Gadgetory

welcome back to how we run box for a laptop review actually it's probably more of a laptop versus desktop type content creation video anyway the topic isn't important what you should be focused on is the fact that I'm going to make you watch the entire video like this well that intro probably hurt my watch time but whatever we'll make do with whoever's left right so for this video we'll be taking a look at the msi GS for TVR 7re phantom pro yeah from this point forward let's just call it the phantom pro despite the fact that you now think it's a quadcopter from DJI and on a laptop from msi but anyway technically the laptop was announced late last year so it's not exactly brand new though the revision I have is relatively new late last year msi released the six re model which featured the Scylla kokoro 7 CPUs and that model has been recently updated with the 7 re version that I have and as you probably guessed that has the kb lake core i7s anyway if you saw my unboxing boxes episode 27 last week you'll know why I have the phantom Pro on hand and for the sinners who missed all the unboxing action let me fill you in next week I'm headed to Taipei for Computex thanks to msi who have sponsored the channel part of a sponsorship deal included a laptop to create videos on well as overseas and for that msi has sent along a light and very compact phantom pro the unit weighs just 1.8 kilograms and measures 345 millimeters wide 245 millimeters deep and as thickest it's just 23 millimeters on paper the laptop looks great for what I need it has a snappy Intel Core i7 7700 HQ processor and although this is the base model it's what you'd expect to find in a compact 14-inch flagship laptop so those wondering the 7700 HQ has a base operating frequency of 2 point 8 gigahertz with a maximum survivors frequency of 3.8 gigahertz although that is a decent downgrade in terms of clock speed from the desktop variants you do still get all 4 cores with hyper-threading for 8 threads the level 3 cache has been downgraded from 8 megabytes to 6 and this is how much level three you will find on a desktop core i5 processor out-of-the-box you also get a very snappy Samsung sm9 5:1 256 gigabyte nvme SSD of the boot drive along with a secondary 1 terabyte hard drive it's a travel star 7k 1000 which has a 32 megabyte DRAM cash and a 7200 rpm spindle speed for a 2.5 inch driver - rather snappy MSI is also thrown in 16 gigabytes of dual-channel ddr2 400 memory the screen is a beautiful 14 inch IPS panel supporting a resolution of 1920 by 1080 and it offers exceptional image quality with great viewing angles perfect for video making the only consumer I did have with the screen was whether the 1080p resolution will be enough for aging videos in Premiere Pro but as it turns out everything fits well enough driving the display is the geforce gtx 1066 q bite model and i'm keen to see how this thing performs in game shortly though I will save that for another video soon for now I want to see how this laptop compares to similarly configured desktops for content creation that said they let me start by saying the laptop versus desktop argument is a little bit pointless laptops are of course purpose-built to be portable while desktops are designed to be set up and used at you guessed at a desk and from there most really move so if you need a computer for creating videos while on the go a laptop is the only solution the question though how well does something like MSI fountain Pro work and this is the very question I was asking myself heading into this week as I prepare for Computex when working from home my editing area is powered by a core i7 69 50 X which is a 10 core 20 thread processor it's a bit overkill for Premiere Pro and its price is quite horrendous but getting sidetracked I also have 128 gigabytes of ddr4 memory so I'm not expecting MSI's little laptop to deliver that kind of performance still I'm very interested to see where the Phantom price performance positions itself on the desktop landscape so let's go find out before jumping into the Premiere Pro CC testing let's quickly run a few other tests first up we have the memory bandwidth test and here we see the Phantom Pro is good for roughly 25 gigabytes per second that places that on power the core i7 7,500 and the reason for this is both configurations were tested using ddr4 2400 memory this means memory bandwidth is down more than 20% when compared to the Intel systems running the faster ddr4 3,200 memory not really a shocker though given the difference in memory frequency and there really isn't anything msi could have done about this as the HM 175 does limit memory support to ddr4 2400 so let's move on and see what the Intel Core i7 7700 HQ has to offer in terms of rural performance using Cinebench r15 MSI's phantom pro was good for a multi-threaded score of seven hundred and three points and this place the core i7 7700 HQ just ahead of the core i5 7600 k which is quite impressive and not far behind the horizon v 1500 X the higher clock 7700 K was 34% faster but that's hardly surprising as we were comparing a 91 watt desktop see for you to a 45 watt mobile part one thing worth noting though is the single thread performance is well down on even the 7600 K and again this has to do with the clock speeds in fact the 7700 HQ is only able to add you at Core i5 7500 before jumping to Premiere Pro here is a quick look at the 7-zip performance again we find the Phantom Pro and at 7700 HQ process I find themselves situated between the 7600 K and the horizon 5 1500 X desktop processors which is quite impressive given the size of the laptop ok so now we have the Adobe Premiere Pro CC exporting or encouraging rendering performance for this all-important test the Phantom Pro was able to overtake the rise in 5 1500 X making it faster than not just AMD's new quad core but also the much higher clocked KB Lake 7600 K when compared to the rise in 5 1600 X 6 core 12 thread CPU the Phantom Pro was 26 percent slower running on the mains power but that's not actually that bad it was also 32 percent slower from the core i7 7700 K that said though it is worth noting when running from the internal battery the rendering time is increased by 23% and now the Phantom Pro is only slightly faster than the locked core i5 desktop system still for truly portable performance that's still very impressive so what took the core i7 77 ok just four minutes takes the Phantom Pro laptop five minutes this means for a ten minute long 4k 60fps video the laptop would take around thirty two and a half minutes to complete the render the core i7 7700 K enabled desktop system should take around 26 minutes so in contrast I feel the laptop isn't that bad and given the convenience of being able to render on the fly I feel like that isn't much of a performance penalty before moving on to the battery testing here's a quick look at how long the Phantom Pro takes to boot up from a cold start as you can see it's extremely snappy Thanks that mbm a SSD which is great as it won't keep you waiting for long allowing you to quickly get back to work or play The Phantom Pro comes equipped with a four cell 61 watt hour battery which offers a reasonable run time though I would say this is one of the weaker aspects of the laptop watching a movie in airplane mode for example with the brightness set to 50% the battery did drain in 4 hours and 15 minutes still that's long enough to watch a movie but it's not quite as long as I would have hoped for meanwhile the PC market battery test did run for just 2 hours and 36 minutes though this is a much more brutal test still you won't want to venture too far from a power outlet speaking of external power the unit comes with a rather large power brick particularly for such a compact laptop that said as you've just seen a laptop does pack quite a punch so it shouldn't be totally surprising that it runs on a 180 watt power brick weighing 480 grams before I wrap things up there are a few other noteworthy items I'd like to mention on the rear you will find a mini DisplayPort which will support 4k displays then on the right side we find a type-c connector which is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades supporting USB 3.1 gen2 Thunderbolt 3 and DisplayPort this means it's actually possible to connect up to three external 4k displays to the phantom pro using the type C mini DisplayPort and HDMI output other connectivity options include a type a USB 3.0 port on the right side and then over on the left side we have another type a USB 3.0 port SD card reader - 3.5 millimeter audio jacks full sized rj45 Gigabit Ethernet connection and a DC power input overall build quality seems very nice and there are plenty of aluminium trimmings which give the phantom pro a very premium feel the lid and chassis are reasonably sturdy for such a thin laptop and I really like the lid design even with the big red dragon logo I feel still looks very classy though it also opens up very nicely thanks to some quality hinges and inside we find a very slick SteelSeries red backlit chiclet keyboard which actually offers very nice feedback well it's very comforting to know that I won't have any editing and encoding my Computex coverage next week on the msi gs4 TV r7r a phantom pro the fact that i can render a 10-minute 4k video and around half an hour is great news and i do plan to deliver at least one new video per day for you guys finally as always there's just the issue of price currently it can be purchased in the US for $1,500 which does seem quite reasonable though I should mention that the American shoppers only get the 128 gigabyte SSD at that price there are options for 256 gigabyte and even 512 gigabyte models though I'm not totally showing what the pricing is there any way down under we're paying 2700 Australian and considering basic gtx 1060 enabled laptops come in at around 2100 ozzie that's not a bad premium to pay for what's on offer here with this very compact package still if the Phantom Pro is a bit rich for your blood then there is a bigger Apache pro model with a 15.6 inch screen and that has half as much memory for 2300 Aussie anyway that's going to do it for this one I'm keen to put MSI's phantom pro to work next week and hopefully I'll be able to create a heap of really cool content for you guys until then do stay tuned because I have a big rx 570 vs GTX 1060 stringing about comparison and the works and that will be coming later in the week I'm your host Steve see you again soon guys