MSI has joined the Coffee Lake laptop party with a brand new gaming laptop designed to take on the likes of the Razer Blade, Gigabyte Aero 15X, and Asus ROG Zephyrus. This laptop'due south arrival has been hotly anticipated as it brings new internal hardware along with a full refresh of MSI's gaming line build and blueprint.

The MSI GS65 Stealth Thin is the successor to the company's previous slim gaming laptop, the GS63, which we've looked at previously. The GS63 blueprint was in use for a couple of generations and now information technology's been upgraded in many areas. Information technology still uses a 15.6-inch 1080p brandish, but nosotros're now looking at slimmer bezels and an upgrade to a 144Hz refresh rate.

Hardware-wise yous become typical loftier-cease laptop internals for 2022. The CPU is Intel's Core i7-8750H that we've tested previously, and the GPU is the GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q. At that place's likewise 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD in my review unit, though that combination can vary depending on the region and what y'all want.

MSI clearly wasn't happy with Gigabyte claiming all the accolades for its slim bezel gaming laptop, the Aero 15X, and then they too have taken the slim bezel approach here. The GS65's bezels aren't quite as slim as nosotros encounter with the Aero 15X, but they are much slimmer than on the GS63, and crucially MSI has achieved this without giving us a nostril-vision webcam. As you can see the elevation bezel is slightly thicker than the sides, and in there MSI has managed to fit in a webcam.

With slimmer bezels comes a smaller laptop, and comparing dimensions reveals the GS65 to accept a slightly smaller footprint than its predecessor. About 22mm has been shaved off the width with a similar depth, all while maintaining the aforementioned 17.9mm thickness. These aren't massive reductions but every bit helps and keeps the laptop every bit portable as possible. Plus it'south yet reasonably light at but four.1 lbs (1.88kg).

I always liked the GS63 blueprint just this new GS65 Stealth Thin is simply a class above. It's past far the all-time looking MSI laptop e'er, with an excellent metal beat out and subtle yet attractive gold highlights effectually the lid, trackpad, vents and more. Almost every area of this slim chassis has been refined; it now exudes premium quality. Minor touches like simplifying the logo on the lid and removing other 'gamer' elements have worked wonders, and if you remove the annoying stickers below the keyboard, the minimalist design but becomes more impressive.

The key thing with this GS65 design is despite opting for a high-quality metallic chassis, MSI hasn't compromised the cooling solution. There are even so a ton of vents on this system, including the sides, rear, top and bottom. We've seen with laptops similar the Razer Bract that a metal pattern is good merely it tin can limit the cooler quite significantly, nevertheless this doesn't appear to be the instance with the GS65.

Despite a significant amount of edge infinite going to cooling vents, in that location are plenty of ports on this laptop. Iii USB 3.0 Blazon-A ports, Thunderbolt iii USB-C, Ethernet, HDMI 2.0, Mini-DisplayPort and two audio jacks. Unfortunately there's no SD card slot, which would have been handy for professionals, however I am glad MSI moved the position of the power button back to a more than sensible location to a higher place the keyboard.

Speaking of the keyboard, MSI has used their standard SteelSeries pattern with per-key RGB LED backlighting. Notably, there'south no numpad on the GS65, which I tend to call up should come with a 15-inch laptop. The Aero 15X, for case, does manage to cram a numpad into a similar chassis. Non a big deal for gamers though, information technology's mostly a nitpick.

The travel distance from this keyboard is rather unimpressive. MSI has opted for an ultrabook-fashion switch with a shallow, rubbery response. I prefer a more than clicky design and I know information technology's possible with a laptop keyboard, but the limited about of space MSI has allocated to the depth of these switches has no doubtfulness constrained this keyboard's functioning. On the other hand, the trackpad is very responsive and an improvement on the one-time ELAN days, though mostly you'll want to use a proper mouse for gaming.

Removing the bottom panel of the GS65 reveals… a flipped motherboard, unfortunately. While you can run into the battery and cooling components to a small extent, whatsoever access to the RAM and G.2 slots is fairly difficult as you have to remove the unabridged motherboard and cooling assembly commencement. There are a lot of minor, fragile connectors forth the way, and then it's not something I'd advise for the casual user. Nevertheless if you lot practise go down that path, you will find a spare M.two slot and a spare DIMM slot.

Interestingly, MSI has used a triple-fan cooling design, with a single cooler on the left for the CPU, and a dual fan cooler for the GPU on the right. The extra fan for the GPU is a bit unique, though the heatsink design isn't annihilation usual and provides a good corporeality of finned area. Certainly a lot more than the Aero 15X.

Before heading into operation I did desire to bear on on the display. Every bit I mentioned before it's a 1080p 144Hz display, and while it doesn't include G-Sync, I practice appreciate the high refresh charge per unit; I hope this becomes standard in gaming laptops.

Like with the bezel size, it'south articulate that MSI are targeting the Aero 15X with this display's scale. While not Ten-Rite Pantone certified, the GS65's display is much more than accurate than whatever MSI laptop I've reviewed in the past. Information technology'southward not perfect, but an average CCT of 6804K is decent, to proceed with boilerplate deltaEs of 2.two in greyscale, two.22 in saturation and 2.73 in ColorChecker. For the all-time results these figures should exist beneath 2.0 at least, however considering past efforts this is a decent improvement.

Unfortunately, peradventure as a result of tighter scale, effulgence and dissimilarity are unimpressive. Reaching only 248 nits of peak brightness is non dandy, and neither is a sub 1000:one contrast ratio. Both of these areas are handily browbeaten past the Aero 15X which packs a like display and somewhat superior calibration.