 22m that a competing high-end laptop with a 7700HQ and double the RAM, a GTX 1050, and a much fast NVMe SSD writing at 4x the r/w speeds took 2h 17m. The screen quality is very good and the colors are accurate. The keyboard is mostly comfortable to type on. Finally, the laptop is thin, light, quiet (the second time around), and has excellent battery life when not playing games or rendering. One very nice touch is the SteelSeries RGB backlit keyboard. I just wanted lit keys, but the customizable per-key colors and brightness levels are really fantastic. Here is how this laptop annoys me. First, these design choices are horrendous. Who in R&D decided that an upside-down mobo was a good idea? This was one of the worst decisions for the upgradeability. I work in IT and I don't even like to pull laptops apart. They're annoying and have little room. Plus, we have that delightful power connection on the right side cutting across the fan. The first laptop almost melted the cable. These are just ridiculously poor decisions on the design. Second, it's nowhere near as fast as it could be. The RAM is only 2400MHz and the SSD is non-NVMe. This is noticeable when rendering CAD files, when transferring lots of data, and when heavily multitasking. These are minor upgrades and could improve performance drastically. Third, the trackpad is fantastically bad. I had to have this exchanged because of the trackpad and poor build quality (loose piece of trim on the outside and temps over 90C when browsing the Internet). The second one is much better, but the trackpad frequently skips, freezes, and become non-responsive randomly. My next step is changing the Synaptics drivers for Windows Precision and hopefully that fixes it. Fourth, the sound of the fans on the one prior to exchanging it was irritating. Fifth is that annoying power light. It's extremely bright, in the middle of the laptop, and cannot be disabled while in use. Quite the opposite, in fact. It glows bright white while using the laptop. Not distracting at all. Finally, the build quality is pretty mediocre. Most reviews say that it's great, but I'm used to workstation-grade laptops and Macbook Pro aluminum unibody models that are really excellent quality and this just feels OK. Not cheap, per se, but definitely not as high end as it should be for the price. Even laptops at half the price feel like they're made of higher quality components. Now for the real issue. I only have one, everything else is easily lived-with. The only truly awful aspect of this laptop is backlight bleed. It was consistent on both the original and replacement model. It's so bad that on any image that is even somewhat dark it's VERY noticeable. All four corners and along the whole bottom of the screen are just BAD. I have several laptops and, as an IT professional, work with many more and this level of bleed is just unacceptable in any laptop over $1000. If there were better options at this price-point with the weight, battery life, and a trackpad, I would be all over it. Unfortunately, there isn't one other than the Aero, and that's practically unavailable. All in all, this is a good laptop. There's a lot of annoyances and the backlight bleed is terrible. However, I can overcome the speed annoyances and live with everything else. This earns my recommendation, but only just. I would probably buy another one and recommend it to my clients if they were to request a powerful thin and light laptop.

I reviewed several laptops prior to deciding on this one. I have had it for about a month and a half now and have not been disappointed. The small bezel on the screen makes the images look almost like they are floating in air. The picture is very sharp. This thing is fast. It boots up very quickly. I did add a secondary SSD for more storage. Adding the second drive wasn't too difficult, just be prepared to remove the motherboard to get to the ram and open SSD slot. I would suggest watching a couple of YouTube videos prior to jumping into it. I had read several post stating the fans were kind of noisy, but I have not noticed that at all. I am extremely happy with the size and weight of this laptop. My last laptop was the M17 R3 Alienware laptop and it was very heavy, and I can't get over how light this one is and how good of a gaming laptop it is. It looks very classy also, with the gold trim, and doesn't scream gaming laptop. Job well done MSI. My next laptop will also be an MSI as well.

The MSI GS65 with the gtx 1070 is definitely an expensive laptop, but it is also nearly flawless. The build construction is great and it feels solid. Pros: - Very clean black and gold design, not outlandish and it doesn't look like it tried too hard - The 144hz refresh rate on the screen makes every action and movement on the screen buttery smooth - The max q 1070 shreds through any game or program you throw at it - The screen is bright and color accurate - There is a lot of port selection - Thin and light - Battery life is excellent for a laptop with a dedicated gpu Cons - The speakers are on the bottom of the laptop, and they are not very loud - The fans can get very loud under heavy loads - The laptop can get a little hot even with the fans at max speed, causing a little bit of thermal throttling, but only when running programs (games) that truly stress the system If you are a person who has been looking at a system near this price range, this is a good one. On a side note, on every other charge, this laptop does not charge all the way to 100%, it charges up tor 94% or something along those lines, this is not a defect or a problem as I initially thought, it is apparently caused by software that was included to preserve the battery life.

This is best laptop I ever had! I can say that it is perfect laptop for gaming and productivity, thanks to the newest 6 core intel processor. It has very clean and impressive look, beautiful keyboard, with less embarrassing gamer elements. 144Hz screen does great job and it makes HUGE difference when compared to 60Hz. Impressive performance from the CPU/GPU, once tweaked Lots of IO. This beauty has big battery also which is very important for laptop and it is so light! If you are looking for new laptop from 2018 this is a MUST BUY.

I got this laptop as a present, and I have to say: I am very happy with it. It is fast, stylish and gaming is smooth. The fans are a lot quieter than I expected and I've had no overheating issues so far. The sound is also fine. The keyboard is very nice on the touch, and the track pack is also ok (although I mostly use my mouse). Battery holds long enough, for a gaming laptop anyhow. Overall, I am 100% satisfied. I strongly recommend this laptop if you are looking for a cool and performing machine at a good cost.

I will be traveling for several weeks internationally for work and the company provided laptop is fine for MS products but not much else. After researching almost all of the newer gaming laptops I settled on the MSI G65 Stealth Thin. I was not disappointed. The size and weight are perfect for traveling, the screen is as advertised, the keyboard is sized for typing comfortably but I did hit the mouse pad at times instead of the space bar, and the laptop runs most games at Ultra or High video settings very well. It runs the O365 suite of applications without issue but I don't use any applications requiring a lot of processing power. Some items to be aware of: the laptop comes with a lot of applications that I immediately uninstalled. Unfortunately one removed my wireless card so I had to reset to factory default and start over. The laptop can run hot and while the fans are not loud they are noticeable. I had issues with Bluetooth connectivity and had to configure the Intel Wireless Bluetooth under device manager to not allow the laptop to turn off the device to conserve power. This fixed my issue. Overall I am very satisfied with my purchase

I am a college student who is hardly home, either spending long hours on college campus or at work. Most of my weekends are spent at my family's house, girlfriend's house, or visiting friends. Got this to replace my dell xps 13 for work/college and gaming desktop I built 7 years ago. Gets the job done in luxury. This laptop is great for all those needs. Pros: 1. looks great, feels great, runs fast, size/weight is perfect for a mobile work/gaming life, no performance issues, MSI branding is awesome. 2. MSI programs are not as cumbersome as people made them out to be; I find their utility beneficial and quite simple to operate. 3. Battery life is better than most gaming laptops I am aware of. Cons: 1. Battery life still leaves something to be desired. 1-2 hours with gaming (myself and most do not game while unplugged anyways). 3-5 hours depending on settings. For 2 consecutive college courses (4 hours), this barely makes the cut. Does not compare to my old dell xps 13, which gets 5-6 hours. Plan for outlets if you are planning to work remotely. You can't treat this like a dell xps 13 or macbook air/pro, even if it a $2000 laptop. 2. Heat. Not as bad as people made it out to be but still hot. This is a fair trade off to me for the slimness and weight. Runs hot while gaming but manageable, though I do not game for more than 2-4 hours consecutively. I don't know how this laptop would tolerate say 10-12 hours of consecutive gaming. Still, would not recommend using on your lap for more than 30 minutes. 3. Expensive... this is the audi and BMW of laptops. You are paying for the brand. I like the MSI brand, so this was fine for me. 4. MSI has a history of poor customer support with repairs being expensive, again the Audi and BMW of laptops. 5. Steelseries (LED keyboard) interface. Attempting to customize the LED patterns on the keyboard is more stressful than navigating my internship in neurosurgery. I just use the default patterns. Summary: Great replacement for gaming desktop and school/work laptop for someone that is constantly out and about. In terms of work/professional laptop, cannot rival macbooks or Dell XPS series, though I was aware of this prior to purchase.

I bought the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin specifically because it had all the gaming horsepower I needed, but in a package that looks far more professional than most gaming laptops. I've had the Stealth for almost a week now and absolutely love it. For gaming, I've been able to toss almost anything at it and achieve 60+ fps on high to very high graphical settings. For work-related tasks, the computer runs lightning fast and allows me to get through work with minimal hassle. It pairs easily with all of my peripherals like mice, keyboards, and monitors, but honestly those things are all great in the laptop itself. The keyboard feels great to use (and looks spectacular), the monitor is beautiful and has a great aspect ratio, and the trackpad is buttery smooth. While the computer does get hot and the fans whir loudly under strain, that's just the price one pays for having a powerful laptop, and it doesn't diminish the experience for me at all. Additionally, the computer is light enough to take anywhere...not something one can say about most gaming laptops.

I've only had this laptop for a few days, so this is my initial take. This is a beast of rig, and would stomp on most desktops. 6 cores and a GTX 1070 with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB M.2 drive. It can run Star Citizen nearly as well as my OC'd and water cooled desktop. The screen is amazing, typing experience solid once you adjust to the shallow keys. Plenty of I/O. Very fast and I love the look of the laptop as I wanted a compact gaming laptop that would be my daily driver at work and for classes. I did a lot of research prior to purchasing and this laptop offered the most bang for the buck in a package that met my needs. There are of course drawbacks. It gets hot and the fans can get noisy under load. You'll want to get headphones since the fans get loud and speakers are subpar. Fingerprints, fingerprints, fingerprints. Web cam is only 720p, but it can be disabled, so that's cool. Battery life seems good if you aren't gaming and switch to the integrated graphics. The AC adapter is smaller than comparable laptops. This is the laptop I've been waiting for.

I was impress with how light is the weight of the laptop considering a few generations past laptops couldn't not have this kind of excellent specs. Running games at ultra and still great performance in games both gpu and cpu and with a refresh rate display of 144hz. Excellent keyboard for the touch of the user. Only down fall 512gb ssd storage I prefer at least 1tb of ssd. For buyers I recommend external portable Seagate hdd storage that I have of 5tb from amazon if you don't want to spend to much for the budget or wait for blackfriday or cibermonday special sales if you want to upgrade the internal ssd components for more capacity to do that you will need tools in my case I prefer the Ifixit pro kit. For teardown the laptop guide check videos on youtube for instructions or if you are going to buy it in best buy they can do the upgrade for you. When you buy the gs65 in best buy comes with a paper review & receive for a steelseries Siberia 200 headset when you review your purchase the headset will be delivered to your home.

Pros: Weighs 4.2 lbs 144hz display Remarkable RGB Steelseries keyboard Runs most games in ULTRA settings at 1080p with 60fps or higher (My Laptop comes with Geforce GTX 1070 Max Q) Intel 6-core processor Elegant and sleek design MSI Dragon Center 6-hour battery life for a gaming laptop Cons: Runs warm while performing tasks, but fan settings can be adjusted to counter act with this Hardware flexes in some areas Upgrading internals such as RAM and SSD can be difficult since the motherboard is flipped No SD card slot - Bought this laptop during a Black Friday in July deal. After having an Alienware m14x laptop for 7 years, I decided to look into gaming laptops once again. As someone who travels, photo edits and games at the same time, this laptop holds up well. I would definitely recommend this laptop especially for the price per performance. 5 Stars!

I bought this laptop to have a lightweight laptop compared to huge 17 inch models that were about 9lbs or more previously. I wanted something that was light that I could travel with, move room to room easily along with still be able to play any modern game. The 1070 has no problem playing any games out there along with the 1080p screen and 144 refresh rate was something I wanted as 15 inch laptops don't need 2k or 4k resolution since most times during gaming I have it hooked up to a external monitor. The light laptop means I can take it to watch movies without having to worry about battery life like I would need to with a desktop replacement. I have underclocked it slightly (-1.50volts) to help CPU temps to stay low but it hasn't affected FPS either.

I bought this laptop as I stay in hotels a lot for work and wanted to still be able to game with the best of the best. I had tested the other laptops at Best Buy and Costco and just didn't find one that had everything I was looking for. Until I found this one. It is small, lightweight, and stunning. I like that it has a small bezel and gorgeous (as my wife calls it) "rose gold" accents (they look more copper to me). The keyboard has slim buttons that aren't too clicky like other gaming keyboards and lights up to change colors if you want it to! I have played Destiny 2 on it and the game looked and performed beautifully. I am excited to see how my other favorite games hold up on this bad boy. The GTX 1070 is more than enough to play high end titles at high settings and with good frames. A few things I would note are that the fan is loud compared to other laptop fans I've heard previously and it does get hot; however, if you do turn the fan onto the ' cooler boost' mode, it will quickly return to a normal temperature. All in all, this is a great laptop for gaming on the go. Heck, even when I am at home, I have it set up next to my desktop PC for some dual screen fun. Highly recommend if you've been searching for that perfect gamers' machine. It is so light, I can barely tell it's in my backpack!

Yes, I may have said gaming and laptop don't go together. Not even in the same sentence. But now I think that's just wrong! This laptop is a beast, and so far blasts through any game I've thrown at it (Call of Duty Black ops 4 max settings? Sure, why not). It's light, compact and well designed. I was specifically looking for a gaming laptop that DOESN'T look like a gaming laptop. So you can use it at work, and get away with it. The Steelseries keyboard is a dream, and the RGB options endless (and can be disabled!). In short, would highly recommend. Downsides that I've noticed so far - can get pretty hot, and fans run loud under strain.

Pros: Super slim bezels. Great size and weight. Nice keyboard. Great battery life for a gaming laptop. Excellent Screen. Cons: It gets super-hot. Outside shows fingerprints very easily. Upgrading will be hard because the motherboard is flipped. It's a great laptop! I use it both for school and games. Great 144Hz screen with slim bezels, plays all my games nice and smooth with no stuttering. Love the RGB keyboard. I really like the design of this laptop, it does not look expensive but also does not look cheap either. The only real downsides are it does get loud at times but that is to be expected with everything this laptop is packing inside and the outside does pick up fingerprints easily. I would recommend this laptop to anyone and I already have my friend picked one up after seeing and using mine.

This laptop is excellent! I have never had a nicer one. It is whisper quiet, a perfect size and weight, and I love the fully customizable keyboard lights. It runs every game I've installed so far without a hitch, next is to test the VR setup. Would highly recommend.

In purchasing this product, I was a bit hesitant at first. I am a freshman in college going for a degree in computer science, and I wanted a fast, slim, light, and overall capable computer to carry me through my degree. I had done my fair share of research with all sorts of laptops prior to this one and was originally on the edge between the MSI GS65 or the Windows Surface Book 2. What eventually pushed me to decide on this laptop compared to the Surface and other similar gaming laptops was the powerhouse performance in a slim body at a reasonable cost (for a gaming laptop of course) PROS: -The Intel-i7 8750H is a phenomenal processor with excellent performance across browsing, gaming, programming, and more. In addition, the power saving mode throttles the speed relatively well at around 1.0 GHz to save battery life -The GTX-1070 is stellar for a laptop. I easily get above 60FPS on most intensive games at the highest settings without any problems -The keyboard is probably one of my personal favorites. The low design of the keys is not too low to where you're essentially tapping against the chassis, but it is just enough to get a good tactile feel of the keys. -16GB RAM. Enough said -Battery life is pretty good. With enough power balancing, I manage to get around 6-7 hours on average of non-gaming activities, about 1.5-2 hours of gaming on a single charge. Pretty good for a gaming laptop -The fan is not too loud and the customization for the fan speed is a big plus CONS: -The chassis is a little on the thin side. I recall pressing down on the area next to the trackpad and hearing a little squeak or sorts that comes from the body squishing down a bit. Not too much of a concern, as it's only noticeable if you press down moderately hard -Trackpad takes getting used to and is not the best feeling -The charging port is located on the right side of the laptop right in the middle of the body. Not really a con, just one of the weirder locations for a port I suppose -Biggest Con: bloatware. When I first got this laptop, I was surprised to see how much bloatware was installed on it. Everything from various control centers and suites to Norton Antivirus was installed. I highly recommend a clean install of the OS in order to fully utilize the speed and performance of the laptop (Side note: download and save all of the necessary drivers to a removable disk if you are going to clean install. I learned the hard way that even the Killer wireless driver gets uninstalled with a fresh install) Other than the mentioned cons, this is an excellent laptop for programming, gaming, leisure, studying, and professional work. I am in love with it and would gladly buy it again.

Build Quality: - Pros: Light, very stealthy, good track pad - Cons: more reinforcement in panels so it doesn’t creek Performance: - Pros: Fast refresh rate makes it seem very fast, great most games I played at 1080 between high and ultra settings for 90-120 FPS average - Cons: Not much, other than runs a bit hot when gaming (which doesn’t matter since you won’t really put it on your lap while you game) Screen: - Pros: Color accurate, covers decently wide spectrum of AdobeRGB which basically means you can actually use it for content creation (casual creation). I don’t use it for that so the display for me is very good for my tasks of playing games, watching videos, office and engineering programs with it’s super smooth 144hz refresh rate . - Cons: None at this price point unless you want a 4k display which I do not recommend (144hz 1080p is better than 60Hz 4k which would take from the performance anyway) Battery: - Ok for use on battery saving mode to watch some videos browse and other light activities. When you want to play games or other intensive tasks battery is ok for a gaming laptop but if your coming from something like an lg gram it is pretty bad (but battery isn’t the reason you buy a gaming laptop anyway) Keyboard and trackpad: - Nice feeling overall for both and would say they are second best in class following the razor (trackpad) and the aero (keyboard) Overall: - Best all round gaming laptop in class when you consider the cost and what you get. I would say the razor blade 2018 might be slightly better laptop for this segment but at 300-500 dollars more it just is no where near worth it.