MSI has joined the Coffee Lake laptop political party with a make new gaming laptop designed to take on the likes of the Razer Bract, Gigabyte Aero 15X, and Asus ROG Zephyrus. This laptop'southward arrival has been hotly anticipated as it brings new internal hardware along with a total refresh of MSI's gaming line build and design.

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 design was in apply for a couple of generations and now it's been upgraded in many areas. It notwithstanding uses a fifteen.half-dozen-inch 1080p display, just we're now looking at slimmer bezels and an upgrade to a 144Hz refresh rate.

Hardware-wise you lot get typical high-end laptop internals for 2018. The CPU is Intel's Cadre i7-8750H that we've tested previously, and the GPU is the GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q. In that location'south too 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD in my review unit, though that combination can vary depending on the region and what you want.

MSI clearly wasn't happy with Gigabyte claiming all the accolades for its slim bezel gaming laptop, the Aero 15X, so they too accept taken the slim bezel approach hither. The GS65's bezels aren't quite equally slim as we meet 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 yous can encounter the top 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 equally helps and keeps the laptop as portable as possible. Plus it's however reasonably light at simply 4.ane lbs (1.88kg).

I always liked the GS63 pattern merely this new GS65 Stealth Sparse is simply a class above. It's past far the best looking MSI laptop ever, with an excellent metal vanquish and subtle yet attractive gold highlights around the lid, trackpad, vents and more. Almost every area of this slim chassis has been refined; information technology now exudes premium quality. Pocket-size touches like simplifying the logo on the lid and removing other 'gamer' elements accept worked wonders, and if you remove the abrasive stickers below the keyboard, the minimalist pattern merely becomes more impressive.

The key affair with this GS65 design is despite opting for a high-quality metallic chassis, MSI hasn't compromised the cooling solution. In that location are however a ton of vents on this organisation, including the sides, rear, top and lesser. Nosotros've seen with laptops like the Razer Blade that a metal design is skilful only it can limit the cooler quite significantly, notwithstanding this doesn't appear to exist the case with the GS65.

Despite a pregnant amount of edge space going to cooling vents, there are enough of ports on this laptop. 3 USB 3.0 Type-A ports, Thunderbolt 3 USB-C, Ethernet, HDMI 2.0, Mini-DisplayPort and two audio jacks. Unfortunately there's no SD card slot, which would take been handy for professionals, however I am glad MSI moved the position of the power button dorsum to a more sensible location above the keyboard.

Speaking of the keyboard, MSI has used their standard SteelSeries design with per-key RGB LED backlighting. Notably, there's no numpad on the GS65, which I tend to think should come with a fifteen-inch laptop. The Aero 15X, for example, does manage to cram a numpad into a like chassis. Not a big bargain for gamers though, it's mostly a nitpick.

The travel distance from this keyboard is rather unimpressive. MSI has opted for an ultrabook-manner switch with a shallow, rubbery response. I prefer a more clicky design and I know it'south possible with a laptop keyboard, only the limited about of space MSI has allocated to the depth of these switches has no doubt constrained this keyboard's performance. On the other hand, the trackpad is very responsive and an comeback on the quondam ELAN days, though more often than not 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 come across the battery and cooling components to a minor extent, any access to the RAM and M.2 slots is fairly difficult as y'all have to remove the entire motherboard and cooling assembly get-go. There are a lot of small, delicate connectors along the fashion, then it'southward non something I'd advise for the casual user. However if you do go down that path, you volition discover a spare M.2 slot and a spare DIMM slot.

Interestingly, MSI has used a triple-fan cooling blueprint, 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 blueprint isn't anything usual and provides a skilful amount of finned area. Certainly a lot more than than the Aero 15X.

Earlier heading into performance I did want to bear on the brandish. As I mentioned earlier it'south a 1080p 144Hz display, and while it doesn't include G-Sync, I do appreciate the high refresh charge per unit; I promise this becomes standard in gaming laptops.

Similar with the bezel size, it's clear that MSI are targeting the Aero 15X with this display's calibration. While non 10-Rite Pantone certified, the GS65's display is much more accurate than any MSI laptop I've reviewed in the past. It's not perfect, only an average CCT of 6804K is decent, to go along with boilerplate deltaEs of 2.2 in greyscale, ii.22 in saturation and two.73 in ColorChecker. For the best results these figures should be beneath ii.0 at least, yet because past efforts this is a decent comeback.

Unfortunately, perhaps equally a upshot of tighter scale, effulgence and contrast are unimpressive. Reaching just 248 nits of elevation brightness is not not bad, and neither is a sub one thousand:1 contrast ratio. Both of these areas are handily browbeaten by the Aero 15X which packs a similar display and somewhat superior calibration.