MSI GE60 Review: Mainstream Mobile Maxwell

Conclusion: Worth Considering

After testing and using the MSI GE60 for several weeks, I've come away reasonably impressed with what's being offered. It's not the fastest or flashiest laptop around, and it's not the cheapest either, but it gets most of the important areas right when it comes to building a good gaming notebook.

Perhaps most importantly, the performance is good, the keyboard and touchpad work well, and the display also looks nice. If you want a system you could take to a LAN party or a gaming session at a friend's house/apartment, the MSI GE60 could certainly fill that need. What's more, you get a good level of performance without breaking the bank. The GTX 860M is really the star of the show here, and NVIDIA's Maxwell provides a good boost in performance over the previous generation GTX 760M while adding a few new features in the process, but let's not forget Intel's Haswell i7-4700HQ, which is fast enough for other tasks as well.

There are a few flaws however. The build quality is a bit suspect, particularly with the LCD cover, and the hinges don't feel all that solid either. Over months and years of use, I would expect the hinges to become quite loose, and the cover could potentially break. That's more conjecture than fact, however, so take it as you will. I could also raise a few concerns about the design and aesthetics of the GE60, but it's a difficult balancing act. Do you want a thinner, sleeker looking notebook, or do you want something that can run fast and not overheat?

More critically, the battery life is somewhat poor for a Haswell-based laptop. I'm not sure how much of this is simply due to component selection and how much could be caused by lack of power optimization efforts, but I remember testing the first quad-core Sandy Bridge notebook several years ago and seeing battery life of nearly seven hours in our Internet test at the time. 3.5 years later and two architectures updates and battery life (granted, on a shipping laptop) is still not able to match that old Sandy Bridge prototype; I'd like to see someone do better than this on a gaming notebook without sacrificing in other ways.

Ultimately, what it all boils down to is choice. If you want something fast and sleek, MSI's slightly more expensive GS series of laptops might be more your style, and I'll post the full review of the GS70 shortly. The GS series basically drops the optical drive and a bit of bulk, but increases the cost several hundred dollars. Razer has the Blade and Blade Pro, which of course are a much larger jump in price, and there's always the Apple MacBook and Dell XPS 15 to consider – but those aren't really in the same performance league, as the GT GPUs are a decent step down from the GTX GPUs. Probably the most compelling alternative is the Lenovo IdeaPad Y50, which ends up with very similar features in most respects (and it also targets four hours of battery life), so it's basically a question of design and aesthetic preference.

In terms of price, performance, and features, the MSI GE60 gets everything right. I just wish MSI had spent a little bit more effort on improving the chassis build quality and battery life, as those are the only things really holding this system back from an Editor's Choice award. As it stands, the MSI GE60 warrants at least an honorable mention, and if you're looking for a GTX 800M notebook for under $1250 there aren't a whole lot of alternatives. I'd still plan on at least upgrading the storage to an SSD if you can manage it, as dealing with pure HDD storage has become more than a little painful.