MSI GS72 6QE

What price for a few extra inches?

PRICE $ 2599 www.msi.com

In some ways this laptop is extremely similar to the Gigabyte, with a set of features that are almost identical. Yet from a physical perspective it’s a very distinct machine, with a totally different form factor and size.

The biggest change is the use of a larger 17.3-inch screen, which you might assume would make this a much larger, heavier laptop. Yet MSI has used some clever engineering to make this laptop incredibly thin, measuring just 22mm when closed, which is significantly thinner than the Gigabyte. As a result, despite being much longer and wider, this laptop is only 100 grams heavier than the P55W v5, weighing 2.6 kilograms. That’s exceptional for a 17.3inch laptop, which probably accounts for the $500 increase in price.

Despite stretching the 1920 x 1080 resolution over a wider space, I was very surprised to see that pixel structure still wasn’t too bad – it’s usually very noticeable on screens of this size. Once again we see IPS technology used here, but it didn’t quite have the punch of the Gigabyte screen, though motion blur isn’t a problem. A 4K screen option is available, though there’s no way the GPU within has the power to push so many pixels, so I’d avoid this.

MSI has gone for a slightly different I/O configuration than Gigabyte. There’s no optical drive, nor any Type-C USB ports. Even the HDMI output has been downgraded, from v2.0 in the Gigabyte to 1.4b in the MSI. Instead we’re given twin USB 3.0 and twin USB 3.1 Type A ports, an SD/XD card reader, and twin Mini DisplayPort outputs. Obviously there’s also the headphone/mic jacks. Killer’s gaming LAN solution is delivered alongside 802.11ac.

Another area where the MSI differs from the competition is the aboveaverage sound solution. Now, don’t get me wrong, serious gamers are still going to want to use a decent set of headphones, as the tiny speakers used in laptops really struggle to deliver clear audio at high volume. However, MSI’s Audio Boost solution, which uses 2x2W/1 Speakers does seem to deliver better audio than the competition. Ditto with its internal audio chipset, which delivered noticeably louder and clearer audio over a decent set of headphones.

While the external options are quite different to the Gigabyte, heading under the hood reveals a basically identical hardware solution. Once again we see Intel’s ubiquitous i7 6700HQ pushing the polygons, with its Turbo speed of 3.5GHz more than enough for today’s games. 8GB of DDR4 2133MHz supplies this with date, which is in turn fed by a 128GB M.2 SSD. Another 1TB mechanical drive provides extra storage at the cost of speed. Finally we have NVIDIA’s popular GTX 970M with 3GB of GDDR5 memory.

So why did Gigabyte’s model have a 20% lead when it came to performance in Grid Autosport? There can only be one explanation – the extreme amount of software that MSI loads its laptops up with. With 13 different applications hiding at the bottom right of the screen, the 6QE has twice as many pieces of bloatware installed as the Gigabyte, and three times that of the Origin. Users can clean these up after purchasing, but it’s annoying.

Despite this niggling issue, MSI has delivered a fairly affordable 17.3 inch gaming laptop that manages to keep the weight down. Whether that extra screen size is worth $500 though is debatable. 8