MSI GE Series GE63 Raider RGB-012 15.6″ 120 Hz FHD GTX 1060 6 GB VRAM i7-8750H 16 GB Memory 128GB SSD 1TB HDD Windows 10 Home 64-Bit Gaming Laptop

Pros: Build quality is nice, feels well made and sturdy. The keyboard functionality is just enough and all the functions make sense. The 120hz monitor is AMAZING, there is no need for anything more than 1080p in a laptop and the 120hz just makes gaming look sexy! Ultra fast boot up time, and the graphics card is plenty. Easily customizable and upgradable one you get the unit open. Came with a serviceable laptop bag to bring to and from work daily.

Cons: When I got my unit the bottom left of the keyboard was a little uneven which caused the laptop to slightly wobble. At first I was furious and wanted to immediately return it because of the $2K price tag. After placing it on another surface the wobble was noticeably less so it was the surface it was on, but yet it was still SLIGHTLY uneven. It wasn’t enough for me to return it and wait for another one so I decided to go ahead and open it up and replace the HDD with an extra SSD I had from my previous desktop. After replacing the plastic bottom and re-tightening it, it seemed to solve the wobble issue. It was slightly difficult to remove the bottom piece but a good YouTube video will get you through it. Once I got it open it was very very easy to upgrade. I do with the SSD they gave you had some more storage capacity in it.

Overall Review: All in all its a great machine for the price. It fans run slightly loud when gaming but not noticeable with headsets on. For $2K I challenge you to find a better gaming laptop with the 8th Gen Intel and a GTX 1070 card. I miss my mechanical keyboard but this Steel Series keyboard is pretty good and provides some decent feedback.

Pros: – Powerful
-good battery life
-Looks great
-MSI utilities are user friendly and helpful
-little to no bloatware

Cons: – Fan do run loud and the system does get pretty hot after long gaming sessions.
-NO user up-gradable parts
-First system developed dead pixels after a week of use. Newegg replaced it no questions asked and the second system has been going for 2 months now without a problem.

Overall Review: Let me start by saying I have a desktop that would blow this thing out of the water as far as performance. However, I needed something that was portable. Something that could handle day to day work stuff like internet surfing and word processors while being able to play some AAA- title games, this computer does both with ease. I am brand loyal to ASUS so the MSI Raider was not my first choice. But it was the only one that had everything I wanted while still being affordable as far as gaming laptops are concerned.
-I never run in power save mode and my battery life averages about 6hours (about 2 if gaming)
– I have played WoW, Space Engineers, ARK, AC:Odyssey, and Civ:6 all at max graphic settings and I average 60-110FPS during most in game situations.
-The Fans will run loud while gaming, almost to the point of distraction but I’ve gotten used to it.
-GPU temps after about 4 hours of AC:Odyssey were at about 80-85C with fans at max RPMs. The game did crash a few times due to overheating. Heat is always an intrinsic problem with laptops so this doesn’t necessarily speak to the build quality but something you should be aware of.
-The onboard speakers are actually pretty decent for what they are but if sound is important to you then a good set of headphones will do better.
-There are no panels that you can remove and upgrade or replace internal parts. You could remove the bottom panel and accomplish this but you will void the warranty.
-The Steel series keyboard is sleek and lots of configuration options, on top of being a nice conversation starter.

Overall if you looking for a decent gaming laptop that looks and performs great but don’t want to drop $4k on a high end system then I recommend this one. If you are looking for a system that can be used for long-term (4+hour) gaming sessions as max settings, then I would look at other options out there.

Pros: Great laptop, works with any game I throw at it, great huge display. Super fast and easy to set up without bloatware.. And the lights are fabulous and cool.. It is a good conversation starter!

Cons: Norton was pre installed not a huge fan of norton security, battery is not the greatest for on the go games lag without charger plugged in, and gets really hot, although just turn your fans on max and you’ll be ok.

Overall Review: I highly recommend this laptop for what it’s worth which is why I’m giving it 5 eggs as it’s worth it for a 1070 with a 8th Gen processor from intel.

Pros: rgb functions are sweet, plays every game I’ve thrown at it at the highest graphics settings with zero issues. Solid construction, good build quality

Cons: running hot, processor will hit 86 degrees Celsius unless cooler boost is on then it hovers around 80-83. GPU stays surprisingly cool

Overall Review: I would reccomend it. Seems solid.

Pros: – Vibrant display, great colors and saturation
– Games run well when on AC power

Cons: – Driver nightmare out of the box. Ended up restoring to factory settings multiple times before things worked mostly right
– Horrible battery life (even by gaming laptop standards) and a battery calibration software that doesn’t work
– Audio will randomly just stop working and can only be restored by rebooting the system
– Several keys have had the green LED fail, making the RGB aspect fairly useless
– Wifi module stopped working requiring opening of the system and disconnecting and reconnecting the wifi module multiple times to get it working again. Not sure how long that will last.
– Customer service responding to tickets put in on the web site are either all robots or can’t read (more in notes)

Overall Review: I picked this up when it first launched in April 2018 as I was about to do some traveling and wanted a good quality laptop for entertainment while in hotel rooms. I had never owned an MSI product before, but it seemed like their reputation was solid so I decided to give it a shot. Thankfully, I had a couple weeks between getting the laptop and my planned travel as I had to spend a lot of time getting drivers (direct from the MSI “help desk” app) to install properly. Several times the installs failed in such a way that the only practical solution was to restore to the factory Windows image and start over.

Later on, I noticed that the green LED on one of the keys had gone out. I opened a ticket through the MSI website and in it I specifically asked what options OTHER than sending it back via RMA were available. That question was completely ignored and all I got in response was an obviously stock email with RMA information and a note instructing me to ship it back at my expense and I could expect it back in a month. I didn’t follow through with that as being without the system for a month over a LED was unacceptable.

Since then the other problems mentioned in the “cons” have popped up, with the wifi module issue being the most recent having happened just yesterday. If it goes out completely I’ll probably just buy a new wifi module rather than deal with the lack of customer service.

Won’t be buying anything from MSI again.

Pros: As stated in the title, it does a good job for playing games on. The eighth gen i7 helps out a lot with the 1060. Most games I play with, usually end up bottle-necking my other rig; which has a MSI gtx 1060 with a i5 7600k. Though, recently I’ve noticed that my CPU has been under performing. My GPU would be at 100% while my CPU is 30~50%.

Cons: Before I bought it, I read the comments on this laptop. I can agree to a few. The trackpad isn’t the greatest. The trackpad doesn’t feel smooth when I use it. It seems unresponsive when I move it slowly. There seems to be an issue when I left click scrolling up or down, to where it kind of “sticks”. The page will keep going up/down until I click somewhere on the page to have it stop scrolling. The spacebar is kind of fickle, when it comes to using it. If you don’t press hard enough or more towards the center, it doesn’t pick it up, so it kind of sucks when you’re typing.

Overall Review: This is a great product for the price and it’s performance. It sucked to see when the same price tag on this was the same as the equivalent model that had the rtx 2060 in it for the same price point.

Pros: Rgb per key. Super fan control with msi application. Good fps values. Worth the money

Cons: Only low battery life.

Pros: – Its slim for gaming laptop
– Keyboard is so good and has so many features. impressed me much than performance of laptop itself
– Low bloatware. just few programs to remove.
– Designated cooling button

Cons: – placement of touch pad is kind of weird, it should be placed more to the right since most people are using right hand to use touch pad.
– No easy access hatch for memory and HDD upgrade. you have to remove complete bottom plastic.

Overall Review: I would definitely recommend this model for on budget gaming. its boots up very fast. games run great on it, but like with any other laptop, some tweaking and set up is needed. Its VR ready, it will run any VR game from Steam.
Keyboard is definitely the best side feature of this laptop. It so good, that i spent more time playing with lights and set up than actually playing games on it.