Customer Ratings & Reviews

Seriously, get it on sale while you can, I've been nothing but impressed since getting mine. In my own benchmarks I would rate the CPU as the same performance level of a desktop Ryzen 5 2600, or a desktop I7-7700K(except with 2 extra cores, and 4 extra threads). The GPU in my own testing is very close to the performance level of a Desktop RTX 2060..... don't let the 75W rating fool you, this thing is still a little beast. You will of course want to add another 8GB stick of RAM and a bit more storage down the line, but even with that, the price for what you get is still amazing. There are a couple tweeks you might want to consider, the first and most important would be a CPU undervolt of around -100 millivolts, this can be done in BIOS when you enable the "expert mode" in BIOS settings by holding (right control+right shift+left alt+F2)..... the undervolt will improve CPU performance and cooling. Next thing you might want to consider is creating a custom fan curve in Dragon Center, the stock fan curve isn't horrible, but if you don't mind trading a little silence, you can definitely get some better cooling with your own curve. One other thing. If you don't want this thing forcibly updating you to Windows 11(it will try believe me), make sure to disable the TPM module in the BIOS security tab. Other than that, game on! this thing is surprisingly capable!

Perfect for school and gaming (Valheim, Raft, Minecraft, etc.) My biggest complaint is the noise of the fan and how hot the computer gets. The MSI dragon center is helpful for teaching the computer when to use balance versus performance but the fan itself just doesnt keep up well. I bought an external cooling pad and have had no issues.

Great laptop but needs more RAM, bought it with a PNY XLR8 16 GB stick initially to up it to 24, and have since upped it to 32 total with a second XLR8 stick. A cooling pad is definitely recommended for heavier gaming though, a laptop 3060 can handle more than you'd expect, but in this casing it will get rather hot without the extra help.

Picked this up during a sale for $800 dollars. At that price, I'm blown away by this laptop's performance. I took the money that I saved from the sale and went ahead and purchased 32 gb of ram, the maximum this computer can support. Within a few months I'll be adding an additional SSD. Both of which are very easy to install and will future-proof it for years to come. The graphics card is great, everything runs smooth and quick. There's a mild bottleneck in the processor, but overall, if you're looking to game, this computer runs great. I would definitely recommend it. If you can get it on sale, get yourself at least another 8 gb stick of ram. The 32 I got from Amazon was roughly 140 dollars or so, but it guarantees the best performance possible from this machine, and with it I can run professional graphics/video editing software, play AAA games on high-ultra settings, and boot/load programs virtually instantaneously. Great buy.

The performance it’s great but the temperature is so high. If yo get it on a good price is not so bad

I've owned multiple MSI gaming laptops over the years, so I was surprised at how disappointed I was in the GF65. Granted, the last few I personally owned were higher-end models in the $1500-$2000 range. But a family member was looking for an sub-$1k gaming laptop and the GF65 seemed to have good reviews. And it was on sale. So I took a chance. I wish I hadn't. The old adage is true: you get what you pay for. For gaming, the Intel i5 and RTX 3060 GPU didn't disappoint. Action was smooth, frame rates were on-par with various review benchmarks, and the screen -- despite not being a high-end panel -- was actually quite good. Fan noise, even when adjusting the fan curves via the included software, was a bit loud. Even when using a laptop fan pad for extra cooling, and despite temps not approaching anything close to throttling, the fans seemed to gleefully spin away at absurdly high RPMs. I'm not sure if this is something that could be addressed with a software/firmware update, but it was annoying enough that it was worth mentioning in the review. Thus far, the pros were outweighing the cons. But then I started running into issues that I could not ignore. The MSI GF65's wifi performance was abysmal. Despite running a tightly optimized network at my office and my home, we couldn't achieve anything over 40-50Mb speeds and about 80-150ms latency, despite being tested on fiber connections. After reinstalling drivers, checking the physical antenna connections inside the laptop (more on that later), and confirming everything was "working as intended", it was obviously this poor little laptop just could not keep up. And with such high latency, I don't see how MSI could justify using this wifi chip in a laptop meant for gaming. Comparatively, my old MSI laptop, my current Asus, as well as the Macbook that I use for work easily achieve speeds in the 200-480Mb range over wifi. But the straw that broke the camel's back was the poor build quality. As mentioned before, I had to open up the laptop to investigate if the wifi antenna connections were solid. And I planned to install some extra RAM and another m.2 drive while I was in there. For the record, I have 30+ years experience building/repairing PCs -- including multiple technical certifications -- and I have past experience working in electronic manufacturing. Opening PCs and laptops and working with their components is second nature to me. The GF65 was one of the most stubborn laptops I've ever opened, and even more cumbersome to put the bottom cover back on, which must be aligned perfectly on two sides to get it to properly snap back into place around some very delicate USB ports. This is made harder by the fact that the plastic is very low quality. Thankfully nothing broke, but it felt like it could at any moment. (Several reviews/upgrade videos I watched on Youtube for this model indicated it is incredibly easy to break some of the clips on the cover if you aren't extremely careful.) Additionally, the trackpad on the GF65 is one of the worst I've seen on a laptop since probably the late 90's. I've had issues with MSI trackpads in the past -- from their wonky sizes to their weird positioning. And for most gaming laptops, people use an external mouse and disable the trackpad. But it still needs to work, and it should work well. Immediately out of the box, the trackpad on the GF65 was spongy and loose toward the bottom, requiring almost zero effort to engage a click, whereas the top two corners were crunchy and firm, the way you'd expect. This inconsistency was problematic, as, depending on how you rested your hand on the palmrest and tapped the trackpad, either it wasn't hard enough to get a click, or it would double-click because the slightest touch engaged the button twice. But the most comic effect was when we discovered that you could engage the trackpad... by tapping on the BOTTOM of the laptop. The bottom half of the trackpad was so sensitive, that just by having the laptop on your lap, and making a slight movement or adjustment in your seat, the buttons would click. As I said at the outset, you get what you pay for. If you're after bang for the buck, it's hard to go wrong with an i5 and a 3060 at this price. That's assuming you can overlook the bad wifi, the loud fans, the comically awful trackpad, and the flimsy build quality. But if you can spend a bit more (or a lot more), there are much better quality laptops on the market. Ultimately for my family member, we ended up returning the MSI and went with an Asus TUF laptop instead. It was several hundred dollars more, but the difference in quality was night and day. We also got a larger screen, faster CPU, more RAM, a larger SSD, and significantly superior wifi performance. That Asus I can recommend. The MSI, I cannot.

Awesome, affordable gaming laptop. I did upgrade the Ram to 16gb and added another m.2 for more storage. Overall, I'm very pleased with this purchase. It does get hot, but never hot enough to cause any issues or crashes. Seems typical of gaming laptops I've seen and used in the past.

If you get it at the right price its unbeatable. Don't know the current price but no doubt its several hundred less than the next inexpensive 3060 equipped laptop on the market. That is after all its role. Certainly missing a few nice to have features (fingerprint reader, usb c charging, huge battery) but for raw gaming performance on a budget its a winner. Just make sure to get it on sale and add another stick of memory to make it dual channel 16gb. If you can't get it on sale spend a little more and get a little higher end laptop with previously said nice to have features as well as a ryzen 5000 or 11th gen intel and higher wattage 3060. This is only a winner when its deeply discounted.

fantastic performance for the price. the cpu is a bit older, and the gpu is not the absolute fastest, but they are both plenty to enjoy almost any game out there at 1080p and 60 frames per second, usually on high settings. more storage and ram are going to be needed by most users who are more serious gamers, but fortunately those upgrades are relatively easy to make to anybody who knows how to make a screwdriver and not terribly expensive. if you get this at the price i did, 800 bucks, you can get 16gb of ddr4 ram and another 512gb ssd and still keep your total spent under 1000. brilliant for reliable mid range gaming in a mobile platform. if its not on sale, which it seems to often be, the value is much less striking, so try to make sure you get it for the 800 "sale" price that seems to happen at least once a month

Anyone looking to get into portable PC gaming, this definitely checks all the boxes. I did do what most people suggested which was add 8gb of ddr4 ram and 1 tb m.2 ssd and this computer performs great. I do suggest waiting to get it on sale for $799. After spending about $135 for the upgraded parts you are still paying under $1000 for a RTX 3060. I mainly play Fortnite and Warzone and on medium to high setting seeing around 120 - 140 fps. 1080p display is more than enough for a 15 inch display. If there were any cons it would be 1, Don’t expect great battery life but that’s one of the trade offs with a gaming laptop which is so power hunger. Maybe watching YouTube only I managed around 2.5 hours. And 2, it does attract fingerprints a lot. Need to carry a microfiber cloth and wipe occasionally.

144Hz with a RTX3060 is great for the price. LED backlight is red can’t be changed. But you give up cosmetics for a good PC at a good price. Not the easiest to upgrade, not the hardest. No easy slot for the RAM or SSD, have to remove the whole back. But it does have an open m.2 slot and an open Ram slot. The RAM stick it comes with can be replaced as well. I replaced mine with two 16GB sticks and put in a 1TB M.2. No space for a SATA drive. I’ve had no issues. It plays games well, upgraded fine. I’m happy with the purchase (especially when it was on sale.)

The RTX3060 provides great gaming performance with the 10th gen i5 not affecting performance too much. The laptop has smaller battery so battery life is not great, limited storage and it can get really hot, but great buy when on sale.

The laptop shipped without any damage. This laptop runs hot and the battery life is short. This is expected because it is a gaming laptop that required more power than a regular laptop. I suggest upgrading the RAM DDR4 to 16GB... I bought Crucial SO-DIMM 16 GB and it works great. The cooling boost is loud but it cools the laptop excellently, but the software may be buggy. I once updated the app and lost all controls (Uninstalled and reinstalled the app) and it works. The bottom is open with visible copper pipping so a cooling pad may work well with this type.

Yes it is a little light on installed memory and storage. But those are very easily rectified. I managed to get one when they were on sale for $300 off. Since I already a 16GB memory kit I took out of another laptop an a 2TB M.2 drive I was not using those went into this. Turned it into a gaming beast! The only drawback is that it runs a little hot gaming, but then every late model GTX and/or RTX laptop does. Just buy a good cooling pad to put under it. Problem solved! Performance in most games is as good as the i7 10800H, RTX 3060 Aorus model I bought a year ago. Bottom line, Plan on adding another 8GB memory module, more if you can afford it. And also plan on needing more storage.

This laptop is very good for AAA games and it will play more demanding games at lower resolutions out of the box with 8gb of ram.I bought and installed 32 GB of ram plus a 1 TB hard drive for additional storage and the benchmarks more than doubled.I play Microsoft Flight Simulator with high settings and I can get approximately 50-60 fps and more depending on the background scenery and the screen is bright and clear.I am happy with my purchase but serious gamers should look to get at least 16 GB and 1 TB storage since the 512 GB SSD fills up quickly.

Great gaming laptop on a budget. Has a really nice graphics card for the price. Upgrading the ram makes it even better. Been playing a little over a year and can run games like elden ring at 60+ fps on higher settings.

Most of the finer points of this beast have been written already - but one thing I want to point out - this has the RTX 3060 (I wish I could underline that) - again the THIRTY SIXTY - this is huge. SOOO many other laptops in this price range come with the 3050 or 3050 TI. Before I go on - I do IT for a living. I've built my own PCs for 20+years. I know a thing or two about PCs, as I've been PC gaming since before Windows even existed. ;) For those of you without a lot of computer experience - those numbers may not mean like much - it's just one digit! But the performance difference is HUGE. The 3060 in test after test, pushes over 58% more power and graphics capability than the 3050TI (laptop version) and 67% more than the 3050. Though this puppy runs hot... VERY hot, it's because you're powering that amazing graphics card. I highly recommend running this with a laptop fan underneath (they can be had for $20) to keep it from either burning your lap, or burning out the PC. (Heat is horrible for PCs, and the hotter it gets, the slower a PC goes, until it crashes, and/or melts some component inside.) This has a great screen, a great GPU, and it's super easy to upgrade (I definitely recommend getting more RAM, and if you're going to game on it, you'll want another NVME drive, which they also make it easy to install, though you do have to take the back cover off...) If you can catch this on sale for $800 or less, like I did, you're getting one of the best steals of any laptop on the market today. Probably the best bang for your buck for anything less than $1300 as of this writing, on 6/24/22. Happy gaming or any other graphics intensive work! If you don't do anything graphics intensive, I'd recommend a lighter, cooler, and less expensive machine, probably a 2-in-1 Dell, which I also have, like the Inspiron 14 2-in-1. Have owned two different models, going back 8 or so years.

I bought this laptop in February 2022 and am writing this in October 2023. I've spend hundreds of dollars in repairs and this laptop is still at the end of it's life as it will not accept a charge. Not just the battery (which in itself is abhorrent)- it will not charge, even if plugged in. I have replaced the charger multiple times and brought it in to try to fix the problem, but a few weeks after it is fixed the problem starts again. It's loud, even if I'm just using MS Word and no other applications it nearly overheats. If I play games, it often does overheat and shuts off entirely. I contacted MSI's customer service to see if it had a warranty since the laptop is relatively young and frankly has been babied, but was rudely told that any warranty expired after one year. Guess having the laptop die a couple months after the warranty is a good business model for them.

Great Laptop for $799. Solid I5 and RTX 3060 Slap another stick of RAM in and you are good to go. People that have any knocks on this laptop for the money have never owned a gaming laptop. They get hot!!! Buy a cooler and you are good to go. It’s a must! The heat pipes and fans do the best they can. You can’t but the GPU for the cost of the laptop. And please shut up about battery life!!! If gaming plug it in!!!

Great laptop runs every game well at medium even triple aaa titles, only warms up but if you use super fan mode which is loud it we’ll do The job!