The MSI GS63 is a thin and light gaming laptop that offers a great combination of power, portability and value. It’s an excellent choice for gamers who want to take their games on the go without sacrificing too much performance or battery life.
The MSI Gaming GS63 is a gaming notebook, and it’s one of the best 15-inch gaming notebooks on the market. The laptop comes with a powerful Intel Core i7 processor, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD.
The laptop has a 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS display with 144Hz refresh rate and 7ms response time. MSI has also included the SteelSeries RGB keyboard for added customization. A thin and light gaming laptop, it is indeed sufficiently powerful to run VR games.
In this piece, we are going to review the gaming laptop thoroughly across all meaningful parameters.
MSI Gaming GS63: Performance and power
MSI’s GS63 is a great gaming laptop, but it isn’t without flaws.
The MSI Gaming GS63 has been a long time coming since the previous generation Geforce GTX 1060 model was released, and now we finally have the updated version with a full-power 10-series GPU and Intel’s latest 8th Gen Coffee Lake CPU. It’s still a gaming laptop, of course, but now it’s something more than that: it’s a powerful laptop for any task you can throw at it.
Performance is excellent across the board from both processor and graphics, although there are some tradeoffs compared to other configurations that make it less suited to certain tasks like video editing or professional software development (which will require more RAM).
If you’re looking for a laptop that can handle gaming, the MSI GS63 is definitely worth considering. It’s thin, light and powerful, with a beautiful screen and great battery life, but it’s also a little bit expensive and not so easy to upgrade.
The MSI GS63 is one of the most powerful laptops we’ve tested this year, thanks to its six-core Intel Core i7-8750H processor and 16GB of RAM. It also has an excellent display, good battery life and plenty of ports. Weighing just 2.3 kg (0.27 kg more than the Pro), it’s one of the lightest 15-inch laptops we’ve ever seen, which makes it easy to carry around.
A solid all-around laptop, it’s definitely not the best at any one thing. It’s not the most portable 15-inch gaming laptop, nor is it the cheapest. But it hits a sweet spot between size and performance that’s hard to beat.
Not the lightest or thinnest 15-inch gaming laptop, it does provide a solid gaming performance a decent battery life for its size.
It’s also one of the few gaming laptops that offer an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q graphics card at this price point. That means you get more than enough graphical horsepower to play most games at 1080p resolution, along with decent battery life and excellent thermals.
MSI GS63 specs review
And here’s everything else.
Display
The 15.6-inch display has an FHD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and an anti-glare finish for comfortable viewing. You can also select a 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) option if you want to spend more money on your laptop. The 15-inch screen is still gorgeous and bright, with great viewing angles and color reproduction.
Connectivity
In terms of connectivity, there are two USB Type-C ports, two USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, one HDMI port and one Thunderbolt 3 port. The Thunderbolt 3 port supports DisplayPort connectivity as well as power delivery up to 65W while charging your laptop at the same time.
Keyboard & trackpad
The keyboard has excellent travel for such a small laptop, and the trackpad works well too if you don’t mind sacrificing two USB ports for the extra space it takes up on the right edge of the palm rest.
Battery life
Battery life isn’t great compared to other laptops in its class either — expect around four hours on average usage — but this is at least partly due to MSI’s insistence on not improving their laptop batteries. In any case, you are not really recommended to ever game while not plugged in. So, this only applies to non-gaming situations.
Security
There’s also a fingerprint sensor integrated into the power button so you can keep all your data safe without having to use passwords or pins every time you log in to Windows 10 Home Edition operating system installed on this machine.
Design
The MSI GS63 features an attractive design that looks great in all black, with brushed aluminum on the lid and keyboard deck, as well as aluminum heat fins on the bottom cover that help keep temperatures under control. The bezel around the display is relatively thin, too — it’s just 0.5 inches thick on either side — which helps make this laptop feel smaller than it is when closed (4.1 pounds) or open (16 x 11 inches).
The 15-inch display has a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and looks bright, colorful and sharp enough for most users — though professionals may want something higher res if they do a lot of photo or video editing work on their laptops. The IPS panel is simply the best money can buy in this range.
Final verdict
MSI GS63 8RE-028US is powered by an Intel Core i7-8750H processor, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q graphics card and 16GB of RAM. This is not a bad arrangement at all. The fact that it is still relevant in 2022 is testament to MSI’s amazing product development and build quality reservations.
The GS63 comes in two versions: The base model costs $1,499 and features a full HD display and Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti graphics. For $1,699 you’ll get a 4K display with HDR support, an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and the same GPU as the base model.
I reviewed the $1,699 version with a 4K display and it’s an excellent laptop for gaming on the go. But there’s another version that may be worth considering: The GS63VR 7RF Stealth Pro Edition which adds an active cooling system for better performance while gaming on battery power.
