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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yhselp - Friday, July 19, 2013 - link
The revised conclusion looks great, the amount of detail you go into and the way you’ve put it all is very neat and clear. And yes, I absolutely agree with you -- the GE40 need a major cosmetic overhaul, the Blade is too expensive in general and the lack of a proper LCD in such a product is just outrageous. I genuinely wonder what happened, perhaps they were way into developing a 14.0” chassis and when they realized they couldn’t source a good screen of the same size it was already too late to go back to the drawing board?! Then again, their standard-sized 17.3” model lacks an IPS screen too. Anyway, I never argued these points, it seems as though this has turned into a GE40 vs. Blade along with Apple thrown into the mix sort of thing and that was not my intention.“Long-term” is a very elusive notion indeed. Hardware can always fail, but having a solid design and build quality goes a long way towards reducing the odds of failure, enables the use of more powerful components (at a certain cost, yes) and helps maintain optimal functionality throughout the lifetime of the product. Yes, fans are finned plasticy spinny little devils which can and do fail -- what can a man do... I know this reads like a bunch of marketing nonsense, but I really believe in those design ideals.
Razer and Apple sell $2000+ laptops, they also pocket significant margins (Apple for sure) so their main priority probably isn’t optimal cooling, but one that just gets the job done; that seems to be the unfortunately reality of today. Despite this they are one of the few companies making advances in “slim-chassis cooling solutions”. I only quoted the rMBP 15 since it was the first laptop to feature a 45W quad-core CPU in such a slim chassis. I wouldn’t bet on Apple, however, to go any further than perfecting their current design as they probably won’t need to cool a hotter CPU (or GPU for that matter) in the future.
Limited options and upgradability have become synonymous with truly optimized and thin designs. I am all for swappable memory and storage and I believe the industry can come up with a very slim, single-sided module which shouldn’t have a negative impact on slim designs. In my eyes, mechanical storage is a no-go for such designs (even a 7mm 2.5” drive); even if there’s enough space for it, it’d make more sense to put more battery instead. Nowadays, even mSATA looks big -- the smallest M.2 implementation looks better, especially for Raid 0 designs. Once you delve deeper even the keyboard becomes a problem, and you just can’t ship a great keyboard without proper travel. All these cannot become standard soon enough.
I would like to thank you for listening to feedback and taking the time to revise the conclusion. I hope I haven’t been too much of a nuisance. Have a great vacation :)
kondor999 - Thursday, July 18, 2013 - link
Excellent article. I just ordered a Sager-branded W230ST (4700/765m) which is considerably thicker than the GE40 and supposedly has a good LCD. I'm hoping that the increased thickness will potentiate sufficient cooling and therefore help avoid both throttling and excessive temps in general. There are no reviews yet, so wish me luck.sotoa - Thursday, July 18, 2013 - link
Nice article. I'm in the market for something this small and this was on my list (not anymore). LCD is junk? Classic!Please review the Clevo W230ST and fast! Hopefully the screen is as promising as it sounds plus 765m can hopefully be decent on 1080p.
yhselp - Thursday, July 18, 2013 - link
Even if W230ST's LCD is not as good, you can easily swap it with a 13.3" IPS 1600x900 screen from LG; this will also increase performance. You can't do this with the Razer Blade 14 or the MSI GE40 because of their unusual screen size -- there are currently no 14.0" IPS screens (900p or 1080p) on the market. Hope this helps.yhselp - Thursday, July 18, 2013 - link
I just saw that the W230ST is already available at Mythlogic and they list the screen as IPS. Their pricing tends to be among the best; customization options are plentiful too, e.g. you can get an 840 Pro mSATA drive.Clevo's cooling is generally better than MSI's so if you have to order right now and you've been considering the GE40, it's a pretty safe bet to get the W230ST.
ddonuts4 - Sunday, July 21, 2013 - link
Just a side note; the battery life of this laptop is so good because there is an extra battery in the optical drive slot. Although this is a welcome addition to a laptop, is shouldn't be overlooked. This laptop isn't much more efficient than any other, it just has a bigger battery.JarredWalton - Sunday, July 21, 2013 - link
Sorry, but that's just not true. The optical slot is where the 750GB HDD is sitting. I took pictures of the internals (see the first gallery on the first page) and there's definitely no extra battery to be found.chancar09 - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
When I am playing a game, I am willing to tolerate the temperature and noise. But I don't want to have high temperature and noise when I am just accessing the internet, or editing a document. Is there any way I could set it to a low temp, or low noise in these case, or is it automatically running slow under these conditions so it will be cool and quiet?xKeL - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Great review, one question though, I see that the keyboard has been removed in one of the pictures, how does one go about removing the keyboard? I need to replace mine due to water damageDarknessrise13 - Sunday, October 13, 2013 - link
Could you guys do a review of the refreshed model of this with the 1080p display? The GE40 2OC-245. I'm wondering if the display refresh helps with the cruddy contrast.