Pros: I bought this quite some time ago and ive had zero issues with its performance.
I can play any game with 30+ on ultra as of 2015

Cons: Maybe some more color options would be nice.

Other Thoughts: I recommend Msi for the performance to price ratio.
I have a desktop and a laptop from MSI and the performance is outstanding for the price.

Pros: This is an outstanding overall laptop! It can handle all of my games with ease, it only failed when I downloaded way too many mods in Skyrim. I bought this on sale and found it to be amazing from the screen resolution to the fan boost. On top of it all, the laptop shipped quickly and was at my door before I knew it.

Cons: Only one thing was wrong with this, and it was that some of the laptop edges were a bit sharp.

Pros: I decided to take a chance with MSI after 3 ASUS gaming laptops in a row. What made me bite was the fact Newegg had it on as a shellshocker and the 100 dollar rebate. I never buy because of the rebate, and most of the time I don't even submit the paper work to claim. But for 100 bucks, I decided to submit for the rebate. Unfortunately MSI has gotten in bed with a rebate redemption company that has a great reputation for denying claims. Just do a search on Afligo Marketing Service and/or 4myrebate dot com.

One week after submitting my proof of purchase, my claim was denied. Why? Because the mailing address I want the rebate sent to is different from the shipping address of the laptop. There is no one home during normal UPS delivery hours to receive packages at my house so I ship stuff to work. The rebate which will come via USPS I have no problems getting at home

MSI - I bought your machine, you promised a rebate and then do everything in your power not to honor the rebate. Even though the hardware is great and would have gotten 5 stars, instead MSI gets 1 star (only because I can't give 0) and has guaranteed that I will never buy from them again.

Some will say this is not MSI's fault, but I disagree completely. MSI choose to use this company. Is it because to be a successful rebate company the criteria is lowest percentage of paid claims?

Cons: Am I upset about not getting the rebate? Yes I am. 5% of my anger is about the money. The other 95% is about the deception of MSI through the rebate company. They say, you buy our product and we will send you X amount of money back. I lived up to my end MSI, why do you weasel out of your end?

Here is a juicy little tidbit of info about the rebate process. The normal processing time on the rebate is 6 -8 weeks (can't remember the exact # of weeks, but it was high) OR the rebate company would RUSH your processing in a couple of weeks if you agreed to have them deduct 9$ from the rebate. This timing does suggest that the criteria to run a successful rebate fulfillment company you are measured by how many claims you don’t pay. Imagine if the criteria was customer satisfaction; rebates would be processed in a reasonable amount of time based on today’s available technology.

Other Thoughts: For those of you not familiar with MSI products, they have a ‘loyalty points’ program where you can earn points towards MSI hardware when you post a positive review of the product(s) you bought. It is a great idea and a very inexpensive way from them to get word of mouth advertising. Clearly being seen in a positive light is very important to them. Unfortunately MSI, I will not be participating in this program, as a matter of fact I will posting this story in as many forums and product review sites I can find. Remember, you are only as good as the company you keep. You and I had a deal, a promise if you will; I buy your product, you send me some money back. I keep my promise; I am good about keeping promises. I now promise to tell as many people that will listen about the way you keep yours.

As for the rebate processing company, I will be lodging complaints with the BBB as well as forwarding a complaint with the attorney generals of my home State as well as yours. Thankfully I included with my rebate submittal a notarized letter attesting to fact that all the required proof of purchase was included. You guys want to be petty? Guess what, so do I.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
If you have any questions or concerns regarding your rebate, please do not hesitate to contact us directly at usreview@msi.com or at our support toll free number 888-447-6564 M-F 6am to 6pm pst. and we will be more than happy to assist you, thank you.

Best Regards,
MSI Review Team | usreview@msi.com

Pros: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M. 17.3" Screen. It's very good quality. I'm very happy with the color. 8GB of RAM in a single stick with an open slot just above it. (You won't need to remove the keyboard to get to these ones!) It's Kingston brand RAM by the way. I bought Newegg item number N82E16820239697 and it's compatible. This also has an open full mSATA slot just above the wireless card.

Cons: And here are the cons...
The Bluetooth doesn't work. I don't know why, I've tried driver after driver but after installing Windows 8.1 on a HDD I put in I've gotten nothing out of it. Even before I install the new HDD the Bluetooth would cut out on me. I've read online that there are a lot of problems with the Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 3160 this comes with. The wireless works fine though so that's good enough for me.
The only other problem I've had with this laptop is where they positioned the full mSATA port. I'm a little leery of putting a mSATA SSD right above the wireless card... I'm sure there's a lot of heat generated in that region.

Other Thoughts: A warning to everyone out there. If you buy this laptop and leave it as is you will probably be disappointed. I know I was when I first fired it up. The bottle neck in the system is the 1TB HDD they have with it. I put another 8GB stick of RAM in bringing it up to a grand total of 16GB and installed a Samsung 850 EVO mSATA SSD and it brought my boot time from a sluggish 20 seconds after bios POST to a snappy 3 seconds! Keep in mind that you void your warranty by opening up the laptop to do these upgrades. Hope this helps!

Pros: light, good quality hardware. fast, works great

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: not a con but. windows 8 is new to me and veyr weird. but seems to run well on this computer.

Pros: Excellent unit! This is a gaming unit, but I don't game, I wanted it because I do some amateur photography that is CPU intensive. It handles this just fine. Good monitor for what I use it for. Opposed to others the keyboard seems solid to me. Flip up screen seems solid.
Not sure what else to say!

Cons: Battery life is a bit on the short side. Varies for me from about 2 hrs to 4 hrs. (even after calibration) Not a big deal to me.
I find it annoying that when I disable the touchpad with the disable button, itz "forgets" that after restarting or even coming out of sleep mode.

Other Thoughts: Not a big fan of Windows 8.x, but warmed up to it enough to use it. Wish this had the option of Windows 7 without paying for a downgrade.
Good value for the money. Equal to other systems that costs half again as much!

Pros: Haven't had it long enough to dig into these.

Cons: Sluggish performance: There are times when I'm trying to do something, and there is a delay before it starts doing it. For instance, when I want to open control panel, I just start typing "Control Panel" at the windows 8 start screen. The auto search pops up and shows Control Panel. But, there are times where it doesn't show the search list until after about a 5 second delay.
Integrated Graphics: This, I'm hating. It has both the Intel HD graphics, as well as the GTX 950M. Games that decide to use the GTX 950M run great. Awesome. But some will only use the Integrated Intel HD, and they of course, run horrible. I had to download a third party utility to delete profiles, etc in order for the games to use the GTX 950M. I tried to just disable the Intel HD in BIOS, but there is no option to do that. I'm not having fun going into advanced settings and trying to force games to use the Nvidia GPU, and downloading third party utilities to work around this issue. This is a long standing issue with multiple generations of MSI laptops with various GPUs. Not impressed.

Other Thoughts: I'm used to buying a gaming laptop, and it just being super fast and awesome right out of the box. This one is not. I think it will be. But having to google for answers and download third party apps before being able to use my laptop at its full potential is VERY discouraging and a pain. Regretting my purchase right now.

Pros: The machine is fast. I like that I don't have to wait on processes to load. I have two monitors hooked up and working flawlessly. One is VGA, and the other is HDMI. The HDMI monitor is new also, the vga monitor is on older Sony 17 inch. The system handles on of them great. I even found Windows 8 workable as long as I can set it to act like Version 7 as much as possible. If I didn't need to get to know windows 8 though it would be loaded with 7. The video card is excellent.

Newegg shipping is just awesome. I ordered the machine and I had it in a day and a half. I figured it would take a few more days.

Cons: There are a few things that I do not appreciate much at all. The keyboard. I expected a LOT more from the way this was touted. If you are going to have a very light touch you might now notice. Down the middle of the keyboard it is pretty solid. On either side of the keyboard however is another thing entirely. On the right side it is just weak. It bends if you put just a little pressure on it. On the left side it clacks like an old style type writer. For the price I paid for this laptop I should not have this kind of trouble. I am not impressed by this keyboard.

Another issue is the touch-pad. MAN is this thing sensitive. breathing on it can screw up your typing or other activities. Many times I have been typing only to look up at the screen and see the field I was working in empty. If it wasn't for the little switch next to the touch-pad to turn it off it would have driven me crazy. I have to turn it off everytime I restart but that is better than the alternative.

The position of the other ports so close the the front of the laptop is annoying. The cables on the right side aren't too bad because the DVD is there, but on the left, if you have many things plugged in, there is just no room on that side to run your mouse.

The DVD player sounds like it is going to explode. It vibrates so bad it felt like my hand resting on the keyboard would vibrate off. Don't know if I will use that often or just invest in an external DVD/CD drive.

If it wasn't for the keyboard clacking noise and very loud DVD drive on a machine that is this expensive like this I would have given the computer another star or two.

Other Thoughts: Over all it is not a bad machine. Fix the things that shouldn't be there and I would call it a very good machine.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the product, please do not hesitate to contact us directly at usreview@msi.com or contact our support team directly at our toll free number 888-447-6564 M-F 6am to 6pm PST. and we will be more than happy to assist you, thank you.

Best Regards,
MSI Review Team | usreview@msi.com