MSI GE60 Review: Mainstream Mobile Maxwell
by Jarred Walton on July 17, 2014 5:00 AM ESTConclusion: Worth Considering
After testing and using the MSI GE60 for several weeks, I've come away reasonably impressed with what's being offered. It's not the fastest or flashiest laptop around, and it's not the cheapest either, but it gets most of the important areas right when it comes to building a good gaming notebook.
Perhaps most importantly, the performance is good, the keyboard and touchpad work well, and the display also looks nice. If you want a system you could take to a LAN party or a gaming session at a friend's house/apartment, the MSI GE60 could certainly fill that need. What's more, you get a good level of performance without breaking the bank. The GTX 860M is really the star of the show here, and NVIDIA's Maxwell provides a good boost in performance over the previous generation GTX 760M while adding a few new features in the process, but let's not forget Intel's Haswell i7-4700HQ, which is fast enough for other tasks as well.
There are a few flaws however. The build quality is a bit suspect, particularly with the LCD cover, and the hinges don't feel all that solid either. Over months and years of use, I would expect the hinges to become quite loose, and the cover could potentially break. That's more conjecture than fact, however, so take it as you will. I could also raise a few concerns about the design and aesthetics of the GE60, but it's a difficult balancing act. Do you want a thinner, sleeker looking notebook, or do you want something that can run fast and not overheat?
More critically, the battery life is somewhat poor for a Haswell-based laptop. I'm not sure how much of this is simply due to component selection and how much could be caused by lack of power optimization efforts, but I remember testing the first quad-core Sandy Bridge notebook several years ago and seeing battery life of nearly seven hours in our Internet test at the time. 3.5 years later and two architectures updates and battery life (granted, on a shipping laptop) is still not able to match that old Sandy Bridge prototype; I'd like to see someone do better than this on a gaming notebook without sacrificing in other ways.
Ultimately, what it all boils down to is choice. If you want something fast and sleek, MSI's slightly more expensive GS series of laptops might be more your style, and I'll post the full review of the GS70 shortly. The GS series basically drops the optical drive and a bit of bulk, but increases the cost several hundred dollars. Razer has the Blade and Blade Pro, which of course are a much larger jump in price, and there's always the Apple MacBook and Dell XPS 15 to consider – but those aren't really in the same performance league, as the GT GPUs are a decent step down from the GTX GPUs. Probably the most compelling alternative is the Lenovo IdeaPad Y50, which ends up with very similar features in most respects (and it also targets four hours of battery life), so it's basically a question of design and aesthetic preference.
In terms of price, performance, and features, the MSI GE60 gets everything right. I just wish MSI had spent a little bit more effort on improving the chassis build quality and battery life, as those are the only things really holding this system back from an Editor's Choice award. As it stands, the MSI GE60 warrants at least an honorable mention, and if you're looking for a GTX 800M notebook for under $1250 there aren't a whole lot of alternatives. I'd still plan on at least upgrading the storage to an SSD if you can manage it, as dealing with pure HDD storage has become more than a little painful.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, July 17, 2014 - link
The "Mainstream" results are high enough that bumping to 1080p isn't a problem at the settings we use, but then we wouldn't have anything to compare performance against as it's a non-standard setting. If we run one "non-standard" setting, it opens the door to all sorts of other possibilities. Maybe we should use the GFE recommended settings (or AMD's recommended settings) as another item to include?In fact, I'll go ahead and run those and update the Gaming page in a bit with results (as well as details on the precise settings used by GFE). If nothing else, it will be an interesting experiment. :-)
JarredWalton - Thursday, July 17, 2014 - link
Page three is updated with 1080p GFE results, if you're interested.nathanddrews - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
Thanks for the update, it's very enlightening. A review of GeForce Experience vs Gaming Evolved would be very cool. I know that up until v2.0 or 1.8, GFE automatically targeted 40-60fps with no option to prefer quality (30fps) or performance (60fps) like it does now.https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/525176/is...
http://www.geforce.com/geforce-experience/faq
Hopefully they update the applications for 120Hz or 144Hz users... or maybe have it target your monitor's refresh rate by default instead? Speaking of which, where are the variable refresh 4K 120Hz monitors? ;-)
DanNeely - Friday, July 18, 2014 - link
First we'd need gpus to implement displayport 1.3 to have the outbound bandwidth. Then until we get another generation of 2x as fast decoder/ldc panel controllers we'll be back to the looks like 2 monitors over MST setup we enjoyed with the first generation of 4k60 panels.xenol - Thursday, July 17, 2014 - link
If I may make a suggestion, please add thermals to laptop reviews. Not just how hot the components get, but how hot each area gets. My primary concern with these thin gaming laptops is that not only would the run really hot inside, but they'll create pockets of hot spots where I don't want them.For example, I had a Dell XPS 15z. Not quite a gaming laptop mind you, but if I fired up a game, the left side of the keyboard would get uncomfortably warm to the point where I had to get a 84-key keyboard so I could play something comfortably.
JarredWalton - Thursday, July 17, 2014 - link
My digital thermometer stopped working properly a while back so I haven't been able to provide numbers. I can order a new one but considering we haven't included surface temperatures for years it didn't seem necessary.JarredWalton - Thursday, July 17, 2014 - link
I was able to use a kitchen thermometer from my wife to do some testing. :-) Page 5 has surface temps now if you're interested.LeapingGnome - Thursday, July 17, 2014 - link
Thank you Jarred. I think surface temps are very important since it is a laptop that many people use in their laps. I appreciate you including them.xenol - a good site is notebookcheck dot net, they do a lot of laptop reviews and always include surface temps from 18 areas of the laptop. Their temps for this MSI look to be 3-4 degrees higher than Jarred saw.
shtldr - Thursday, July 17, 2014 - link
I have the laptop. It has solid CPU, GPU and display. I actually thought the display was some exceptionally good TN.I bought an SSD together with it to replace the HDD... only to find out that opening the laptop voids your warranty!!!
Coming from an Acer laptop which had no such c(r)ap, this was a huge letdown.
JarredWalton - Thursday, July 17, 2014 - link
I've heard (but can't personally verify) that such stickers can't actually be enforced by law, but it's definitely annoying when they try to prevent end users from upgrading things like the RAM and storage. You could always email/call MSI and ask them for confirmation that you can upgrade the RAM/storage first and see what they say -- get it in writing, though! :-)