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There is a little DynAudio speaker visible underneath the chassis, shown above.
The laptop ships with a thin protective sleeve between keyboard and screen. There was a little ‘specs' sticker on the laptop – like one you would see in a shop – highlighting all the hardware inside.
This was painful to remove and actually left a little glue type residue on the speaker grill – shown above. This might have been isolated to our specific review sample which arrived direct from the factory.
This is the first time we have seen a mechanical keyboard on any laptop and the experience is as good as we hoped. No more spongy key presses – you can really get into some speed typing with the GT80 Titan. Only negative point I would mention would be the single height return key, but that's more a personal thing.
A speaker runs the full width above the keyboard, to support the other speaker underneath the chassis. The GT80 Titan Dynaudio system in operation delivers surprisingly good sound quality, a league above any laptop audio system I have heard to date. That said, you will still want dedicated external speakers or quality headphones for the best media and gaming experience.
For those interested, the audio system is more than loud enough to annoy everyone on a plane or train.
The screen is semi matte, and as such won't mirror the scene behind your head in brightly lit conditions. I like how more manufacturers are moving from gloss screens in the last year, finally realising that they are more trouble than they are worth. This panel however is only 1920×1080 (1080p) which seems a rather unusual decision – especially considering there are two GTX980m's running in SLi.
Perhaps MSI will move to a 3k or 4k panel in future, but for now, 1080p it is.
The touchpad at the side of the keyboard doubles up as a numpad, if you are using a mouse. You can easily switch between numpad and touchpad functionality via a button. Two physical buttons are placed underneath the pad, for left and right mouse presses.
The touchpad works as well as we could expect, and in a pinch its perfectly usable. Not sure this is an ideal laptop for an airplane or train due to the physical size, but I am sure some people will try it out.
Some product placement logos top left. This is a Steelseries keyboard which uses Cherry MX Brown switches.
The keyboard is backlit with red lighting and the quality is very bright and even, and rather attractive. We feel MSI haven't compromised in key areas, which is good to see at the price.
In night light conditions the dragon above the keyboard will reflect against the light – which is very appealing in action. I tried to capture with my camera this under various screen light conditions, shown above. It looks better ‘in the flesh'.
Removing the bottom panel takes a little time as there are around 10 screws holding the panel in place. It is worth pointing out that if you remove the bottom panel there is a ‘warranty invalid' sticker you will damage. Not sure if MSI will completely cut you loose if the laptop ever fails and this is broken, but it is worth checking into first.
The cooling system inside the GT80 Titan is formidable. I can think of no better word. There are no less than 9 thick heatpipes running into heatsinks on either side of the chassis. Two large fans are placed at the side and rear vents to ensure stability. The processor is installed centrally.We like how MSI have painted the cooling system black. This is almost identical to the pre release sample we had weeks ago – although the (heat resistant) bridge cable between the two GTX980m's is tighter and the overall build quality is a little higher.
I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed to see the main PCB was an ugly green and not black. I know there won't be many Apple fans reading this review, but I remember taking apart a Macbook Pro last year and admiring the all black motherboard. Very sexy. GT80 Titan motherboard, not so sexy to look at.
Two of the screws on the underside of the chassis allow the top panel to be removed with relative ease (they have little icons next to them, so impossible to miss). You simply push down gently on the panel, and then to the right to remove it. While two of the memory sticks are underneath the board, the remainder are here.
We spoke to MSI about potentially upgrading the GT80 Titan in years to come and they said that future upgrades will be supported via specific retailers in various countries around the globe. We don't have confirmed details on this yet, but the idea right now is to allow people to pay for new graphics cards from Nvidia (for instance), ship the laptop to a local retailer in your country and pay to get it upgraded. As you will see later when we get to testing the video cards, we can't imagine anyone will be running out of gaming power anytime soon however.
do want, cant afford . . . yet 😉
btw quote: “MSI may be adding a 3k or 3k screen” 😉 4th paragraph from end
I really want this laptop! BTW, XoticPCs are selling this with SSD options allowing a choice of manufacturers and capacities. It’s hard to decide on buying now or waiting to see IF a 3K or 4K screen will be offered in the future. Good job, MSI!
Great review! Very thorough and detailed. Keep up the good job! Really gave me an idea about what this gaming laptop has to offer. It’s a really great laptop with the only downside I can think of being it’s price.
Don’t get the point of having that much graphics power without at least a 3k screen. Unless you’re doing some serious 3d rendering then it’s just so much hot air.
Don’t get the point of having that much graphics power without at least a 3k screen. Unless you’re doing some serious 3d rendering then it’s just so much hot air.
What doesn’t make sense is such a good laptop with only a 1080p screen. When will they learn?
Did you notice CPU-Z validation[1] reports wrong VRAM size?
[1] http://valid.canardpc.com/rng1v9
It’s missing the version of the benchmark software. Also, there’s no information on the SSDs models used.
Great Review…but so expensive….with mechanical keyboard is awesome
is this wide-view anti glare Display?
Wow! What a beast! Finally a laptop that really competes with the high end of the desktop market. The real downside is it’s very expensive.
A desktop with decent CPU and GTX 980 would be cheaper than this…but yeah laptops are more expensive since they need to be mobile…but lets be honest….this laptop ain’t that mobile for dat price tag.
shIT…dafuq did i just wrote 0.0
@Zardon is that HDMI port output only? No HDMI input mode? Alienware laptops from 2014 had the single HDMI port than could be run as input or output based on function key combination switches.
insane hardware but i must say im little disappointment whit screen resolution this laptop in eu cost 5k euros and screen should have at lest 1440p if not 4k
While that is true, the newest alienwares have omitted the hdmi in feature, so you cant really blame msi for not putting it in. Would have been an amazing feature to add in though.
This isnt so much as msi’s own fault, as the market for 18.4inch panels for laptops is a slowly dwindling marketspace. The current panels in the gt80 are also leftovers from the production by various companies in the past.
Yeah I heard about the change on the 2015. I don’t like a laptop smaller than 18.4″ screen size. Guess my M18X R1 is a precious model now, will be hard in the future to replace if something fails. Might have to stock up on the M18X R2 ivy bridge motherboard so I can fall back on that option since it works perfectly in the M18X R1 chassis. CPUs are more easier to come by.
Fed up with the ridiculous prices for MXM cards, for the price of two MXM top line cards I can build a ITX or Micro-ATX rig for high end gaming with sort of ‘acceptable’ mobility when I travel internationally. Just plug the HDMI output from cabinet to the laptop and I can have a gaming rig when I want it without the need for a separate monitor. The Alienware Graphics Amp is so large that getting a separate mini system makes much more sense and value. I would be willing to go the graphics AMP route if there was an 18.4″ model. 17.3″ just doesn’t cut it especially with embedded CPU and GPU. The graphics Amp is still penalized by somewhat with the 4X PCIE bus while the external cabinet option with a new system is going to be rendering on 16X PCIE 3.0 and fed out via HDMI.
Ideally I would like a simple 18.4″ laptop with no high end graphics in it, just upgradable PGA MQ processor support and HDMI input function. Am done with MGPU/dGPU laptops, MXM pricing by the cartel is untenable. MSI promises upgradeability by supplying parts but don’t be under any illusions their MXM cards will be just as expensive. The CPU is HQ BGA so it is embedded, which is a shame for a flagship laptop aimed at upgradeability.
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And yet other companies are making much higher resolution laptops, say Apple.