Customer Ratings & Reviews

Pros: Sturdy, Solid, Stable. Very fast, very quiet. Cons: Upgrading SSD and RAM I am a truck driver away from home 300 days a year so my only real option for PC gaming is a laptop. My last laptop was 5 years old and finally died. As I was only home 2 days and needed a replacement I had to buy local, best buy was there for me. As these are comparisons to a 5 year old laptop I have to say I am blown away. The case is metal and feels quite sturdy while being half as thick as my last laptop which was all plastic. The KB is beautiful and can have colors assigned to individual buttons and you can make separate profiles for any games you have to light up certain buttons. Large, silky smooth trackpad which I rarely use unless I'm just watching movies. I was also impressed with the speakers as they are much louder and crisper than my old laptop. Gaming performance is what I would expect for a laptop in this price range, which is to say I was blown away. The 144hz screen is crisp and vibrant and so far every game I have thrown at it has run like butter. This laptop is also suprisingly quiet when you have the fans set on auto, with cooler boost on the 6,000rpm fans sound like my laptop is going to float around the room. I was able to get a max overclock on the gpu of +200 on the core and +350 on the memory. and though I was not able to stress test it I was able to run 3dmark a few times with no errors pulling out a 6213 over the performance overclock score of 5789. Now, as with anything, there is always a downside. With this laptop for me it was storage. While SSDs are blazing fast a 500GB hard drive is just too small for me. With AAA titles taking up over 40GB and having my entire movie collection on my hard drive 500GB is woefully inadequate. Luckily there is a second SSD slot and you can get 2TB SSDs for around $200. BUT, I learned installing memory and SSD upgrades in this laptop are quite involved. If you are not comfortable in the guts of a laptop I strongly suggest having a qualified tech do your upgrades. On my old laptop you just removed a back panel and viola, there were your memory slots and hard drives. Not so with the MSI GS65. First you remove over a dozen screws to take off the back cover. Then 3 more screws to remove the battery, another screw to remove the network card. Then you need to disconnect about a half dozen ribbon cables and 3 more screws. Then you must pull the motherboard and only then will you be able to access the SSD and memory slots to install any upgrades. Doing this the first time on a new $2,000 laptop is a nerve wracking experience. Also, I do not like how the factory drive is partitioned. I understand why they made a separate boot and data partition, but the way they did it forces you to leave the stock hard drive this way unless you plan on doing serious data wrangling backing up, formatting, and restoring. After installing my 2TB second drive that is where I keep all my data and installs. I would like to have merged the 200GB drive C and 300GB drive D into a single drive but cannot because they put the hidden recovery partition right between them. But, such is life. In all I am very happy with this machine and the only thing preventing 5 stars was the difficulty upgrading the memory and SSD. Here is a link to the 3dmark results I got https://www.3dmark.com/spy/7034725

> Pros: - Boots up incredibly fast. - Plays games at 60-120 FPS on high visual settings (Overwatch, World of Warcraft, DayZ). - Fast processor and adequate RAM. - Beautiful thin-bezel display. - Gorgeous chassis design. - Fully customizable keyboard. - Light and easy to carry. >Cons: - Runs a bit hot in the keyboard, but not terribly so. - Slightly awkward power/HDMI port placement. >Overall: Five stars, for certain. It's using the first Geforce RTX card released (2060) and an Intel 8th gen processor, so it's got some great tech; while not the absolute top-of-the-line, for the price, this combo of specs can't be beat. Add in the SSD for the incredible boot-up speed, and this Stealth model is a winner.

This is the thinnest gaming laptop in the market with some competitive specs. I have an eye on this product but never pulled the trigger as it’s not in my price range but bought it on one day sale and I’m very happy with the purchase. Coming to the looks it has thin bezels & camera on the top(not everyone is doing this recently) with nice gold/copper touch around the edges & good build and finish. The performance is great with its updated specs per the current market. The screen looks a lot like 4K even though it’s a 1080p HD. Lots of options to customize the performance, keyboard, screen display. Even though it’s thin they didn’t compromised on the battery - it’s pretty good compared to its competitors. Great graphics. Now coming to its cons they need to improve the thermals. It’s not great but good when taking its size into consideration. The track pad quality is good but doesn’t work the same. It’s missing a SD card slot. And by the way the motherboard is built upside down hence it’s difficult to upgrade in future. Overall, It’s a great laptop and I’m very happy with my purchase.

This computer has been nothing but amazing. The fact that it manages to have an RTX 2060 in it for $2000 with the RGB keyboard and 144 hertz screen makes it a steal. The SSD makes loading every application super fast. The thinness of the computer is the most impressive part, it manages to look very subtle in a public setting which is uncommon for most computers like this. It is very lightweight as well which makes traveling great. Overall one of the best products I have ever purchased.

I'm happy with it, fast startup, great graphics, awesome design, customizable keys, yeah love it.

First off, I would like to state that I am very tech savvy. I build media and gaming desktops on the side for my home job and have been doing so for the last 10+ years. I was looking for a laptop that could handle gaming, some video editing, and audio production on the go. I am not a big fan of MSI products, as I have had issues with many of their motherboards over the years. However, the sales rep at the Best Buy store I visited told me that these MSI laptops are a 'top seller' and they are the 'most in-demand'. I had my doubts, but between his suggestion and the reviews I had read online of other MSI laptops, I thought I would give it a try. First off, the laptop itself was fast. It booted up in less than 30 seconds, and I had no issues with speed. I put it through the torture test of benchmarks as well. From Primer 96 to the GPU Heaven benchmarks. It handled everything very well, and for the first week, I was pretty happy with it. However, there were some minor issues that started to pop up. I would notice that my mouse pointer became unresponsive when I would boot it up from a full shut down. The only way to get it to come back was if I ctrl+alt+delete and then hit 'cancel' on the menu. I then also started having issues with the track pad, and LED lights on the keyboard. I tried updating all the BIOS, firmware, and drivers. I even re-installed Windows 10 3 times. The issues still occurred. I called MSI tech support, and the gentlemen I talked to had no idea what would be causing these issues, especially after I had already updated everything. For a laptop that was over $2000.00, I expected far better results. I returned the laptop and am looking elsewhere at other brands.

I've been searching for a laptop for about 6 months now to replace my aging Lenovo. A week ago the hinges locked up and when I went to close the lid it snapped a whole bunch of stuff putting a tighter timeline into purchasing a new one. My biggest issue was what did I want? My old laptop had a discrete GPU but was old and heavy. Weighed about 5.5 lbs plus power brick. While this doesn't seem heavy when walking through airports that weight will eventually show it's self to your shoulders. So i was torn b/c i wanted some light like an ultrabook but powerful so i could play some games at leaset. I was about ready to settle on an ASUS S book that was about 2.5 lbs plus an eGPU which would be 5 in it's self but not always needed. Then one day i saw this puppy. Just slightly over 4 lb's but the internals are beefy! 2060 gpu, i 7 upgradeable (though not easy) memory and storage and 2 storage slots. I haven't had this long so it'll be first thoughts at this point and i may update later based off my observations.... Opening the box everything feels premium. Open the brown/plain cardboard box and you see the sleep black box hold the laptop protected by 4 pieces of thick closed cell foam. Remove this and the cellophane around the box and you see the laptop protected in a nice cloth cover to protect from scratches. Remove it and open her and a nice cloth piece b/w the screen and the keyboard. Premium. My first impressions of the looks are nice. Everything is subtle. With the exception of the shiny gold MSI dragon logo on the lid it's fairly subdued. This laptop does not scream Gamer by any means which is what i wanted. This is not really something you'd be ashamed to carry to coffee shop with you. Opening the laptop for the first time the base has a nice enough heft that i can one handed the lid and the bottom doesn't lift with it. The layout is simple, and other than the stickers that can be removed easily any badging is done by either recession or done glossy in a matte area, all very subdued. Build quality is good. Some flex in the screen the area but not horrible and some flex on the keyboard area..... The keyboard is simple, though it does not include a number pad. Keys offer a decent resistance and travel and a satisfying soft click with press. They are individually RGB lit keys but that also means another piece of software is needed to control that (So + and - there) There is very large track pad and is done by Microsoft precision! It's not the greatest but very decent! Palm rejection on it has been mostly good so far. My only gripe is that it is centered on the laptop yet, as we know, the keyboard typing area is more to the left so i tend to have a greater part of my right hand on the touch pad and sometimes put to much pressure and push it. Moving on the screen is decent as well Fairly bright or at least bright enough for me.. It is a 144hz but sadly only 1080p no 2k here, also no G-sync. This would be a complaint for some people but if it was then the gpu would be linked directly to the screen and use the dedicated graphics card full time killing battery life so i don't mind it at all. Colors look good. Small bezels on the sides and tops and they were able to put the camera up top. For I/O we have pretty much everything you could want. Thunderbolt o/c! We also have USB 3.1 type a x 3, Ethernet, mini DP, HDMI, and headphone/mic jacks. I would of preferred two TB 3 however if it were up to me. Also wish you could charge via the thunderbolt port but no go! only with the power brick! Speaking of that thing... the plug for it is about mid way on the right side. I've read complaints about it... doesn't bother me though, just takes some getting used to. The power brick is very small... about the size of a galaxy s7 just a bit thicker. The biggest gripe about this, is the upgrade ability. While yes it is able to be upgraded as far as ram and storage but not as easy as pulling the bottom cover off and swapping chips because the motherboard is upside down. That's right, so you have to remove the entire motherboard to upgrade it... Also, there is no Windows hello feature. So there is no supported camera and NO fingerprint scanner which saddens me b/c there is a model that has a fingerprint sensor in the power switch. This is kinda sad since the ssd they use is a western digital and it feel fairly slow honestly. It has 16 gigs of ram which is great but it's single channel not dual so i'll expect to upgrade that before long. I'll probably end up doing all upgrades at once since it's so hard but i want to put swap in a 500 Samsung nvme and a 2tb sata m.2 for storage and i'll probably go for 32 gigs of dual channel just for giggles :) On book the battery should get 8 hours of life but we all know that's not real. Through normal/light use i would say may be 4-5 hours at best. I would suggest doing some research on extending life of it by undervolting and unlocking the c states. The bios doesn't give you immediate access to options to overclock, however, there is a key sequence you can use to unlock all sorts of features but i wouldn't suggest this if you aren't 100% what you're doing b/c you can brick this thing and there's no cmos reset! So my overall thoughts so far is this is a solid laptop. Loving it so far. All metal case, but a fingerprint magnet. Full of power, I personally don't think you could ask for more from a laptop and still have portability. Oh man the portability is so great on this one. Easy to grab and go! The power light next to the button changes color to let you know which GPU is in use. White= integrated and orange = nvidia! Pros: Powerful Light Decent battery life for what it is Sleek looking Cons No fingerprint sensor! No gsync (this is for some i really don't mind it) Fingerprint magnet No touch screen Difficult upgradability.

I am so disappointed after I disassemble GS75. I saw the stock SSD is a low-quality version of NVMe. My friend bought gs75 from a different distributor. and he got a Samsung SSD nvme x4. while best buy version provided me one 1 the lowest SSD quality in the market. so disapointed for the 2500$ laptop worth.

I purchased the MSI GS65-006 8SE with the RTX 2060 Video Card. Beautiful keyboard and aesthetics, super lite and thin, and comes with (some) high end components comparable to other vendors for a reasonably priced mid-higher end laptop that can take anything you throw at it. PROS: Lite, Beautiful 144mhz 7ms screen, RGB keyboard, fast, and portable 15.6 thin laptop with the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 Series graphics cards. PCIe SSD storage is nice but could be better as they are less expensive to pure NVMe (Samsung) these days. CONS: Driver incompatibilities soon as you turn the machine on and start updating from their proprietary MSI Dragon Center. If you have tried to update Killer (anything Killer) over the actual Intel WiFi LAN Card, it kills your WiFi and makes it unrecognizable. Read previous years forums -/ Killer killed it on WiFi and LAN cards. But they made a deal with Intel so they are the same specs. Delete the Killer software and reload the Intel WiFi Card drivers it already has on the computer — it uses the Killer drivers and works just fine now. Other programs advertised don’t work on specific models and newer video cards but that may be a video card vendor (NVIDIA) issue in this case according to my experience and online notebook forums. Dragon Center refreshed says thunderbolt 3 drivers not installed but when I attempt to download and update — it simply does not update the drivers. Screen and cover seems flimsy with loud creaking noises — true story so I agree with the others. Finger magnet to the max! Be prepared to have your microfiber cloth always ready (they provide you with one which is nice). Speakers are low end at best — the sound is just okay, and nothing special running the Realtek drivers. Nahimic software and drivers won’t work, at least not for this model. There is some bloatware but minimal to be fair when competing bloatware on other computers. All new PCs and laptops have their issues but this is a great deal since they’ve lowered the pricing recently. And the day after I bought the laptop, I the price dropped. I took my receipt into the local Best Buy and they also gave me a $100.00 refund which is a good deal compared to other machines with these specs. Still can’t figure out how to get my free digital game downloads promised by Best Buy or MSI during the purchase. Perhaps it’s a glitch in their marketing and sales system? After reading all the online forums and reviews of last years models, this little laptop is a winner if you’re lucky to get a good heat sink install with no major driver issues like I am experiencing. My thoughts ... go with the 17” model or another card in the GS65 2019 models because from what I’m experiencing with my NVIDIA software, it appears to be the RTX 2060, and not the 2070 or 2080 Q cards. Only update your NVIDIA drivers from MSI until NVIDIA gets their new driver squared away. I’ll wait a few days and run some more tests but it will not open or let me use the NVIDIA Experience Software either. Oh well, I simply deleted it because I really don’t need it after reading more on it. But then again, why buy a $2K laptop with a higher end RTX Series video card that you can’t use all the features on? I would had given it 5 Stars but with the issues I’m having on the driver updates, Blue Screens, and Windows errors — I could not honestly give this laptop 5 stars. With the prices considerably dropping and continuously getting errors, I’m considering taking this one back and swapping it for the 15.6” or 17.3” with the RTX 2070 or 2080 card in it. I’m reading a lot of issues about the 2060 model cards and laptops with them installed; but nothing when comparing to the 2070 or 2080 Q model RTX Cards. I shouldn’t have to do a clean install on a brand new Windows 10 64 Bit Laptop but it is appearing to be more and more like that is what I’ll be required to do if I don’t swap this out before the 15 day period is up. After reading the forum on the 2018 models, these 2019s are a huge improvement though. Perhaps I just got a questionable one with the drivers not being updated correctly before or after windows 10 updates. Update your Windows first then do your dragon center MSI driver updates would be my advice. Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Being in a Ph.D. program, I reached a point where my old ultrabook (3rd gen intel processor) was inadequate for computational analysis of high throughput sequencing data. I needed something with more threads to compute my data much quicker which this things delivers! For example, I was able to perform differential gene expression analysis in approx. 20 minutes (over 45 min with my old ultrabook). When I was searching for the best overall laptop, the MSI GS65 fulfilled all of my criteria: (1) thin/light/portable (2) professional appearance (3) latest cpu (4) dedicated gpu for strong enough for 4k video editing and (5) battery life. The fully customizable RGB keyboard was the icing on the cake! The only con that I could think of is the motherboard orientation making it a hassle to upgrade components. Other than that, I highly recommend this!

I got lucky and got this at a deep discount. I had an MSI laptop before and I always thought the steel series keyboard on it was the best typing experience out of any of the laptops I've had. I wanted this one but it was out of my price range. I was browsing the site one day and saw that this was $600 off. Yes, $600! So I made a trip to Best Buy to pick it up and put my current gaming laptop (Acer Predator 17) on eBay. I'm very happy with the decision. The keys are shallower than before, but still a great typing experience. MSI has a good name for gaming laptops so I knew everything else would be good. I've had it for a couple days now, and it IS good. The only thing I would change is a design issue. I would have liked the majority of the ports in the back so the cords are out of the way when gaming. It's not a major thing, but it's the only thing negative I can say about this wonderful computer. Good job MSI. This is the first 144hz screen I've had and now I don't think I can go back to a 60hz screen. Gaming is very smooth. It is very light for a gaming laptop. I believe the lightest on the market right now. Even lighter than the razer blade 15. Since it's so portable, I can be more productive with this than heavier gaming laptops. I don't think I would have gotten it at it's regular price, but with a big discount, it's a Best Buy.

The MSI GS65 Stealth 8ES is an impressive gaming laptop the thin, small profile is amazing when it comes to portability and the level of customization that the RGB keyboard allows is impressive. However, while I am able to play Ubisoft's The Division 2 on ultra settings the laptop tends to heat up quite a bit which I find concerning, but otherwise, it works great.

I've been looking for a gaming laptop to replace my Macbook Pro for a few months now and decided to try out MSI. I was looking for a Windows PC as the main focus was on gaming. I had been playing games on the Mac but either kept running into games that were not ported over to Mac OS or that were but ran very slowly on the Mac. Specifically I was looking for a computer that would run Cities Skylines and Tropico 6 in at least medium to high settings. Originally I considered buying a 15" Macbook Pro but the price for one with *decent* graphics performance was way too high for me. After watching and reading a ton of different reviews I decided on either the MSI or a Razer Blade 15. Luckily my local Best Buy had both in stock and after seeing them in person I preferred the look of the MSI with it's gorgeous gold accents. It also helped that it was considerably cheaper than the Razer. The MSI (RTX 2060) plays all of the above listed games in ultra mode without a hiccup. I've also been pleasantly surprised by how far Windows 10 has come along, as I still use Windows 7 for work. I installed the Apple iCloud app and all of my documents and photos synced right over. I also have access to Apple Reminder and Notes via the iCloud website - the only thing I wasn't able to replicate from the Mac experience was iMessage, though this isn't a big deal for me personally. Overall I've been very impressed with the laptop and have sold my Mac. The only gripe I have with the laptop is the trackpad palm rejection, which as far as I can tell doesn't exist. The trackpad itself works very well, but due to it's size my right palm touches it while typing and causes the cursor to move around and click. I've had to learn to hover my hand over the trackpad without touching it, not idea. PROS: - Excellent gaming performance - Windows 10 is surprisingly good and stable - The matte screen is gorgeous, I much prefer it over the reflective Mac screen - Trackpad is large and works very well - I prefer the look of the laptop with the gold accents - A small thing, but Windows Snap is super useful - Battery life is decent, slightly less than the Mac - RGB keyboard is cool and super customizable CONS: - Not a huge fan of the font used on the key caps - The trackpad, while it works well for mouse use, has very poor palm rejection

Picked this up as a BB daily deal. So far, I couldn't be happier with what this machine can do. Pros: Nvidia RTX 2060 is crushing everything I've asked it to SSD is super quick WiFi chip is fast!! Easily pushing 500Mb/sec Doesn't come with a lot of bloatware Form factor is great - surprisingly thin! Minor Con: Fans can be a bit loud under load - they do cool it off quickly though and shut down when not needed. Using this primarily as a photo editing machine, but do game as well. Will probably upgrade the RAM/SSD in the near future to optimize it, but it has already sped up my workflow considerably.

I've had this laptop for a few weeks now and it's just been a great experience all around. I've used it for general tasks, web surfing. photo & video editing and some moderate gaming and it handles everything I can throw at it. The display is fantastic, the keyboard is comfortable and the laptop itself is extremely light and portable and the battery is top notch. I expect you will love this laptop as much as I do. I would note that when gaming the it runs pretty hot and can benefit from a stand with a fan to help mitigate the heat. Pretty common though with this type of machine.

This msi is great design i love the gaming on it. It doesn’t heat up that much and speed is so sweet i got 90 to144 fps on apex on high setting trying ultra setting soon RGB keyboard is so awesome overall i hight recomended this gaming laptop

Lets get the meh and bad out of the way: - unboxing the laptop would not boot without being plugged into the wall on first boot, despite the battery being near full. - Speakers are acceptable. - The power Brick is average not too big, but wish it was smaller. - Battery will not charge using type c - No card reader - Port placement is a little annoying especially the type-c - Lack of G-Sync or any Sync support - Driver support page is hit or miss. some are provided, others do not work at all. (ie. Thunderbolt) - Bloatware. Come with Norton and a variety of other MSI apps which all crashed until they were updated to the newest versions. - Laptop refused to install Direct X until I wiped it using a fresh download from Microsoft (NOT the OEM copy. It re-installs the blatware and problems.) - Extremely time consuming to upgrade. What is the use of populating 1 RAM slot and giving me and extra M.2 slot if you make it impossible to get to these slots? - Re-mapping keys is easy, but randomly does not work on certain keys or with certain commands. The software provides no feedback as to why. ie. Re-mapping Volume, birghtness to not require Fn key use. - The power management program is ok.. But it offers only shortcuts to switch profiles, and has confusing options with no explanation. A powerful tool, that lacks power in some odd ways. Now for the good stuff - Solid build, minimal flex. - Good weight, feels heavy enough to feel valuable, but light enough to be portable. - Screen looks amazing - 144hz refresh looks awesome even just browsing the web and moving windows and opening menus. - Performance has been excellent in most games. Anno 1800 hits 40-120 FPS on high depending on what's on screen, The Division 2 runs on High at a solid 60FPS, and Borderlands GOTY Enhanced hits the 144FPS nearly constantly. - Keyboard feels nice, but key spacing is a little odd to get used to. - Track pad is nice and wide, and overall feels good, but is meh compared to a mac touchpad. (I want to click ANYWHERE MSI! Not just the bottom left and right!) Conclusion. Out of the box the laptop is fine, and ofcourse all the power is there despite the bloatware and lack luster apps crashing. Once those are fixed or you wipe it using a fresh download of windows 10 it gets MUCH better.

I've only had the laptop for around 2 months, so keep in mind this is by no means a comprehensive review. Mostly I've been using it 1-3 hours a day, and it's mostly been casual Youtubing. Volume is quite good. Even in a semi-loud environment, 40-50 is sufficient if you're using speakers. Since I've mostly been using it for videos, I've kept the battery usage at "best for battery". Under the aforementioned and this condition, 60% of battery gives me between 2-3 hours of life. Also I've never had a problem with heating. The laptop is lightweight and is perfect for on the go. I've noticed screen flickering (brightness) at a certain time of day, but I'm assuming that's due to some feature I'm unfamiliar with, or some setting I overlooked. This isn't a real issue and only lasts around 30 seconds. The SSD is very fast as boot time is under 10 seconds. Unfortunately, I did have a BSoD the other day when I tried to update my video driver. Considering the time I've had it, this is definitely cause for concern. Overall, this seems to be a good low-mid end laptop, perfect for someone constantly travelling.

I returned this, it sounded like a baby jet engine every time I played a game. The fan would also kick into high gear when the SSD was heavily used, which is odd. It gets really loud, I measured it at 59 decibels near the keyboard at max fans. And it's not just the fan loudness, it's also the pitch: it's not a neutral sound and the pitch increases as it gets faster. It literally sounds like a plane taking off. Temps were very high (90C+) when gaming, I undervolted and it helped bring them into the high 80's. I imagine it needs a repaste, MSI is legendarily bad at applying thermal paste. However, I didn't want to try that in my 15-day window, this computer is apparently super hard to take apart and easy to break when you're in there (motherboard is upside down). Cinebench was 20% less than another other similarly spec'd 8750H/2060 laptop I own from another manufacturer. I attribute this mostly to RAM only running single channel (this comes with a single stick, you'd need to add another for dual channel). Also, I imagine thermal throttling on the MSI played a part. I'm not sure why MSI would choose to put in a single stick of RAM, it's only maybe $10 cheaper for them, and I'd expect dual-channel out of the box on a premium laptop like this. Other stuff: Nice size for a gaming laptop. Very nice 144hz screen with good color and viewing angles, no backlight bleed at all. Build quality is pretty good, it's plastic but has very little flex. Good trackpad. Ridiculous keyboard font, although I could live with that. Average-speed Kingston SSD. Again, this is MSI cutting corners in a weird place. For a few more $$, they could have put in a much nicer SSD.

I have enjoyed the computer this far. Pros: slim, lightweight, powerful and fast Cons: fan is loud when playing a very intense game, shows finger prints on the places around keys