Gadgetory

not all gaming laptops are the size of cinder blocks but going with smaller form factors like this one does pose a risk for thermals and that's one of the things we're going to be looking at today with Emma sized ge62 Apache pro gaming laptop this is the 6 QD model of those it's got an i7 6700 HQ @ a gtx 960m we've got all the specs on the screen now this particular model is $1,300 there's a 970m version of this with slight changes to the storage capacity and memory capacity for $1,500 first off check our full in-depth article links in the description below for more information on charts that might not be here this benchmark looks at gaming performance battery life thermals and overall build quality of the laptop we've recently done overclocking with laptops actually with the CyberPower fame book for running the newest Intel unlocked laptop CPUs to case cube for laptops we also reviewed MSI's gt72 Dominator Pro G a stark difference from this one and that had a GTX 980 desktop GPU and it believe it or not and that was an interesting test because it was the first fully unlocked desktop GPU in a laptop the Apache Pro the one we're looking at today takes on a more reasonable and genuinely portable form factor running 15.6 inches for the screen at 1080p with an IPS panel and a total unit size of 15 by 10 point 2 4 by 1.1 4 inches the IPS panel affords excellent viewing angles for a laptop though use cases for that are generally limited to times when you might have more than one person looking at the screen otherwise it's a fairly standard 1080p display with vibrant colors and brightness the most overlooked aspect of laptops and reviews is the ability to effortlessly maintain the components within the laptop and for our enthusiast audience that's a pretty important feature for the laptops just ease of access because we're the type of people the viewers and of course staff who would rather fix the laptops problems maybe add new thermal paste or whatever then set it in for warranty repair or buy a new laptop so one of the things we're looking at here is that ease of access with the back panel and component accessibility to the user without having to pull apart the entire I see and keyboard and display and everything like you do in a lot of laptops removing the back panel of the ge62 reveals an ideal layout everything's there under one panel know if I've seen with the keyboard and chassis to get into secret compartments for RAM or GPU access the gum stick SSD HDD Ram CPU GPU and cooling fans are also all here under one panel and if for some reason you had to apply new thermal compound to the laptops heat sinks it be less than thirty minutes of work which of course it's something that generally does have to happen at some point with these long service lives for the laptops speaking as someone who's once held a job that required 40 to 50 hours a week of laptop testing and disassembling for thermal analysis this one is about as good as it gets the ge62 is it very easy to disassemble put back together and access all the core components the thermal design is also pretty straightforward a couple of large copper heat sinks meet at alloy heat sinks that cover the GPU and CPU so the copper heat pipes are used for they've actually got liquid inside of them as you may know from our previous videos that liquid just moves from one end to the other does a phase change into gas at one point and that's what does all the thermal conductivity and dissipation from the silicon so these terminate in standard cooling fans at the ends with an alloy heatsink in the center ventilation is present in the front of the chassis as intake rears exhaust and bottom for general breathability and there are two axial fans in the system at opposite corners audio is a big thing for laptops too it's one of those things that you can't really fix once you've bought it so personally speaking I've got an old ACS B al series laptop and that has speakers that are so bad I've basically got a plug peripherals headset or speakers into it in order to actually hear the sound coming out of the system because the speakers are that bad so it's always important to us to look at how powerful the audio is in a laptop when we're reviewing it and with these newer ones the trend and that's included with this laptop there are actually subwoofers on the bottom of these things so there is a subwoofer right here you can see the little speaker cover and that is supposed to help with bass of course but we'll see how it works in the real world the patchy ge62 has a subwoofer in the bottom and speakers on the top near the display audio is allowed but not necessarily powerful for things like music the bass despite MSI's use of a subwoofer is weak and outperformed by the flat EQ of the overall sound system everything sort of emits the same volume level so highest things like high hats will often drown out mid tones for a laptop that we're pretty happy with the raw noise output overall before diving into benchmarks I've got two core points of criticism for this laptop software bloats a big problem for the ge62 and it's sort of disappointing because I haven't had software bloat issues for years now most of the sis or system integrators and manufacturers like MSI have improved with time I have really gone a long way to remove the bloat in their preach pre-built systems and laptops with the ge62 it comes with one a really obnoxious MSI warranty registration program it basically just pops up and tells you to register the warranty constantly as really hard to get rid of so that's one thing but then it's also got the killer networking software which I really frankly do not like at all so it's got killer it's got the MSI warranty thing it has an RGB LED control for the keyboard which of course you need otherwise why would you have the RGB LED keyboard it's got controls for the touchpad and all the gestures and inputs and things like that separate controls for more keyboard functions and then some Intel software that is also useless so there's a lot of stuff on there oh and Norton how could I forget Norton the plague upon PC gamers everywhere because even though it is a solid AV in some aspects especially corporate it's really not necessary for gamers and it does pretty massively slow down boot times and things like that at least with the version that's on here so that is something I would rather not have pre-installed and just sort of leave it up to the user of do you want to install something like ms e or Avast or something lighter weight and this is maybe something that laptop manufacturers and sis could listen to for the future I think maybe looking into some sort of service like my Knights or similar basically pops up when they turn on the laptop and says what things do you want they check it and then it installs it that would be a better solution if you want to enable users who are maybe less savvy to get the software but also not way everyone down with garbage that is the main complaint here is just bloatware you can install uninstall at all of course but why would you want to do that if you're just trying to buy a good gaming laptop out of the gate there also were issues with the embedded controller firmware and bios which have the fans operating at low speeds that allowed massive heat accumulation we have the CPU running at 41 C delta T over ambient idle again which is about 61 Celsius in our environments absolute that is completely unacceptable and the surface of the laptop the part that you actually touch with your wrist is about 105 Fahrenheit under these conditions definitely uncomfortable as a user fortunately we were able to work with MSI to resolve this problem with the EC and BIOS updates and that's something we explained in another video on the channel that's already live let's look at the gaming benchmarks and see how this thing actually performs for video games all of our test methodology and system specs are detailed in the article linked below or on gamers nexus net battery life testing will also be available in more depth on the site thermals first the ge62 had severe issues when we first got it thermally so these results were collected after fixing the EC and BIOS with those updates thermal results are on screen we've currently changed and updated our testing methodology so all these laptops on the chart have been rechecked and updated as necessary it's not fully comparable to our previous tests because of methodology changes after the EC and BIOS flash the ge62 Apache performs reasonably well out 34.5 C delta T over ambient for the GPU and 28.1 C delta T for the CPU both are definitely accessible temperatures and generally cooler than most the other laptops we've tested the PC H runs a bit warm at roughly 35 Celsius delta T but is still acceptable before updates our temperatures were nearing about 60 Celsius delta T when under load for just the CPU so that is quite a hike and it's a worth while EC and BIOS update if you end up buying one of these the GE 62 runs pretty cool post update given its portable form factor and rough 1 inch thickness here's a quick look at the battery life chart for our laptop so we run grid Autosport non-stop using the high-performance windows profile no AC adapter connected of course to this time and we check the event log for the inevitable shutdown and then extrapolate a time in that fashion most gaming laptops lasts between 45 minutes and a little over an hour depending on how powerful the GPU component is and how hot the CPU runs time for gaming stuff competitively the gtx 960m is obviously significantly underpowered versus the 970 m and 980 units on this bench it's also a $1,300 laptop so that makes it much more affordable than the other stuff we've reviewed which tends to be in the 2,000 to 3,000 dollar range nothing's really all that playable at Ultra settings with 1080p resolution on the 960m GTA 5 is the first example where we see about 33 FPS average and the lows are actually times pretty tightly so that is a good thing despite the low averages overall unfortunately that low overall average does mean it's too low to properly enjoy the game at these settings and the 970m is much more reasonable especially when overclocked but the 980m is where you'd have to be for 60fps if that matters to you with dirt rally we saw about 32 FPS average with tightly time to lows on the 960m the 970m laptop is a huge step up running almost 60 FPS average and is totally playable on ultra shadow of mordor pushes the ge62 Apache Pro beyond its limits as it falls below 30 FPS hitting just 29 FPS average the same is true for Metro last light generally a gtx 970m gets you a fairly playable framerate at Ultra with tweaks anyway on all of these games but it's not until the witcher 3 that everything that suffers on ultra and that's fair since the game is so intensive here's a quick chart showing medium settings on only the 960m as you can see here it's suddenly significantly more playable on all of these titles we're hitting 50 plus FPS in a lot of cases and that's just fine for a $1,300 laptop if you're on a budget and a bit over a grand is your sort of target to spend and you're willing to sacrifice down to medium settings then the ge62 does have good performance the ge62 is the kind of laptop you would be buying if you travel a lot or haul it back and forth on a day to day basis maybe to school or work and that is something that it's good at it's generally small it's got a 960 M which is powerful enough but not so powerful forces the laptop into a larger chassis sort of format and the GTX 980 and 970 laptops that are above this one are 970 m and 980 m laptops do definitely have a lot more output in terms of power or performance you're able to hit those 50 fps sort of averages at a minimum with most of these games or at least something like 48 so that does make them a lot more playable on ultra if you're willing to drop down to something like medium and you're on a budget of around $1,300 then this is actually good laptop for those things the really only key points that we had about the labs that were bad we're the bloatware so that's one thing but you can fix that by sitting there and uninstalling stuff for half an hour and the other point was the high thermals stock and that's resolved with an EC and a BIOS update assuming MSI doesn't just start shipping the laptops with those things pre-installed the next thing here this does have a 970m cousin it's the same laptop with a 970m in it slightly different storage spec but pretty similar overall and that is $200 more that's $1500 and for the $200 price jump it really it sort of is worth it if you are the type of person who just can't stand looking at medium settings now 1080 medium with these games even though we always talk about ultra it still looks pretty damn good especially for the price but if you really need high or maybe pushing the ultra settings in some cases obviously you got to be connected to AC when you're doing that then the $200 would be worthwhile so that's the ge62 6qd Apache Pro mouthful gaming laptop check the link the description below for more information and hit the patreon link the postal video to help us out directly thank you for watching I'll see you all next time