Customer Ratings & Reviews

This is my first laptop ever and as someone who never really had the best of personal PC's, this laptop has been amazing for me. I'm able to do just about anything in terms of gaming; graphics card can handle most games on very high (I have yet to test ultra), gets a bit warm, but has a great ventilation system and no bottleneck. One downside I see is the placement of the motherboard (it is inverted - if you want to replace the SSD or RAM, you have to completely remove the motherboard so you can get to it because those components are facing the keyboard. I knew about this before I bought it and I have no plans to upgrade the laptop just yet. I work in tech and opening laptops is an everyday thing for me so it's not an issue - just an annoyance because it will take a few extra steps to do something that should be simple (If you're not tech savvy, you should leave it to someone with experience in opening laptops). Outside of that, the laptop is beautiful and sleek. Lot's of power packed into a lightweight and slim laptop. The Steelseries keyboard is a bonus, easy to use and customizable. The display is beautiful for a laptop, sharp and clean and the refresh rate is a huge help when gaming. The webcam is decent; I find most onboard webcams don't give the sharpest of pictures - If you do a lot of streaming, you will need an external webcam if you want a high quality picture. The main reason I'm giving this 5 stars is due to the value vs what I paid for it - this is a steal. If you want something with more power though, I recommend the Pro version.

Out of the box this laptop was almost perfect. There was a small Amount of bloatware which was easy to remove. My unit came with a defective battery and had to be sent out to be replaced. The screen is very color accurate (98% of srgb) and extremely bright. It is great for media consumption and gaming. The bright screen makes this laptop ideal for indoor and outdoor use. The Speakers do not sound the best as they are downward firing and lack bass. But, they do get extremely loud and can be configured through an provided by MSI. The keyboard has decent travel and is not mushy. The trackpad is centered and not offset which may be and issue for some but its easy to adjust to. I thought I wouldn't be a fan of the RGB keyboard but it is vibrant and looks awesome. The apps to manage the different aspects of the laptop such as the keyboard lightinh, fan speeds, battery calibration, drivers, etc. are straight forward and easy to use. The battery life is not the best with such powerful hardware but still manages to last me most of the day before having to charge. The gaming experience on this laptop has been absolutely amazing. While the temperatures may get how undervolting the laptop easily fixes that. The 144hz refresh rate is achievable in most modern games on this device but you may have to lower in game setting. The smooth screen and high fps made the gaming experience enjoyable. This laptop can also easily handle any type of productivity work with the keyboard being comfortable to type on. I'd imagine that most programs whether it be photo/video editing, 3d rendering, etc. will be no issue for this laptop to handle. Overall, I would say that this laptop was a perfect choice for me as a college student who is also into gaming. My Reason for taking off one star is due to my unit having a defective battery which had to be sent out and replaced. I'm still having an issue where the battery will not charge to full capacity.

Greetings fellow gaming nerds and friends! I just bought this yesterday, and so far I love it. (Would like to give it a 4.5 if I could). I have been researching and saving up for a laptop like this for about a year now. I was looking for something that was portable (not crazy heavy or big like many gaming laptops), a good amount of storage and an awesome graphics card because I like to play games on the go and I am a college senior completely online. Also, I didn't want to break the bank either. So far, everything has pointed me in the direction of this guy. Short and simple: Pros: -It's the perfect size and weight -The graphics are pretty awesome -Just put Destiny 2 on here and there isn't a lag in picture quality and it keeps up with online Crucible and Iron Banner matches without any issue (aside from a good internet connection) -Setup was relatively easy... and I'm a chick and not very tech savvy -There's a pretty decent amount of storage space, so I can have multiple games on here as well as save all my files from school. -Aesthetically, the pictures on here do not do it justice. It's incredibly sleek, huge track pad, and the key board lights up and fades in a gold color matching the rest of the black and gold accents. Cons: -Gets pretty hot quickly, especially when gaming. You can't sit back and have this on your lap. I put a textbook under it to allow ventilation underneath. -On that note^^, when the fans kick on, it's loud. I can hear them running in the other room kind of loud. Hope this helped your decision making process! Cheers!

I needed a laptop for college, I wanted a laptop that was portable for school, do homework, and then be able to play games when I am at home. I was able to catch this laptop on sale for $1,400 plus another $100 off with a student discount. Though with about another $100 with tax, I paid about $1,400 which is still totally worth the price. But, if I could turn back time to Amazon Prime Day. Where the Acer Predator Helios 300 and the Predator Triton 500 were available for $1000 ( not including tax) I would rather have the Triton 500, as I did not have the money available yet to purchase these laptops, unfortunately. But, I am happy to have this laptop over the Helios 300, mainly due to looks and portability ( Helios 300 is almost a pound heavier than the MSI). But for $300 less, I would have rather had the Triton 500, getting a better GPU with the RTX2060, though it had the 8th gen i7 instead of a 9th gen. I have had this laptop now for almost a month and a week of taking this laptop with me to my classes. This is my first time owning a half-decent laptop and this laptop has surpassed all my expectations. A couple of deal breakers people may have with this laptop are the upgradability factor, with this laptop having an inverted motherboard. I would get anxiety about messing something up so I am not going to be trying to upgrade this laptop. I wish I could easily upgrade because easily the biggest issues with this laptop are the storage available. Only a 512GB SSD. Which means you will run out very quickly if you play a variety of games. I am currently about 73% of my storage used with about 8 games downloaded and about 50 other programs. So storage will be an issue for many people. The few negatives I have with this laptop is the very loud fan noise during gaming, which is to be expected with any laptop capable of playing games. I leave the fans on auto and during regular use ( like streaming content, note-taking, and web browsing) the fans are pretty much silent. Another negative may be the speakers, as they are downward-facing speakers. I do not care about laptop speakers as I use/have headphones with me about 99% of the time. Though these are still the best laptop speakers I have ever had so. Build quality is very good, with a very good screen in my opinion. Went from a 60hz screen to a 144hz screen for games is the best thing you can do if you want to improve your gaming experience. Temperatures have been great for me, gets warm while gaming, but never got warm otherwise. I now have the CPU undervolted and has made the laptop stay a lot cooler ( I am not sure if undervolting the CPU voids your warranty so do it at your own risk, but I would highly recommend if it does not void your or you don't care warranty as it is really easy, just look up some tutorials). Keyboard and trackpad are excellent. Big glass trackpad, and a responsive keyboard, I've been enjoying typing notes and such with this keyboard ( I play with an external gaming keyboard and mouse for games).

The MSI GS stealth 296 is a really great laptop so far! I bought it for school, and it seems to be running very well right now. The specs on it are no joke with NVIDIA GEOFORCE GTX 1660 TI makes the games on here look amazing, playing some Gears of War 4 on it I didn't see any frame drops. The weight on it is very light and the screen is thin. It is shocking with how much power it has to be this sleek, and nice. The battery so far has been good and it seems that you can control with how you want to prolong the battery's life span. Though the fan does get kinda loud when playing a game it doesn't seem to be bothersome too much. Overall this laptop is amazing and I am very excited to have purchased it, and can't wait to play more games on it!

I was unsure what gaming laptop to get as there are many out there. However, I am very well pleased with my decision to purchase this laptop. It has a premium feel and doesn't yell "GAMER" which I enjoy. I have a list of pros and cons that I think really made this laptop stand out to me. PROS- -very well built, nice subtle golden design -keyboard is comfortable, nice rgb lighting -easy customization by using the Dragon Center app( can control fan speed, gaming mode, etc.) -an AMAZING 144hz refresh rate to make games seem very smooth -the 1660ti is a beast when it comes to gaming(most people play fortnite and I can say at get up to 135 fps) -laptop doesn't get to hot, the customization of the fans really help out. -battey good for a gaming laptop CONS- -The keyboard had problems starting out(the rgb lighting wouldn't sink up so it was stuck in a rainbow mode) -this thing is a fingerprint magnet, luckily they included a microfiber cloth -speakers are average -when gaming with the laptop plugged in it was amazing, however I think it goes into power saving mode when not plugged in because I was getting around 24 fps in fortnite (however I think there is a setting to change this) Overall I think this laptop is amazing. The design is sleek and the performance exceeds what I expected. Would definitely recommend this :)

I just recently bought this laptop and I am happy with the purchase. I had to return the Asus Zephyrus that I bought because the fans were being extremely noisy even with another fan sitting underneath it. Unlike the Asus, this laptop is pretty good with the cooling system. I haven't had to use the fan for this laptop so far. I'm only complaining because I want to use this laptop for class as well so I can't have the fans disturb class. This laptop is slim, it's not loud, and is light enough for my to carry in my backpack without it being an issue. As for gaming, I don't play the graphics intensive games but for league I can push around 120 fps with high settings on so that's a great thing. The speakers are decent enough but since it's on the bottom of the laptop, I find that if I have the laptop on my lap it tends to muffle out some of the sound. I would recommend this product for people who want to have a notebook for school that is slim and for people who game as well. I can't think of a reason why this wouldn't be a good choice.

Solid gaming PC with good battery life and nice screen. I like the keyboard quite well and mouse is okay. I use usb mouse mostly, so mousepad didn't affect my decision much. Computer does get a bit hot, but that is to be expected of a performance laptop, especially one so slim. No issues with it performance-wise and love the speed and look of the laptop. Definitely recommend.

There are definitely laptops that compete fairly evenly with this one but I chose this because it was a mix of everything I needed. The 144hz display is really nice and was definitely a nice touch to the laptop, especially with the thin bezels. It can run basically any game with 60+ frames on the highest settings but the problem is that it gets pretty loud. Your CPU will run around 80 degrees celsius if you're on the auto fan mode and it will get loud and hot. The cooler boost addition is nice but you have to be in your own room with no one around because you can hear the fans from your front door. The trackpad is really smooth and the keyboard has a nice feeling as well. It's not too heavy at 4 pounds but if you're looking for something light to carry around without having to worry about gaming power then you should perhaps look at a lighter option. The material build feels nice but it can most definitely become a fingerprint magnet, it's inevitable. I personally use this laptop basically everything from gaming to school work to programming. This laptop is for people who want that nice graphics card to run their favorite games on high but also want to be able to bring it places to do their work. Few things to note: It runs games amazingly. It gets hot when gaming or under a heavy task load. It's fairly light for what it provides. It's loud when you make it work hard. Battery life doesn't last too long depending on how you use it. Can't run demanding games without being plugged in. Overall it's a really nice laptop with all the essentials and more. Definitely a must-have for a college student who can't have both a gaming pc and a laptop for school.

I've had this laptop for over a month, and I absolutely love it. As with every product, there are some pros and cons, which I will highlight: Pros: Super light weight. Incredibly fast boot times with the OS on the included SSD. 9th Gen CPU renders very quickly and smooth. The 1660Ti GPU performs amazing and run AAA games with no issues. The back-lit Steel Series keyboard is great to type on, has great feedback and has some awesome customization for the RGB lightning. -Battery life with a laid back profile in Dragon Center provides excellent battery life for daily work use. Some Cons: - The laptop runs hot, which is expected for having such a thin chassis. Many people recommend repasting with liquid metal and using throttle stop to get better temperature/performance. - Due to the thinner chassis, components, such as the screen hinges can be a but wonky, so don't be too rough with it. - This laptop only has one 16GB Ram stick, so running single-channel can limit some performance. The reason for the 4 stars is due to the fact that in order to get desired performance, some repasting/throttling etc. will be needed, along with only having a single stick of RAM. When a laptop at this price point needs aftermarket upgrades to perform like it SHOULD, I think those things should be included. All-in-all, this is a great laptop for both business and gaming, and I am more than happy with my purchase. Despite the minor issues, this laptop definitely gives you the bang for the buck. Other than that, the main reason for 4 stars is due

The screen hinge is more wobbly than it should be, the chassis does creak from time to time, the screen could be brighter, the speakers are so-so, and MSI's bloatware out of the box is frustrating. And that's all the bad stuff. Everything else is really, really impressive for the price. I got this laptop for $1450 after the student discount. The 1660Ti is more than adequate to push over 100FPS in most games with this panel. The panel itself is really quite nice. I would have preferred a bit more color and brightness but I may be asking too much coming from my 2015 MacBook. The 144Hz is fantastic though, and it really lends itself to making Windows feel smooth and responsive. The CPU is decent out of the box, and it performs fairly well. Once undervolted it performs even better but still thermal throttle a bit under intensive loads. The best parts are the battery life and the keyboard though. Battery life is fairly good once all drivers are up to date and ECO mode is enabled in Dragon Center (surprisingly useful if you embrace it), I got 5-6 hours on a charge without the fan kicking in much at all. The keyboard is also excellent and rivals the one on the MacBook I am switching from. The backlighting is decent but the feel and responsiveness of the keys is excellent. Overall for the price this laptop is pretty solid. MSI has come a long way in just a couple years, hopefully this laptop holds up fairly well.

The MSI GS65 is a wonderful laptop to live with every day. The screen is bright and colors are good, the trackpad is accurate and large enough, the processor is blazing fast, it has 16gb of dual channel 2666 MHz RAM, an NVMe 512GB storage drive, and weighs just over 4 lbs. What isn’t to love? Similar to many laptops with this processor, this device gets hot... really hot. When running games or even sometimes when rendering images or running SolidWorks simulations, this computer can reach 96C with ease. The fans in the “turbo” setting get louder and help keep the processor from throttling as much, however, it still does occur frequently. The GTX 1660ti also gets rather toasty at around 82-83C, but takes much longer to heat up in my experience. MSIs Dragon Center app gives you access to customizable fan speeds, power profiles, and more. It is a good program but not as intuitive or feature inclusive as ASUS’s new ROG software. I do like the feature MSI includes to limit the battery charge to 50%, 70% or full charge to improve battery longevity. Speaking of the battery, I often can achieve 4-8 hours of use on one charge, vastly better than many of the “gaming” or “thin and light” PowerBooks on the market such as the ROG Zephyrus. Overall, this laptop will satisfy those power hungry users who often might take their laptop with them to the couch and browse the web. MSI has been doing this for longer than most and it shows with this laptop. As a side note, the quality control on these are much better than the ASUS ROG I had briefly before. After swapping that laptop out 3 times for faulty power supply connections, speaker issues, or fan rattling I decided to try the MSI and am satisfied with the first one I received, as no obvious issues are present.

Okay, so, I bought this a few days ago and wanted to give myself time to enjoy it a little before I wrote the review. This laptop does have a few issues, like the loud fan when it is working extra hard, but it's not a huge deal. It feels way too nice to handle, the shell doesn't have that plastic feel to it that all the other laptops I've had previously had. It runs the game I wanted it to run very smoothly and is very easy for someone who is new to the world of gaming computers to use. I might just be being a 'girl', or whatever, but I absolutely just love how this laptop looks. I had bought a few stickers for when I get it, and I just simply can't bring myself to putting them on this beauty. At first, I was nervous, teetering between this laptop and a more expensive one, but this one has absolutely delivered a lot more than I expected in the long run.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t used it much for gaming, but the little I’ve done is outstanding given the price of the laptop. The screen is 1080p with up to 144Hz refresh rate. The laptop is plenty responsive and it has never frozen on me. The graphics card is able to output 4K and HDR (but maybe not native for both at the same time, depending on the game). The keyboard feels very responsive with good feedback while typing. The touch pad is the biggest I’ve seen in a laptop, but serious games will still be better off with a mouse. At the screen size the 1080p resolution is plenty. If you want something better it’s easy to connect it to an external monitor or TV with higher resolutions. It’s very light and easy to carry, and relatively thin too. This, IMO, achieves the perfect balance between performance/power, ergonomics, and portability at a pretty good price.

My initial impression upon un-boxing was how thin, but sturdy this laptop is. It gives you confidence it will hold up over time. Excited, I turned it on - nothing. Finally I decided to actually read the quick start guide that came with it and it said you must plug it in the first time you turn it on (probably to activate the battery). Plugged it in and it turned on fine. Screen is beautiful and it is fast. After initial setup the thing booted much faster than I expected. Gaming overall is smooth, I only play MHW: Iceborne and it handles that well. The good: Fast - It is fast. Boots quickly and no dropped frames in Iceborne, even running in 21:9 mode. I have not run a 3dMark on it yet but will and will update the review when done. Fairly quiet for a gaming laptop - The fans were surprisingly quiet compared to my old Alienware 17 r2. Solid build quality - You can open it with one hand. My previous laptops required you to hold down the bottom to open. This one is balanced so you don't have to do that. Feels solid. Screen - 144 is beautiful with an easy to see, solid image. I had some trouble with color calibration but it might just be my eyes and patience, It was good enough for me out of the box. The different: Keyboard RGB utility - I had to really dig around to get usable backlighting setup. The Steel Engine (the name of the utility) sets it to a funky pattern that washes over the keyboard by default. Pretty, but not very functional in low light. You can adjust it but it took some work and research. Dragon Updates- Upon setup I went into their update utility to see if I needed new drivers. It told me I needed a new driver for the Intel wireless card and that all others were fine. Then when I first launched Iceborne it warned me that my NVidia driver was out of date. I checked with NVidia's website and sure enough, there was a new driver. I installed it from the NVidia website (along with the GeForce Experience) and the graphics popped on my 34" 21:9 monitor. Battery configuration - I have never had to do this before. When you set it up you calibrate the battery using a utility they provide. Then I noticed, as I was plugged in gaming, the battery was draining. After a half day of gaming the battery was at 86% - plugged in. Some further investigation revealed this is normal as MSI sets the battery not to charge until it gets to 50-60%. Not sure why it drained but understood why it wouldn't charge. They recommend this as being easier on the battery and it can be changed through their Dragon Control Center. You can set it there to charge up fully when plugged in or charge when battery gets to 70%-80%. They also recommend calibrating every three months. I use it mostly plugged in when not on the road so I'll keep the default until I get on flights that require multiple movies! Heat - I would not sit this on my lap and game for any period of time. Fans and profiles can be adjusted but the CPU seems to run hot. Fingerprint magnet - I have oily hands and this thing shows every fingerprint. Track pad - It is definitely different from what I am used to and right-clicking took some getting used to (just due to location). I noted the above things as different and not bad, because on the face they might or might not be bad to you. The only real bad I noticed was heat, and I haven't fiddled with the settings or researched how to lower it so it might just be my ignorance. Dropped connections - When I first started playing I had dropped connections in the middle of hunts. It was very frustrating. After some research and changing some default settings in Steam and the wifi driver things calmed down a bit. I checked the wifi card and was getting 110-143 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up in my home office and 300-340 Mbps next to the router. Both should be enough for gaming but I will probably move my router into my home office and hard-wire it. Most hotels I stay at have ethernet jacks so that is not an issue for me. Besides, it is too early to tell if it is a wifi card issue (the new intel card is fast) or a "you have too many people in the house watching hi def movies" issue. I listed all these as different (not bad) because I haven't researched enough to tell if they're endemic issues or I just don't have it configured properly. I've only had it for 4 days. I will report that latter as I plan to give it a thorough shakedown before the return window closes. The only reason(s) I can see for returning it now is if I can't get the heat reduced or the connections keep dropping in relations to my old rig, I would have given it 5 stars but I can see a non-techie (I work in IT) getting frustrated over the setup and having to do things like calibrate the battery, etc. YMMV, it is a great machine if you're patient, have some technical skills, and do a bit of research. I certainly understand negative reviews on it because if you just pull it out of the box and start using it, you might not have the best experience. You might think the battery is defective or the fans just run all the time. MSI, if you are reading this, please try to make it easier to set up if you can. I bought it to play a game when I'm on the road without having to drag my PS4 Pro around. So far, it seems to fit the bill.

I really enjoy this laptop: it is lightweight, compact (without losing any functionality), and performs as expected. It is very user friendly, runs smoothly, and has a great screen. I have only been using this laptop for my university work, so the gaming aspect has not been tested, yet. However, there have been a few instances while I've been working that my laptop sounded like it was revving up to explode as I taxed its processing power (I had a few tabs open, writing a research paper, while having a lecture going). Occasionally, I also notice as I'm typing the cursor will jump to other lines -I believe I may be touching the touch-pad without realizing it, and I've been having issues with the automatic OneDrive saving option -potentially user error though. Overall, I think this is a pretty solid laptop for day-to-day needs and the demands of a university workload. I would recommend this laptop to others, and I do not regret my expensive purchase.

The MSI Stealth GS65 is a great choice for a gaming laptop. It provides great graphics and sound while having awesome performance. My last laptop was a Dell Inspiron, and was a great laptop for school work but wasn't able to play some of the games I liked. With much research I chose to buy the MSI GS65 Stealth and am very happy with it's performance. Although it is a bit on the pricey side, its makes up for it with its 144hz refresh rate, 16 GB Ram, and GTX 1660ti graphics card. I would recommend this laptop for anyone looking for a school and gaming laptop for a reasonable price.

I originally bought a Dell G5 9500. After a week of use I became very disappointed with it. The screen and slow M.2 drive and mechanical keyboard were a serious drag. This little MSI is simply put AMAZING! Pros: Over all build quality is very good. It's light but built solid. I like the key board and find it easy to use with good key travel and good response. The RGB effects are very nice with more options than I'll ever need. This thing is lightning fast. The 512gb M.2 is a Western Digital device so it's a good quality drive and it's fast. It has a second M.2 slot which I installed a 1Tb drive in. The screen is fast with fantastic color reproduction and runs at 144hertz so it's buttery smooth. I've thrown a few intensive games at this thing and it' handled them with ease. I do a good bit of Photoshop 2020 and it renders images quickly and easily. Honestly I love this unit. Couldn't be happier. It comes loaded with extremely useful MSI software. It comes with two storage slots. One is being used and one is empty. It also comes with two sticks of DDR 4 2666 ram both are removable and are not soldered to the board. Cons: It gets way to hot to game with it on your lap. Seriously this thing will smoke you. My only real, and legitimate complaint is the Units how difficult to it is to upgrade. I put a secondary M.2 drive in and it was not easy. The whole motherboard has to be removed and flipped to get to the drives and ram. It was far to tedious and a poor engineering decision to build an enthusiast machine in this way. Enthusiasts are always going to want to tinker and upgrade their devices. So why on earth build a device that not only makes it difficult but potentially dangerous to the machine to do so. Bad on you MSI. You know better and should do better. You will have to remove the motherboard to access the ram and drives and all that goes with that. Conclusion: I love this thing. I've always wanted and MSI unit and am very happy to have this one. If you can get it for $1299 you'll be happy you did. I gave it a "fair" ease of use based on difficulty in upgreading.

Does what it is supposed to, runs all my games at mostly max settings although it does get hot so a cooling mat is recommended. Not too much bloatware you can uninstall most of it. Good build quilty and it looks great, it is thin and light so easy to carry around.

This laptop is a great place to start your gaming experience if you want to play just about anything you want at max. I got the laptop during the sale for $1299.99 and let me say best gaming laptop I've ever had. Its beautiful and slim. It has mult-RGB lighting steelseries keyboard. Great 144hz screen that you will see when you first start it up. Not only that 9th gen i7 and Nividia geforce gtx 1660ti is a great combo for the price. If you're looking for a reliable and easy solution for gaming this is it.