MSI GE40 Review: a Slim Gaming Notebook
by Jarred Walton on July 16, 2013 3:00 AM ESTMSI GE40 Subjective Evaluation
There are generally two ways of looking at laptops like this: either you want as much performance as possible in the smallest form factor possible at the lowest price possible, or else you’re looking for a reasonably balanced system but you still care about things like the keyboard and touchpad. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that while I can get by with just about any keyboard and touchpad in a pinch, they’re actually critical elements in the overall experience that are very easy to get wrong. Thankfully, MSI actually does quite well with the GE40 in the keyboard area and slightly less so in the touchpad. Where they fall short is in the same place where the Razer Blade fell on its face: the LCD quality is poor, which is a shame as almost everything else works quite well. But I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s start with the overall build quality and impressions.
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
The most succinct way of putting things is that there’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary with the MSI GE40; it’s a slightly dated design aesthetically speaking, but it gets the job done. The bottom of the chassis is made out of plastic, with brushed aluminum veneers on the top and palm rests. Unfortunately, there’s still glossy plastic on the display bezel and around the keyboard. As far as the idea that “black goes with everything”, I’m ready to leave black behind now as it’s very good at picking up fingerprints, particularly on the brushed aluminum (you can see this in the above gallery, and that's after wiping the surfaces down with a microfibre cloth). This is where the decision to use silver by Apple and ASUS (and others as well) ends up scoring points in my book. Considering that MSI did the right thing and equipped the GE40 with a matte LCD, I do wish they would get rid of the glossy plastic at least; it’s simply unnecessary.
Build quality is serviceable but not exceptional as well. The LCD cover is a little flimsy—not so bad that you’re afraid you’re going to break it, but it’s definitely not as rigid as you might find in higher quality laptops. Looking at the back of the LCD, we also find the “Dragon Eyes” (also referred to as “Devil Eyes” in some places, like on the palm rest sticker)—lightly glowing orange LEDs that attempt to add some visual flair. I don’t necessarily mind the idea, but I’ll be honest: they don’t shine nearly as brightly as you would expect when looking at MSI’s photos, and they're more orange than red. I suppose all they had to do was put some red plastic on the back of the LCD backlight and poke some holes in the cover, so no harm done, but that also means there’s no way to turn off the “eyes”.
Moving over to the input side of things, opinions on what makes for a good keyboard vary from user to user; personally, I really like having dedicated document navigation keys. Several years ago, the most common layout placed the document navigation keys in a column on the right of the keyboard, but for some reason we’ve moved away from that standard. Sometimes progress doesn’t actually move us forward, and I’m happy to see that MSI uses the tried-and-true layout. (In this case, MSI’s lack of aesthetic “enhancements” actually helps.) We are dealing with a chiclet keyboard, perhaps with a very slight amount of flex but nothing I’m overly concerned with. Key travel is good, the keys are reasonably sized, and about the only omission on the keyboard side is that there’s no backlighting. Backlighting would’ve taken this keyboard from being “good” to “great”, but it’s still far better than many of the laptop keyboards I’ve used in the past few years.
As for the touchpad, MSI uses ELAN hardware with rocker-style buttons below the touchpad surface. It supports all the usual multitouch gestures, including (in theory) the Windows 8 “side-swipe” gestures. While two-finger scrolling gestures work well enough, the Windows 8 swipe gestures are a different matter. Swiping in from the right hand side works properly most of the time, but try as I might I never could get the left swipe or top swipe to work. I don’t know if that’s a glitch with the drivers or something else, but since the first thing I usually do with Windows 8 is to install Classic Shell so that I have a real start menu, I’m okay touchpad experience. If you’re the type of user that wants the Windows 8 gestures to work properly, however, short of a driver update I cannot recommend the current touchpad implementation.
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
We will get to the LCD numbers later, but while the 1600x900 resolution works well enough in games, the contrast is quite poor, and viewing angles are bad even by TN standards. Maximum brightness levels are also pretty limited; we measured around 250 nits, whereas the Razer Blade was able to hit 450 nits. For the most part such high brightness levels are only truly useful if you’re going outside, but battery life when the GPU is not engaged is such that the GE40 could easily be used all day.
One last item to address before we get to the benchmarks, the GE40 has a built-in amplifier to improve the quality of audio when you’re using a headset. I definitely didn’t find the audio bad when I had headphones on, but I will say that the Sound Blaster Cinema software isn’t able to hide the fact that the built-in speakers are pretty anemic. There’s no subwoofer, so bass response is lacking at best; if you’re looking for a laptop with awesome built-in audio, you’ll probably need to look elsewhere.
Now that we’re finished with the visual inspection and kicking the tires, let’s start this puppy up and see what it can really do.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
93 Comments
View All Comments
alex_l17 - Thursday, July 18, 2013 - link
actually... if you are just doing some upgrade of the RAM, MSI will still honor the warranty.. i had experience of that before. I called and spoke to the tech support, and they replied saying the RAM upgrade doesn't void warranty.xenol - Tuesday, July 16, 2013 - link
What's starting to annoy me is still, a lot of these laptops that aren't ultrabooks and whatnot, come with a VGA port. I mean, sure, a lot of external displays can take it, but it just feels very out of place. Throw in a Mini-DP and another USB port!airmantharp - Tuesday, July 16, 2013 - link
Projectors. It's sad, but it's a real limitation everywhere.JarredWalton - Tuesday, July 16, 2013 - link
Yup. There are a ton of projectors out there that pre-date HDMI and DP. It would definitely be nice to be able to run three digital displays off of a laptop, but most companies are so busy cutting corners that it's not even a minor consideration.Engineering: "For $5 extra, we can add two more digital video ouputs."
Management: "What!? Forget that -- we can save $0.05 by using 100Mbit Ethernet instead of Gigabit Ethernet. That's what we need to do! And while we're at it, find a cheaper LCD -- there's no sense spending $75 for a display that most people won't notice! All they care about are mega-whatevers and giga-things, and we need to give them lots of those. Screw abstract ideas like build quality and color accuracy...."
Bob Todd - Wednesday, July 17, 2013 - link
Hahaha...you brought up one of the things that drives me bonkers. There's no excuse for 100Mbit Ethernet STILL showing up in so many laptops. The BOM difference has to be almost non-existent these days, and yet we still see machines north of $500 only offering 100Mbit. I've seen so many machines in the past year that look kind of interesting as low cost general compute devices, then I scroll down and see "Fast Ethernet". It's like a cruel joke.Lacrimosa - Wednesday, July 17, 2013 - link
We have exactly opposing sources for annoyance :-) I am looking for these kinds of machines because I want something that I can take with me on business trips: powerful enough to game on when in hotels on evenings and good for doing my work when on client premises. I need to hold a lot of presentations so connectivity to projectors and external screens is important. Some of my collegues use these dongles to connect HDMI or some other port to those VGAs that are everywhere, but often those dongles are lost, or broken, or twist so that suddenly picture disappears... not good. I have had to pass on quite a few machines because they do not have VGA port anymore (for example that Razer Blade does not have one).yhselp - Tuesday, July 16, 2013 - link
Alright, great review in general - helpful, objective and well-written and I really mean all that. Thank you for that.However, every once in a while I come across a comment or conclusion in one of the articles I read which makes me go - whaaat?! Why did they (this is not aimed directly at Mr. Walton) write this...
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but how can you say "The truth is, we’re probably still a couple years away from seeing this level of performance in a laptop this size that runs cool and quiet;" when such a laptop exists today, not to mention your colleague review it and reached the opposite conclusion.
Not to mention the following statement or, more importantly, what it implies - "... physics can be such a drag,", yes, indeed physics not only can, but always is a drag. Why would you, however, have your audience believe that laptops such as the Razer Blade 14 and the MSI GE40 are the best thing for thermal design since heatsinks? Yes, the Razer is very well-engineered (the MSI is just bold and reckless) but neither of which pushed the envelope to the limit. I'm not trying to play wannabe thermal engineering here but if we have to talk about the facts of physics better thermal solutions for thin laptops can be designed right now, not a couple of years from now. Yes, it's easier to cool more efficient and thus cooler parts but thermal design isn't stuck, we're far from greatest in this field. The fact that it hasn't been done so far doesn't mean it's impossible. I suspect it's a matter of unwillingness/cost rather than a physics barrier. Designs such as the rMBP 15 and the Blade 14 are but a glimpse into what can be done with custom cooling solutions.
I'm sorry for this rant, but it's really unpleasant to read such a conclusion to an otherwise excellent review. I hope that at least a few people agree.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 17, 2013 - link
Which laptop have we reviewed that's thin, light, and powerful without running either hot and/or loud? The Razer Blade 14 hits 93C under stress testing, just slightly lower than the GE40. It could cool more with higher fan speeds, but I consider "cool and quiet" to be more like 70-80C max on the CPU and GPU with fan noise well under 40dB. We are nowhere near that level right now.The rMBP 15 is larger and while it doesn't get quite as hot, it's not exactly cool under a full load. More importantly, it's slower on the GPU than either of these laptops by a sizable gap. GT 650M is half the cores of the GTX 760M/765M -- it's not a bad GPU, but it will struggle quite a bit with higher detail gaming. I'm not trying to say any of the current designs are bad for trying, but if you want something that's as fast as the GE40 in a similar size chassis, and you don't want it to run loud or hot? It's just not going to happen right now. You either need to be thicker/larger to get more cooling, or you are going to make some noise to cope with the heat, or you're going to get hot. We've seen different laptops balance those factors to varying degrees, but really we will likely need one or two more generations of iGPU upgrades and at least one more process shrink to get to the point where we can have a combined 35W TDP for the CPU and GPU with the performance of the GTX 760M.
The Crystalwell parts from Intel offer a bit less performance than GT 650M. Maybe Broadwell can get us there, but more likely it will be Skylake -- and when Skylake arrives, we will want twice the performance of it's iGPU, just like today, in order to run all the games at acceptable levels with moderate-to-high detail settings.
yhselp - Wednesday, July 17, 2013 - link
Thank you for responding; you should know it was not my intention to be offensive. I agree with the vast majority of what you say, and I also like how you speak your mind freely and tackle different issues - $5 extra for video outputs vs. $0.05 less for Ethernet – so true. I’m not trying to question your knowledge, on the contrary – I take your professionalism for a given. It’s more of an issue of presentation and possible misinformation. Which, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is not the intended effect. It’d be unfortunate if I’m being perceived as some sort of crazy internet troll, I’m just trying to give feedback here.The thing is that your conclusion might be read and understood as ‘if you want a thin & light gaming laptop the MSI GE40 compromise is your best bet for now and that’s because it’s physically impossible to do better’. None of which is actually true (again we might be arguing linguistics here); and I’m not acting crazy, I’ve had 4 people, with and without technical knowledge, read the last page of your review and they all agree that’s a very likely interpretation.
Yes, Blade 14’s CPU goes into the lower 90s and while that’s hot, it’s not out of spec. In my opinion, there are more important factors to consider. Your colleague concluded that Blade 14’s cooling solution is quite adequate and capable of handling the heat. He also noted there’s room for improvement which is absolutely true. It’s not just a matter of raw numbers, for example, both Blade 14 and GE40 hit the 90s, however the former has a far superior cooling solution and shouldn’t have problems in the long run.
If a certain temperature doesn’t cause throttling and is safe to run at for years, and provided the surface of the product it’s in doesn’t get hot to the touch, what is the problem? No, it isn’t optimal, it isn’t perfect but it gets the job done; let’s say it’s ‘consumer-ready’. I’m not saying we should be content with running microprocessors at 90+C, but I also don’t think we should accept huge “laptops” *cough*Alienware*cough* and wait for integrated solutions to get better for ‘thin & light performance’. Besides, as you said, by the time iGPUs get at this level of performance it wouldn’t be sufficient anymore.
I also cannot accept what you seem to continually suggest – that we cannot get better cooling in the same form-factor. Getting thicker is the crudest way to better cooling performance and not the only solution. We can use denser and wider (not taller) heatsinks, bigger and more efficient fans, better materials throughout, etc. Those things would take up more space, but space management is not optimal nowadays either. We could go even further into more exotic solutions and by exotic I don’t mean crazy expensive. There’s a whole world of possibilities out there but it takes time, money and innovative engineers.
Yes, you’re correct, we probably won’t get better products right now but not because of physics.
I apologize if I’ve been a little too harsh in my quickly-written first post. I sincerely hope to get another response from you. Thank you for your time.
JarredWalton - Thursday, July 18, 2013 - link
I figure when Razer and Apple have products at $2000 and can't get cooling to the point where we think it's working ideally, it probably won't happen right now. There's definitely a balancing act and space management could be improved, but there are tradeoffs with changing the way space is used as well. Go with mSATA or M.2 SSDs for instance and you drastically limit what options are available. Better fans and heatsinks are certainly a possibility, which is something I hope a revised GE40 would look into, but that's probably a 5C or maybe 10C difference at best.Anyway, I've tweaked the conclusion a bit to make it clear where I think the GE40 stands. Razer is a bit cooler, quieter, faster...and a lot more expensive. Both need better displays. GE40 also needs improved industrial design IMO. Long-term, the Razer is less likely to have problems I think, but what I've learned over the years is that "long-term" is very hard to judge. Fans can fail on expensive as well as cheap laptops, and while I'd hope the fans used in more expensive laptops would last longer... well, I wouldn't make a bet on that! (I have had plenty of $400-$500 GPUs that had fans wear out after a year or two.)
So which laptop is truly "better" out of the Blade 14 and GE40? Probably the Blade, but roughly $700 extra to get there makes it pretty much a wash in my book. If the Blade had an IPS panel, then it would be just about perfect -- expensive, yes, but with no huge flaws. The GE40 needs far more work before it could get the same sort of recommendation.