Hello readers,
At one time if you had told me I would consider a gaming laptop anything other than silly, I’d have laughed. I generally like; Workstations, SBC style micro computers, Mainframes, Servers, and when I do resort to using laptops it’s usually a question of necessity for work related problem solving.
That me has died… thanks primarily to this slim sleek amazing little 15.6 lightweight hellion from MSI. I nearly wept at the speed of the first game I tried (Space Engineers because yes I’m a nerd – that’s why you should be taking notes!)
For starters lets talk Cpu – I balked at the notion of buying an I5 (9th gen or otherwise,) because I recently married a Xeon processor and figured the world was done surprising me. Apparently somewhere between 3rd and 9th generation I5 became “A hell of a lot faster.” and those specs are shockingly good – and in this case the gpu is an Nvidia Geforce GTX 1650 that apparently smokes crack cocaine when I’m not looking because it is “faster than a stabbed rat.”
The build quality is just right, and notably the quasi-flexibility, are about what you would expect from something under 1″ thick, it feels premium but also light enough to make me re-evaluate how to rate laptop weight in the future. I was delighted to find it was not loaded with bloatware – there were a few MSI related features that were genuinely worth discovering.
It also came with Norton… (Which is nice if you like Norton!)
Pros and Cons… I shall search desperately for a con but for now it’s all pros and unless I’m being an ass it just is all pros. I happily give this gaming rig a 5 out of 5 for it’s $699 price point.
Oh, and try to price this as a build and you’ll come up against plenty of problems. Not the least of which is that there are now exactly 5 laptops that have these identical cpu and gpu combos. (all for about $200 less than building it.) I chose this one for it’s overall quality, as from experience I know that this would be a chore to source for a DIY build. You may find higher praise for that Acer Nitro 5 – they are pretty much the same but it has a backlit keyboard and since I’m over 40 – that would be a bit silly for me personally.
You could go with slightly older models to save a few bucks. However “gamers” these days try to not go lower than a GTX 750 – 1050ti and even then you are looking at practically identical prices – in both laptop and tower builds. This really is about as good as it gets for under $1000. At least when Intel and Nividia are the choice – AMD has a lot of new things that are worth a look.
