The MSI GE75 Raider Laptop Review: Core i9 and RTX 2080 Performance
by Brett Howse on July 12, 2019 8:00 AM ESTDisplay Analysis
MSI’s GE75 Raider ships with a 1920x1080 IPS panel, offering an impressive 144 Hz refresh rate. Some will lament the lack of a UHD option, although in our gaming test it really showed that even the mighty RTX 2080 will struggle with UHD gaming in laptop form, and the smoothness of gaming at 144 Hz is something to behold.
The GE75 Raider offers a matte display, meaning there’s a slight blurriness to the pixels due to the anti-glare coating, and there’s no touch capabilities.
MSI is one of the few manufacturers to think about color management, which they offer through their MSI True Color application. You can choose from six pre-defined modes, as well as calibrate the display if you have a supported colorimeter. For all of our testing, we left the display in the default sRGB mode, which should offer the best accuracy for day-to-day work, but if you are gaming there’s a dedicated gaming mode which lets you adjust the gamma as needed for a particular game.
To see how the GE75 Raider’s display performs it was tested with Portrait Display’s CalMAN software suite, using an X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter for brightness and contrast measurements, and the X-Rite i1Pro2 spectrophotometer for color accuracy readings.
Brightness and Contrast
At 447 nits, the GE75 Raider offers an incredibly bright display for a gaming laptop. Coupled to that is great black levels at maximum brightness which provides an excellent contrast ratio closing in on 1300:1. It wasn’t that long ago that gaming laptops often shipped with TN panels that could struggle to even hit 800:1 contrast, and the latest generation of high-refresh IPS displays has really helped here. The laptop only goes down to 23 nits but since you're unlikely to be using it in bed, that's probably not a concern.
Grayscale
In the sRGB mode MSI delivers one of the most accurate grayscale results we’ve seen on any laptop, let alone a gaming laptop where most manufacturers pay no attention to the display calibration.
Gamut
Testing the primary and secondary colors at 100% levels shows that once again MSI has done an excellent job tuning the display characteristics. The display almost perfectly hits the correct points for sRGB.
Saturation
Testing the primary and secondary colors across their entire range, the results are still perfect. The gap between this laptop and all other gaming laptops we’ve tested is massive.
Gretag Macbeth
The Gretag Macbeth test checks for color accuracy at many points, rather than just on the primary and secondary color axis, and includes the important skin tones. The results are near perfect, with none of the colors even reaching an error level of 3.0, and an average error level across all colors of just 1.32. This is exceptional.
Colorchecker
This relative color graph indicates the targeted color on the bottom of the image, and the top half is the color that the GE75 Raider produced. The color differences are so minute that it’s almost indistinguishable.
Display Conclusion
MSI has delivered an incredibly accurate display in the GE75 Raider, which is something we don’t often get to see in a laptop targeted at the gaming demographic. The color accuracy is among the best we’ve tested on any laptop, and additionally MSI offers the ability to quickly change and tune the display as needed through their simple to use, yet surprisingly robust, True Color software suite.
That, coupled with the high refresh rate, make this an excellent display. The only thing not included is G-SYNC, which is unfortunate in a laptop of this class.
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MattL - Monday, July 15, 2019 - link
As it turns out I just upgraded from an OLED 1440p Alienware 13" laptop to this exact ge75 i9 9880h 2080 laptop.I was concerned about going from 13" 1440p (on that beautiful OLED screen) to 17" and 1080p.
I can say absolutely it's not a problem. 17" at 1080p is perfectly fine. Basically it's almost the same pixel density as my 34" Ultra Wide 3440x1440p (120hz IPS) display which is pretty high res itself (the max you'd want for gaming).
4k gaming would be horrible.... you'd get no FPS. getting closer to 144hz (at least 80-100+ FPS) is far more important.
On the best games even this top notch 2080 can struggle to get 100 fps at 1080p in some cases if you have your settings set high....
1080p is exactly the appropriate resolution for a modern gaming laptop.
Zanor - Wednesday, July 17, 2019 - link
It's a laptop very focused on gaming. Gamers don't want 60hz.DanNeely - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link
"Second, this keyboard has a slightly strange layout, with the Windows Key being on the right side of the keyboard along with a duplicate backslash key."Half of this is apparently due to MSI using an international mechanical layout with an extra keycap rather than a different piece of hardware for the US model. The second half which has always baffled me is that they put a pipe on the extra key instead of a right click key; which although increasingly rare would map back towards the original 104 key layout.
cgeorgescu - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
FN and Win keys can be swapped (physically and in BIOS), then the somehow strangely-placed keys can be re-mapped with that Steelseries software.On mine (an older MSI GS), I have Del instead of Pause and AltGR instead of that second |\ right of the spacebar.
Now unrelated to keys: all MSI laptops can be bought in wildly customised configuration, there are tons of small shops (online) who sell these with any combination of SSDs, memory, etc.
eva02langley - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link
280W power supply!!!!?How much does that thing cost by its own, 150$!!!???
Anyway, I am waiting for my Zen 2 APU laptop with Navi cores.
ads295 - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link
Agreed. I think it may be possible to have 1080p eSports gaming for 3-4 hours on battery with an APU.DanNeely - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link
probably. I couldn't find MSIs model as a replacement, but the equivalent ASUS model is $149 direct.Vitor - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link
Holy sheet, those display numbers are incredible. Basically a gaming notebook that can be used for professional edition.Duncan Macdonald - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link
Given the position of the air intakes - this is not suitable for laptop use. If used on a lap much of the airflow will be blocked and there will be nasty temperatures near some sensitive bits. This device is a lightweight Desktop Replacement - not a laptop.In my opinion if you want a portable gaming system (especially with a high end GPU like the 2080) then you should get a system with good cooling which implies a thicker chassis with better airflow, larger heatsinks and fans and a higher weight.
Two things that "laptop" reviews should do are show the bottom temperatures after an hour of heavy use and also see if the cooling system can stand up to being used on a lap without cooking the laptop or the user.
nevcairiel - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
Is it really that common to actually use a laptop in your lap directly? That has always been exceedingly uncomfortable for me, no matter if gaming or working. Would always grab a table or perhaps one of those laptop lap stands that gives it more height and a flat surface to keep it's vents free