Gadgetory

when it comes to tech these days it's got to be sleek stylish above all else then take my shiny new Samsung Galaxy s8 plus for example it's so sleek and thin it goes beyond the realms of being remotely practical drop it once from any height greater than its own length and you're probably going to have a bad day thankfully MSI is unbelievably slim and thankfully still very stylish GS 63 VR 7rf stealth pro is much easier to live with as long as you're creative enough to come up with a more appropriate name if you are unimpressed with the beefcake that is gigabytes arrow 15 I mean that thing measures 19 point 9 millimeters thick what they think the average game is built like a rock well thankfully MSI has come to the rescue with their GS 60 let's just call it the stealth pro anyway the stealth pro measures just 17 point 7 millimeters thick and that's 11% thinner than gigabytes ultra portable gaming laptop that Tim was mighty impressed with so whatever so I managed to cram into this 1.8 kilogram pancake of a laptop and perhaps more importantly just how have they done it well let's go find out inside they've managed to include a geforce gtx 1060 with all six gigabytes of vram to memory dims populated with ddr4 or 2,400 memory a 7th generation Intel Core i7 processor an m2 SSD and room for a 2.5 inch drive as well the only real sacrifice as far as I can tell has been made to the battery which is a 3-cell 57 watt our job so I don't expect it will last too long when I'm plugged from the external 180 watt power brick it's also well worth noting this is the lightest 15-inch laptop on the market to feature the geforce gtx 1060 so that's quite an impressive achievement by msi skirting the exterior you will find a plethora of connectivity on the left there's an Ethernet port which MSI's managed to cram in along with an SD card slot three USB 3.0 ports and two 3.5 millimeter audio jacks on the right is a single USB 2.0 port Thunderbolt 3 via USB type-c HDMI 2.0 mini DisplayPort and a proprietary power connector the amount of USB ports on this laptop is fantastic although the position of the power connector and display outputs may inhibit Mouse usage in some circumstances I should also note that the ports on the left and right edges are also quite close to the front this is in order to accommodate the massive internal cooling solution which I'll cover in a moment something worth noting is the fact that the stealth pro can support up to three external displays each at a resolution up to 4k in fact it's possible to run up to 4 display simultaneously as you can still use the laptops own display with 3 monitors connected msi calls this their matrix display and they say it makes for mega multitasking support even during competitive gameplay this makes the stealth pro extremely powerful when it comes to display options moving on around the stealth pro we find a mostly black design that's complemented by a small handful of red highlights including a red rim around the trackpad several red lines near the exhaust vents the MSI gaming logo on the lid and the well hidden power status LED above the keyboard the subtle highlight approach works well and it fits in with MSI stealth branding what I really appreciate about this laptop is that the most interesting elements are more functional than aesthetic for example the display hinge folds back more than 180 degrees which is more than most traditional laptops I'm not sure why you need or want to use the stealth pro with the display parallels your desk but nonetheless it's an option the overall style of this laptop is similar to MSI's other offerings with generous use of brushed magnesium alloy around the keyboard area and the top side of the lid the smooth black finish is a definite fingerprint magnet though although visually the design is excellent and it certainly appears very sleek and stylish as I mentioned earlier there's essentially no gamer elements to be found making this the perfect work slash play laptop I should note that in order to unlock the full power of the gtx 1060 you'll need to carry around the rather large power brick the brick is almost twice as thick as the laptop itself and way they're hefty 580 grams which needs to be factored into the portability calculations of course the laptop does work without this power brick although the 65 watt hour internal battery won't let you get away from the mains power for too long and as is always the case with laptops graphics performance is the frequently reduced when on battery power underneath the stealth Pro we find yet another interesting inclusion felt the bottom of the laptop is covered in this soft material except for where the intake vents are naturally you don't want to block those with any kind of material the felt also provides some insulation and it does prevent the GPU from simply channeling all of its heat through the metal body onto your legs I really do like this edition and for me it provides a very premium look and feel opening up the laptop lid we find an impressive looking 15.6 inch IPS display supporting a resolution of 1920 by 1080 and this provides a pixel density of 141 pixels per inch this resolution is typical for a gaming laptop of this size and well suited to the performance of the GTX 1060 there is also a 4k IPS option available though you can of course expect to pay quite a bit more extra for that one lastly though it was a little disappointing to discover this premium laptop lacked g-sync or a refresh rate higher than 60 Hertz complementing the sharp looking displays a steelseries keyboard using chiclet keys which are fine for gaming and the tactile feel of each key is surprisingly clicky considering the use of rubber dome key caps the keyboard layout is very good with adequate size for important gaming keys like tab left shift control + spacebar there are full-sized arrow keys awkwardly crouched between the standard keyboard and the numpad though I do appreciate the inclusion of a numpad on a laptop that clearly has enough room to include one system functions such as volume adjustment brightness adjustment aeroplane mode and so forth are mapped to both the F keys and arrow keys and is a good mix of inclusion see the keyboard is backlit via three zones of RGB LEDs in MSI's utility you can change the color of each of the three zones and there are additional functions to pulse the backlight in various patterns the rainbow effect looks pretty cool though it should be noted that each individual key is not RGB programmable if you prefer a solid backlit color red looks best as it matches the physical red highlights of the laptop so we know the stealth pro is super thin and we know that it had some seriously impressive hardware inside so how does it go about keeping everything cool and hopefully clear of any throttling issues well let's crack it open and take a look getting inside is relatively easy there are just a little over a dozen small that need to be removed from the bottom cover and then the back just pops out of place inside we find an easy to replace 2.5 inch drive and a slimline battery but beyond that there isn't much else to see the internals are mostly facing upwards which means replacing the SSD and ddr4 memory is extremely difficult which is a bit frustrating to be honest the only part of the cooling that's visible here are the three red blower fans which look cool but don't give too much away in order to get to the cooling as well as the SSD and memory you need to completely remove the motherboard which is a bit extreme and not something your average laptop owner is going to want to do not to mention you are voiding your warranty by removing the cover to begin with once pulled apart I found what MSI called a trinity cooler this design employs three fans two of which are larger fans featuring 41 blades while there is a smaller 37 blade fan the GPU is cooled by 41 and 37 blade fan while the other 41 blade fan takes care of the CPU MSI claims that these fans features a unique whirlwind blade design which increases air pressure by up to 30 percent basically this boils down to more generic blower type fans featuring fewer fins but with thicker blades whereas MSI is gone with more of a turbine life design if you will featuring more blades that are a lot thinner just 0.4 millimeters wide in fact linking everything together a5 ultra slim heat pipes and they connect up to four individual banks of aluminium fins it's without question one of the most impressive and complex cooling solutions I found working inside a gaming laptop MSI says they design reduces low temperatures to 71 degrees whereas other gaming laptops run at 84 degrees or higher so I'm keen to check out their claims I should note that I only taught on a laptop after having first tested it so this won't impact the results speaking of results let's move on to see how well the stealth pro games and how much noise it makes when under load first up let's quickly see how the stealth pro handle itself in battlefield one in this scene we can see the frame rate hovered between 70 to 80 fps I played this map for about five minutes and in that time I saw an average of 83 FPS with a minimum of 64 fps so very respectable performance using the ultra quality preset at 1080p moving to f1 2016 we saw an average of 61 FPS with a minimum of 44 fps again the game was maxed out at the 1080p resolution in this title the max GPU temps have it around 80 degrees while the GTX 1060 rounded a fairly consistent 74 degrees throughout the test well the tanks played very smoothly using max quality settings in our tests we averaged 102 fps and never saw a frame rates dip below 70 FPS the CPU temperature was again around 80 degrees and this time the GPU hits 76 degrees Ghost Recon wildlands was played using the medium quality preset as this game is somewhat lacking when it comes to optimization anyway using these settings at 1080p we saw an average of 63 FPS though at times frame rates did dip as low as 47 fps Counter Strike global Offensive was tested using the very high quality settings with FX AAA enables this allowed the stealth pro to average 158 FPS with a minimum of one hundred and thirty twelve years the GPU only 72 degrees in this title well to see if you pushed up around 86 degrees for testing titanfall so I went with a single-player campaign because visually this seems more demanding than the multiplayer portion of the game anyway we saw an average of 73 FPS with a minimum of 56 fps you can tell this title is light on CPU usage as temp stayed below 80 degrees for the core i7 7700 HQ overwatch was silky smooth with 134 FPS on average and frame rates never dip below 100 FPS that said this was a bit of a hot item for the stealth pro as it hit 90 degrees on the CPU and 78 degrees for the GPU finally we have prey and here the stealth Pro did very nicely offering an average of 85 FPS with a minimum of 64 FPS so the game was very nice and smooth the CPU peaked at 82 degrees while the GPU sat about 75 degrees for the most part overall a stealth pro performed very well framerate performance was excellent and the operating temperature was exceptional for a gaming laptop here's a quick look at how it sounds under full load that might sound loud but the fact is with the laptop speakers set to even a low volume they completely drown out any fan noise so it's really a non-issue especially if you plan to use headphones operating temperatures were also very good when gaming the GPU never throttled and throughout our testing state below 80 degrees that said though the CPU did often exceed 80 degrees and was at times seen hitting as high as 90 degrees but even so that's still very good for a gaming laptop when it comes to battery life gaming isn't really a consideration however if you want to watch movies for example I found the battery would last for around 4 hours which isn't too bad and again quite good for a gaming laptop in my opinion the stealth pro is a seriously impressive gaming laptop for a whole host of reasons firstly I really love the slim and lightweight design that's great and when you couple that with the impressive gaming performance well you have a real winner on your hands for me the size and weight advantage of the stealth pro has a big impact on daily usage while other 15-inch laptops are largely guest bound this laptop can be comfortably taken around and used in multiple locations and the great thing here is that you gain the portability without sacrificing performance at this size weight and price the stealth pro competes strongly with the latest razor blade managing to narrowly beat it in all three categories perhaps more impressive is the fact that it manages to pack a larger display into a body that's marginally lighter than the blade although the footprint of the blade is smaller thanks to the 40 inch display right now it's possible we got the stealth pro for $100 US less than the razor blade 2017 model which Tim just reviewed also other shoppers can now buy the stealth pro from the likes of JB hi-fi and I'll provide a link in the video description of course as you guys have no doubt noticed the stealth pro and competing laptops certainly aren't cheap you're definitely paying a premium for a compact gaming laptop but still for those who want a game on the go the premium to me seems well worth it anyway that's going to do it for this one I hope you guys enjoyed the review I'm your host Steve I'll see you again soon