MSI Stealth GS65 Gaming Laptop (8th Gen Core i7/ 16GB/ 512GB SSD/ Win10 Home/ 6GB Graph)

Abhishek Jain

from Flipkart

Simply awesome

Being a long time Macbook user, this was really a great product that compares to my Macbook pro, in terms of user experience. Be it keyboard/touchpad or screen quality, it excels in everything. Here is my comprehensive list of pros and cons: Pros: 1. 144 Hz display - Believe me this makes a lot of difference in AAA titles, when you use this buttery smooth display, you can't really turn back to 60Hz or even 90Hz. Also, that awesome thin bezel display. Man that's a delight to work and game on. Really feels like a 2019 laptop design. 2. i7 8th Gen and 16 GB RAM - This 6 core processor and RAM combo is a beast. With DDR4 2666 Mhz frequency at RAM in dual channel (2 slots), there is absolutely nothing it can't handle. These 8th gen processor are tweaked to work best with dual RAM sticks, and this laptop is configured in the same way. The processor is lightning fast with Cinebench r15 multi-core scores of 1150-1200 (in consecutive runs), this one's really a beast. 3. RGB backlit keyboard - With individual RGB backlight for each key, this is one of the best keyboards that I have seen, keys have a good tactile feedback, and typing experience is really good. 4. Large touchpad - I have used windows laptops before my Macbook, but one of the reasons for sticking with Macbook pro was its touchpad, that awesome feel when you use that. Believe me when I say this, touchpad on this laptop, is one the best, if not the best, that I have seen on any windows laptop. Touchpad is really sensitive, and you never need to press it. Everything can happen with just touch, gestures and tap. 5. Gaming - And then coming to gaming, there is absolutely nothing that this laptop can't handle. With RTX 2060, you can play almost every modern and demanding title at ultra quality with buttery smooth framerates, almost every title that I have tested as of now, is playable at about 90 FPS (avg), this includes CS:GO (250 FPS avg), Call of Duty: Black OPS 4 (135 FPS avg), Battlefield 5 (Ray Tracing Off, 85 FPS avg), Shadow of the tomb raider (70 FPS avg) etc. 6. Thunderbolt 3 - Believe me this is really helpful. Many of ASUS's gaming laptop don't include support for thunderbolt 3 even though having 2 USB-type-C ports, this one does. That future proof's me down the line for use with eGPU's and multiple displays. Although included graphic card is no slouch, and will easily run any title thrown at it over 60 Hz at ultra settings for years to come. 7. 512GB M.2 NVME SSD - This one comes with M.2 PCIE3.0x4 SSD. Although as this is an OEM version of SSD, read write speeds would not be as good as samsung 970 EVO, but man this is really fast. With boot times in under 10 sec, there's nothing really to say. 8. Stealth - When looking at exterior of the laptop, no one can tell you that this is a gaming laptop, featuring such powerful specs. You can easily use this in meetings at office, and no one would know a thing. 9. Slim and sleek design - Sure this is no ultrabook, but with such powerful gaming laptop, you'd expect, a bulky and beefy laptop. Nope, not here, with just 1.9 KG of weight under the hood, this is really slim, and a sleek design, that doesn't hurt your back. 10. MSI rucksack style bag comes with the lappy. Really good quality backpack. 11. Right now as of writing this review, there are few game promotions being run by MSI. You can easily get around 9k of free games with this purchase. Cons: 1. Heating Issues - Out of the box, there are a few overheating issues with this laptop, but nothing that can be addressed with a little undervolt on the CPU, that helps a bit. But still in really demanding workloads (but not in games), this thermal throttles the CPU. Even then performance doesn't take a huge hit, just moving from 3.9 Ghz on all cores to 3.5 Ghz. I have tweaked this accordingly to downclock, so as not to sustain, at these temps for long, then clock back at intervals. 2. Battery Life - This one really takes a dip. With medium workload I was able to get just about 3.5 hours of battery life. That is really bad for a laptop. 3. It comes installed with Windows 10 Home Single Language, not pro version. 4. No FingerPrint or Windows Hello FaceLock Login. 5. Port selection is really good, but no SD card reader, really huge miss for me. 6. Speakers - Not exactly a con, but sound quality is just about average from these. 7. Bad upgrade-ability as motherboard is upside down, and opening it would void warranty. Overall, I would say this is an awesome purchase, and is a must buy if looking for an excellent gaming laptop, with RTX graphic card, in stealth, slim and sleek design approach