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The MSI GS70 2OD-Stealth is one of the most impressive laptops that we have tested in 2013. It can handle a myriad of tasks without a hitch, including gaming, heavy duty 3D rendering and video encoding.
Initial impressions are certainly positive. The design is going to appeal to a wide audience of people who hate lugging around a thick heavy 17 inch laptop. As we mentioned earlier in the review, the uniform front to back super thin chassis puts us in mind of the now-discontinued 17 inch MacBook Pro, which we loved.
In regards to MSI GS70 Stealth performance, we were exceptionally impressed with the processing capabilities. The powerful Intel Core i7 4700HQ processor is right at the top of the mobile performance chart and the score in Cinebench R11.5 is actually higher than the reference clocked 8 core AMD FX8350 desktop processor. This is remarkable and showcases current generation Haswell performance.
One of our main sticking points with the MSI GE40-2OC Dragon Eyes laptop that we reviewed back in June was the painfully slow 5,400 rpm mechanical hard drive. Thankfully MSI have adopted two mSATA drives in the GS70 Stealth, and configured them in RAID 0. This means the GS70 Stealth boots to a workable state in around 8 seconds and our testing highlighted sequential read performance around 1000 MB/s. In the real world you are never waiting for this machine to save a file, or load a program. Adobe Photoshop CS6 for instance was ready to use in around 2 seconds.
Gaming performance is also commendable, The Nvidia GTX765M is able to power many of the latest Direct X 11 games at the native panel resolution of 1920×1080. That said, if you want to maximise the settings and use high levels of anti aliasing then it might run out of steam with more demanding titles. This is why Nvidia sell the GTX770m and GTX780m however.
Noise levels are maintained well and the machine is audible but never that intrusive – negatively it does get hot under gaming load so good air circulation is a must. On a positive note, it didn't thermally throttle during our tests.
The screen is quite good, and the Steelseries keyboard is one of the best we have used to date, although not quite as good as the one adopted in the Lenovo ThinkPad range.
If you are in the market for a well designed high grade gaming laptop then the MSI GS70 Stealth is certainly worth of our Must Have Award. At £1,699.99 inc vat from Overclockers UK it offers excellent value for money.
Pros:
- lovely thin chassis design.
- adjustable backlit keyboard.
- good screen.
- excellent keyboard.
- Haswell processor is a powerhouse.
- class leading SSD performance.
- decent battery life.
- Nvidia GTX765M is capable.
Cons:
- onboard sound is average.
- gets hot.
- not the cleanest software install.
Kitguru says: We love this laptop, it certainly faces challenges from Alienware, but at the price, it is hard to beat.
A GTX770M would have been a better option for this machine. love it though!
Its a great looking machine, I still think the Razer blade looks better, but the hardware in this is better. Blade doesnt have RAIDO SSDs for instance.
Love the design myself – not sure I would compare the appearance with an Apple (yuk) but I do get the point. Apple were making their big laptops all the one depth from front to back for years while PC makers had a thin front and then a 2 inch back near the processor!
Good to see them catching up.
I Love It
There’s no way it took less than 10 minutes to encode a 2 hour long 720p video file. I’m guessing all you did was change containers from MKV to MP4. No encoding there. Now I would really like to see some actual encoding benchmarks. Like maybe taking an untouched Bluray movie and encoding it at crf 23 and 720p with MeGui?
Yes its a good point :3, but this test is more for a person who already has a high definition movie file on a drive and wants to ‘convert’ to a portable player. its a common task – but yes you are right, it would be interesting to also include a ‘full on’ raw disc to encoded file on a drive. Thanks for the feedback.
Is the OS installed on the SSD(s) or the HDD?
Need your help PLEASEEEE!!!, I dont Play 3d Movies in my MSI GS70 for hdmi in my TV SAMSUNG UN7500 SMART TV 3D, WHY NOT?????
Excellent review and has helped me tremendously in making my purchase decision. Thank you for being so thorough. Especially regarding heat and noise.