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They say ‘good things come in small packages' and if MSI have a say in it, then their new 14 inch GE40 with ‘Dragon Eyes' will be winning your heart. This diminutive gamers laptop features the latest Nvidia GTX760M graphics, paired up with the quad core, hyperthreading enabled Intel Core i7 4702MQ. Is it worth the £999.95 asking price?
The MSI GE40 2OC ‘Dragon Eyes' laptop ships with the latest 4th generation Core i7 processor and an LED backlit 14 inch screen with a resolution up to 1920×1080. On the MSI website the company claim this tiny laptop can ship with two Solid State Drives configured in RAID 0, with a throughput speed of over 900 MB/s.
By this stage I was beginning to get the impression that MSI were really serious about this 14 inch system and our review sample was organised.
MSI claim that this is the slimmest and lightest gaming laptop that money can buy. The exclusive Dragon Eyes are cut into the aluminium chassis on the lid, as shown in the image above.
Our exact review sample specification is listed on Overclockers UK, unfortunately they are not as eye poppingly delicious as the flagship specifications listed on the MSI website. Our sample does ship with the latest Core i7 4702MQ processor and GTX760M discrete graphics card, but the ‘exclusive Super RAID' dual Solid State Drive option has been replaced with a single 750GB 2.5 inch mechanical unit. Sad face.
Our sample arrived with the lower 1600×900 resolution panel although within the confines of a 14 inch panel, I think this makes more sense. I have tested 14 inch 1080p panels before and I always end up with eye strain by the end of the day.
It will be interesting today to see how the Core i7 4702MQ performs. This is one of Intel's latest Core i7 processors which is clocked at 2.2ghz, with a turbo speed up to 3.2ghz. It is built around the latest 22nm manufacturing process. You can read more about it on Intel's site here.
MSI GE40-2OC Dragon Eyes Specification:
– Screen Size: 14.0″
– Screen Type: LCD Backlight LED
– Screen Resolution: 1600×900
– Aspect Ratio: 16:9
– Screen Features: Full HD
– Processor Type: Intel Core i7 4702MQ
– Processor Cores: 4
– Processor Clock Speed: 2.40GHz
– Hard Drive Supplied: 1 x 750GB
– Hard Drive Size: 750GB
– Hard Drive Interface: Serial ATA-600
– Hard Drive Speed: 7200RPM
– Optical Drive: Super Multi
– Memory Supplied: 1x 8GB
– Memory Size: 8GB
– Operating System: Windows 8
– Graphics Chipset: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760M
– Graphics Memory: 2GB GDDR 5
– Chipset: Intel HM87 Express
– Audio: Sound Blaster Cinema
– Speaker(s): 2 Speakers
– Microphone: Built-in
– LAN Card: Regular LAN
– LAN Speed: 10/100/1000
– Wireless NIC: 802.11 a/b/g/n
– Bluetooth: V4.0
You can see the full specification of our review system on OCUK, here. The list price is £995.95 inc vat.
No laptop is worth that money, u could get a PC that blows that out of the water for the same price
When I see a mechanical drive now in such a machine I always despair. its such an oversight as nothing is more important for a machine than a fast drive. even the CPU or GPU isnt as important.
@ Stephen, well you can’t really carry around a £1,000 desktop, or put it in a bag in cabin luggage on a plane. Its horses for courses. Many people love these tiny little machines for mobile gaming.
I think MSI dropped the ball a little with this spec though.
is this windows 7 or 8 ?
What do you think it is? Microsoft is paying big money to shove win 8 down our throats.
I bought this laptop last week and it came with a 128 ssd + 750 gig standard HD. I upgraded the ram to 16 gigs and so far it’s been a great little machine. The pre installed software bloat is definitely an issue though. Navigating the msi site for driver updates is also a bit of a pain. If you go to the main site it’s alright but picking the Canadian site and trying to find any information is completely useless.
The machine ships with Windows 8. I got the machine with no OS installed and slapped on Windows 7. All drivers available on the product page at MSI.com