MSI GE40 Review: a Slim Gaming Notebook
by Jarred Walton on July 16, 2013 3:00 AM ESTMSI GE40 Closing Thoughts: Give and Take
We’ve frequently discussed the balancing act that needs to take place when manufacturers are designing a laptop, and that balancing act gets even more difficult when you’re creating a thin and light gaming notebook. If you simply throw caution to the wind, it’s definitely possible to create an awesome notebook that runs fast, performs well, and looks great—but it’s going to cost you. The Razer Blade notebooks are perfect example of this, except that the Razer Blade 14 basically drops the ball when it comes to the LCD. MSI tries to pick up the fumble with their GE40, but unfortunately their display happens to be even worse than the Razer Blade 14 panel! Here’s the thing: a somewhat mediocre display with a reasonable resolution isn’t the end of the world. If you’re able to overlook the LCD and its poor contrast ratio, the GE40 hits a lot of the right notes.
For starters, the CPU and GPU pairing are just about ideal. The 37W i7-4702MQ isn’t the fastest CPU on the block, but it’s generally fast enough to keep the GTX 760M happy. The GTX 760M is also a good pairing for the 1600x900 LCD resolution—it might be able to handle 1080p without antialiasing in some titles, but there are also going to be instances where you’ll need to drop down to high or even medium detail levels to get acceptable performance (e.g. Metro Last Light and Company of Heroes 2). NVIDIA’s top-of-the-line GTX 780M in some cases offers nearly three times the performance of the GTX 760M, at least at our Enthusiast settings; at our Mainstream settings, in quite a few titles we don’t even see a 2X performance increase. Finally, in light use we were able to hit nearly nine hours of battery life with the GE40, and if you’re willing to lower the LCD brightness further you should be able to exceed that mark.
It’s not just about performance either; I won’t say that the GE40 is the greatest looking notebook I’ve ever seen, but it also seen worse. Get rid of the black glossy plastic, and perhaps switch to a neutral silver color instead of black, and aesthetically the design would move up from a middle-of-the-road six out of 10 to a solid eight. The keyboard on the other hand is definitely better than average these days, with the only real omission being keyboard backlighting. I like the inclusion of dedicated document navigation keys on a 14-inch laptop, and having those keys in a column on the right is my preferred layout. Frankly, I’m still a little baffled why most modern 13.3-inch and 14-inch laptops have abandoned this layout. The touchpad also has actual buttons rather than integrating those into the touchpad surface; I know some people prefer the latter, but I’d rather have buttons.
Take all of the above and slap on a $1270 price tag and we’re talking about a viable and reasonably priced slim gaming notebook. (The model without an SSD costs about $100 less, but that’s not a compromise I’d recommend.) Without jacking up the price, about the closest alternatives I can come up with that offer a similar or perhaps slightly better gaming experience are much bulkier: ASUS G75VW (last-gen IVB CPU and 670M GPU), MSI GX60 (faster GPU, much slower CPU), the Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 series (i7-4700MQ with SLI GT 750M), or MSI’s own GE60. Depending on what you’re after, one or more of those might be a better choice, but they’re not clearly better in every area.
What it really boils down to is this: are you willing to turn down detail levels a bit in order to get acceptable gaming performance, are temperatures in the 80s and 90s “safe”, and can you live with the mediocre LCD? It’s a shame you’re forced to make that kind of decision, but at least the price is more palatable than the Razer Blade 14. Hopefully MSI can release a revised model that fixes some of the oversights: give us better cooling, keyboard backlighting, a silver chassis (or at least something less prone to collecting smudges and fingerprints), and a good LCD and this would be a winner.
The truth is, we’re probably still a couple years away from seeing this level of performance in a laptop this size that runs truly cool and quiet (<75C and <40dB); physics can be such a drag that way. But the Razer Blade 14 runs a bit cooler and quieter while boasting better performance, and slightly larger notebooks are faster, cooler, and quieter. The GE40 ends up being reasonably fast with temperatures that are a bit higher than we'd like but still technically within spec, and the price is quite reasonable. Fixing the LCD would go a long way towards earning an outright recommendation; as it stands, we can only sigh and think about what might have been.
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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.