MSI Gaming Laptop (GE75 Raider-023) Review

If you’ve ever used an MSI gaming laptop before, then you have a feel of how powerful those machines can be in-game. Whether they’re GL Series or GE Raiders, they always have a thing over competitors from HP, Dell, and others. The company’s latest release in 2019, the MSI GE75 Raider-023, takes that dominance to new heights with the latest hardware available on a gaming laptop.

With premium components including an RTX 2080 graphics card and two raised red stripes on the lid, the Raider 023 has a coupe of tricks up its sleeve. But for the starting price, are they enough to make this Raider a hit?

MSI Gaming Laptop : Design

The MSI GE75 Raider-023, when closed, looks like any other MSI gaming laptop. Black, thing, conservative. About the only difference from its siblings is a pair of red lines on each side of the MSI dragon logo. The two raised red stripes are a new style to hit MSI’s gaming laptop aesthetic. They are what MSI calls “3D dragon spines,” and they do a nice job spicing up the lid, set on an aluminum black construction.

Lately, we’ve reviewed laptops that insanely thin bezels, making the 5.7-mm bezels on the 17.3-inch display nothing to surprise us. It has an 82 percent screen-to-body ratio. Measuring 15.6 x 10.6 x 1.1 inches and 5.9 pounds, the Raider is fairly heavier than most of its rivals in the same price range, including the Gigabyte Aero 15 X9 (0.7 inches, 4.7 pounds), and the Asus ROG Zephyrus (0.7 inches, 5 pounds), but notably thinner and lighter than the Alienware 17 R5 (1.2 inches, 9.8 pounds).

RGB lovers will be impressed by the keyboard on this MSI laptop, which comes with a number pad, and has an all-cap font, except for the letter n, which is, for some reason set in lower-case. There’s a triangular power button on the right edge that remains red when the machine is powered on. Below it is an angular button for controlling the keyboard’s pre-set RGB lighting profiles, and one for toggling the fan speed.

PORTS

MSI offers almost every port imaginable. That includes an RJ-45 ethernet jack, HDMI, Mini Displayport, USB 3.1 Gen 2 and USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C, as well as separate headphone and mic jacks all on the left side. On the right, you get an SD card reader, a pair of USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, and the charger connector.

Typical for gaming laptops, all of the USB 3 ports have red LED lighting, which you can control via the included MSI Dragon Center software. You have three options: static, breathing or flashing, all with varying brightness, but always red (or off).

DISPLAY

The MSI GE75 Raider-023‘s 17.3-inch, FHD resolution panel makes for a great gaming display. Here, you’re getting a 144Hz refresh rate and 3 ms response time. In marketing, it’s flaunted as an “IPS-level display”, in reality, it’s an SI TFT-LCD. That means, it is a thin film transistor liquid crystal display with a silicon backplane that delivers fast refresh rates, better viewing angles, and energy efficiency.

It allows you to watch 4K movies with incredibly sharp images. For gaming, you’re able to pick out the clear details in Battlefield V: gray, gray-blue, and gray-brown throughout the game. On the other, in true “IPS-level” style, the viewing angles are great with hardly any glare when viewed from side angles. You can view it from any angle, only that you simply have a drop in brightness.

The system includes the MSI True Color software, which lets you toggle between six modes: sRGB (default), Gamer, Anti-Blue (for reducing eye fatigue), Designer, Office, and Movie. For each individual slider, there are things like brightness, color temperature, color gamut, contrast, and more, all depending on the mode.

KEYBOARD & TOUCHPAD

The MSI GE75 Raider-023’s keyboard is comfortable, responsive, and colorful – if you like them. Its 1.9mm of key travel is snappy, requiring only 70g force to actuate, even though it has some clicking noises with each press. If you’re a fast typer, you can easily hit 121 words per minute on the 10FastFingers.com typing test, with very few errors.

Anybody addicted to RGB will love this keyboard. It has per-key lighting for its native 16.8 million color backlight. All these can be controlled via the included SteelSeries Engine 3 software, which also has 8 different presets. There’s a button on the laptop’s deck that lets you toggle through the RGB profiles.

Below the keyboard is a 4.2 x 2.4-inch touchpad that’s smooth and matte with large buttons that add up to a strong click. It works well with Windows gestures like three-and four-finger taps.

For audio, it uses two 3W Dynaudio ‘Giant Speakers’ and a pair of 3-watt woofers on the bottom. They produce ample sound for gaming, movies, and music that can easily fill a medium-sized conference room.

MSI Gaming Laptop Review : Performance

The MSI GE75 Raider-023 comes with the latest six-core Intel processor that most gaming laptops and high-end productivity machines have been using since late last year or so. It’s an extremely capable CPU, especially when matched with 32GB of RAM, which our review unit comes with. Honestly, I feel 32GB RAM is a definite overkill.

The specs sheet on our unit is the most extreme among its peers: An Intel Core i7-8750H CPU, RTX 2080 graphics card, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB HDD, and 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD. If you need a lesser spec sheet, the base model is the MSI GE75 Raider – 050, with the same CPU and amount of HDD storage, but uses a stepped-down RTX 2060 graphics card, half the memory at 16GB, and a smaller, 256GB SSD.

For productivity, this configuration offers reliable productivity performance for most workloads and should sustain much more. Here, you can load up to 21 tabs with a few streaming, without a lag. Plus, you can easily switch through tabs rapidly without stuttering, just like you’d do with the Aero 15 and ROG Zephyrus.

The NVMe SSD suffices for fast copy speeds (can copy around 5GB of files in just 7 seconds), which is much quicker as compared to most machines, but typical of premium gaming laptops. Also, you can transcode a 4K video into 1080p in just a few minutes, although Alienware tops them all.

Gaming, VR, Graphics

We aren’t surprised to see the MSI GE75 Raider-023 top the charts as a strong performer in the graphics department. It comes equipped with the RTX 2080 GPU with 8GB GDDR6, the most powerful mobile graphics you can find although the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 is available now. How a laptop will handle a graphics card is different and the frame rates it produces vary a lot. Real-world gaming is the only way to ascertain whatever is packed inside.

For Battlefield V, with DX12 on and ray tracing off, played at high graphics, the Raider easily delivers 131 and 147 frames per second (fps) but can easily drop to as low as 109 fps. Still, you don’t notice any stuttering, and all these scores are above the playable standard. Once you enable ray tracing and DX12 and graphics set to high, the frame rate drops to 60 to 70 fps. A good thing as the visuals become brighter, shinier, and more vibrant.

While at it, Hitman (DX12 on, ultra-settings) yields 108 fps, which is much better than the Aero 15 which uses a lesser RTX 2070 Max-Q graphics, the Asus ROG Zephyrus equipped with a GTX 1080 Max-Q, and even the Alienware (GTX 1080), not surprising considering the new Turing Founders Edition graphics card. Other games offer excellent frame rates including Grand Theft Auto V (very high) at 96 fps, more than 10 fps than its competitors, while Last Light (high) at 87 fps. An impressive performer, overall.

On the MSI GE75 Raider-023, you should be able to enjoy VR gaming on your HTC Vive or Oculus Rift with ease. It uses MSI’s Cooler Boost 5+ module with eight pipes, four external exhausts, and 31 fan blades to keep the RTX 2020 perfectly cooled. While that doesn’t result in better performance, it does keep both surface and internal temperatures surprisingly low.

Battery Life

While the difference in battery life among gaming laptops is not intense, some new ultraportables are delivering longer battery life. And for most of them, battery life is not a forte, you won’t be staying away from the mains for long.

With the MSI GE75 Raider-023, you’re getting just over 2 hours 51 minutes, while the best gaming laptops in this price tier only last around 28 minutes longer. That said, the Alienware impressively lasts over an hour longer.

MSI Gaming Laptop Review | Verdict

The MSI GE75 Raider-023 is a significant evolution in mobile gaming, with fantastic gameplay, high-quality components, decent cooling, and an impressive 17.3-inch 144Hz screen. Compared to its predecessor, it’s smaller, more attractive, and offers plenty of performance. With an impressive screen, great gaming performance, and software, it has certain strengths over its competitors. At its price, the GE75 Raider is a worthy alternative to the spendiest machines from Razer.

Is there a better alternative?

MSI offers a smaller, 15-inch version, the MSI GS65 Stealth-002. The smaller size and portable profile make it an attractive option. We still think the Razer Blade 15 RTX has the best balance of gaming capabilities, but it’s also among the most expensive gaming laptops you can commit to buy.

If you’re in for a larger screen, the 17.3-inch GE75 is one of the better options. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus S, though, is a good alternative also if you need something portable. It’s a 17.3-inch laptop, quite a bit larger, though, it’s as powerful and costs a little more.