DarkStar02
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2006
- Messages
- 2,144
I picked up an MSI GS73VR yesterday afternoon hoping to replace the desktop in my sig (i5 2500k @ 4ghz, 16gb ram, 970). My impressions so far:
- Very thin and good looking. I initially hated the font they used on the keyboard but after disabling the stock rainbow colored keyboard backlighting it's a lot less noticeable.
- The stickers they put all over the palm rest area are ridiculously difficult to get off. Every single one of them left a ton of thick glue residue that I had to scrub hard with rubbing alcohol and a terry cloth.
- Ships with some bloatware, not bad though (Norton, some music recording program, Xsplit, etc). Easily uninstalled.
- The speakers are pretty "tinny" considering how big the speaker area above the keyboard seems to be. Music, videos, whatever, the sound is hollow and has a very slight echo to it. I definitely wouldn't want these speakers to be my primary audio source. The speakers on the Samsung 48" 4k tv I have it hooked up to (JU7500) are infinitely better sounding for being built into a flatscreen tv.
- Battery life is TERRIBLE so far. On the first charge I barely got 2 hours installing programs and syncing files from OneDrive, Dropbox, etc with the screen brightness set at 40%. When I used it last night in bed I had the brightness set to 0% and the estimator showed an estimated 1 hour 15 mins with 80% charge left. I didn't use it for more than 15 minutes though so I'm hoping the estimator has some calibrating to do or something and that was just a very, very wrong estimate.
- The keyboard travel feels nice. I'm not used to having the right side 10 key on a laptop so I keep accidentally getting my finger placement wrong when typing and the trackpad is slightly to the left so I keep right clicking. This isn't a bad thing, just something I'll have to get used to.
- The ability to choose your keyboard backlight color and set up macros for different games and programs is awesome. The SteelSeries program has a ton of customization options.
- I haven't run benchmarks yet but it feels about on par with my desktop
- There is a surprising amount of flex on the display and chassis. I think this might be intentional to prevent damage during travel but compared to my wife's macbook pro it doesn't feel as premium, probably due to the pl. Don't get me wrong-- this is still a premium feeling laptop but relative to the macbook pro or even the new Spectre x360 I played with when I picked it up, the plastic chassis leaves something to be desired.