Pros: Will go with MSI again!

Cons: No Cons

Pros: Solid computer, had it for over a year, works like a charm.

10/10 Laptop

Cons: N/A

Other Thoughts: Don't listen to those people complaining about battery
power, this is a gaming laptop, quality/performance eats
battery power lol

Also, to those people complaining about stupid stuff like
no keyboard back light... it says so in the description >.>

Pros: -Good display
Horizontal viewing angles from the sides are surprisingly good, I was happy with the panel of this laptop, but vertical angles are somewhat poor, roughly average with other budget laptops. Be prepared to adjust your display.
-Good hard drive (7200rpm 1tb)
Large size and doesn't feel like it hampers the system too much
-Fast Processor
This model's laptop has an extremely fast processor for the price range. I'm happy with it's performance in daily tasks and in data crunching.
-Good feedback on keys
Keys for a laptop feel good, doesn't feel squishy and has actually somewhat of a click. Overall I enjoy typing on it.
-Minimal bloatware
Has Norton on it but it's easily uninstalled.

Cons: I bought the laptop on sale with rebate for a total of $650 a few weeks back, but if you're paying $900 stay away, look at other models as I'll lay out reasons why here.
-No Sata storage
Competitors of this price range have a 2nd hard drive such as a small sata to improve performance, but this is lacking it when it should for $900.
-Extremely Poor battery life
Battery during normal usage (web browsing) and on power saving settings can barely put out 2.5 hours, If you turn on a game expect less than 1.5 hours, I played Dota 2 on high settings and it told me 70 minutes remaining on a full charge.
-GPU is very poor
the 940 is a budget chip, if I knew it would be as bad as it was compared to the 950 I would have never bought it and saved the money. If you buy this computer for roughly 650 like I did and you don't care about gaming or do light gaming, this is a great deal, but if you're expecting to play GTA V on good settings and 1080p, avoid this laptop, it can barely play it on low/medium settings at 720p around 30fps. If you play league of legends or other less demanding games it'll easily play them at high settings with acceptable frame rates. But demanding games will need serious compromises to play games well. ASUS models that sit around $750 have 950M's, for full price this is unacceptable.
-No backlight on keyboard
I thought I would be fine without backlight, but after using this for a month I sorely want it, the keyboard has an odd but acceptable key layout, and I find myself having to tilt the display down at night just to see the keys. For a $900 dollar laptop this is a poor choice.
-It's huge
For what it has, it's huge and thick. Other laptops of this range and similar specs are half the size in thickness. I have a 17 inch laptop backpack, but this thing is way too thick to fit inside. I've ordered another backpack and praying this thing can fit inside of it. It's just bulky and unappealing.
-Fingerprint magnet
Fingerprints everywhere and oil is left over, it's going to need constant cleaning to look pristine.

Other Thoughts: If you're going to get this on sale for roughly $600-$650 I'd say this is a great work machine if you're a coder or do any CPU intensive work. But if you're a light user it's way too bulky, if you're a gamer the GPU is terrible, if you're looking for traveling the battery life is awful.

But if you just want a great CPU, solid keyboard, and will be plugged into a wall constantly then this is the best you can get, as long as you don't pay anywhere near full price.

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 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

Pros: Nvidia 940 GPU is cool and efficient. Never see over 60c and idles below 40c. Runs ultra graphics 1920x1080 @ 30fps. Runs ultra graphics 1366x768 @ 60fps. MAX PAYNE 3.

Hard Drive Disk is impressively fast, for a standard HDD. 7200RPM and runs very good.
Ready for M-SATA SSD. I easily added an SSD which makes this laptop much faster.

SCREEN - NICEST SCREEN I have seen on a laptop in this price range. HIGHLY impressive. Screen seems to be ultra-high quality. You will love it. It is my favorite aspect of this laptop.

CPU- Very powerful. Remains between 45-65c.

RAM- EH, okay. Cant wait to upgrade to 2400 mhz RAM. Not bad though, not bad. For this price point i'm sold by the architecture of the laptop. I can easily change or add RAM.

FANS - The fans are usually idling low, and the temps stay below 60c all around..MAX FAN button rocks! It drops the temps during games up to 10c. I normally see 50c during games with max fans on.

CHASSIS- For the price point, it is impressive. I like it a lot. The plastic is high quality.

SPEAKERS- Loud, and very crispy clear. I love them.

CHARGER- Charges very quickly. Usually about 1 hr.

KEYBOARD- Very accurate, I rarely miss keys. Has a nice click to the buttons.

WIFI- Very nice, very fast. I tested over 100mbps wireless and it is rated for over 400mbps. Good signal strength.


OVERALL APPEARANCE - High quality, crisp, clean, and exciting.

Cons: WEBCAM- Horrible webcam, absolutely horrible. Most cell phones are miles beyond the quality of this webcam.

No back-lit keys. Doesn't matter though, as the screen is bright enough to illuminate them.

Battery could be larger, however provides 4 hours of power efficient time, and 1 hour 20 minutes of full power gaming.

Other Thoughts: Add an SSD, and upgrade the RAM. GOLDEN. This laptop is PERFECT for this price point. I paid $718 out the door.

Pros: Good build quality
nice keyboard
runs cool

Cons: power hog
okay GPU
no "home" or "end" key

Other Thoughts: The laptop feels pretty nice. Textured trackpad which is a plus to some and a minus to others, but it doesn't seem to hurt my fingers so that's good. Also gestures on the trackpad like two finger scrolling and bringing up the windows 8 sidebar by swiping in from the right side feel really responsive.

The biggest issues are that the GPU is not even technically a gaming GPU. I was hoping it would be good enough, given the allure of the great price on the unit, but I can't even seem to run dark souls smoothly, and I can't max out Crysis either which is an 8 year old game by now.

The processor is also a big power hog. Maybe not the best choice to put in a laptop. The battery life is somewhere in the 2-3 hour range idling and this thing is brand new. It told me less than 2 hours at full charge a couple days ago, but now it's telling me just over 3, so maybe it just hasn't really been "broken in" yet or maybe there were some processes running in the background earlier.

In addition, the keyboard layout is a little strange with buttons like home and end completely missing, a slash key next to the space bar, and the arrow keys bleeding into the numpad.

The plus side is the screen is very nice, the price is good, and since it runs so cool, I was able to overclock and get a more steady framerate on Dark Souls. Unfortunately I've only tried the two games on this computer so far.

Overall, I'd say the price after rebate is pretty good so maybe consider getting it, but the balancing on this model is somewhere in the limbo between being a power efficient business machine and a worth while gaming machine.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you for your feedback. However the "End" and "Home" keys are included on the MSI GP70 Leopard keyboard, they are located on top right above the 10 keys number pad. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the product, please do not hesitate to contact us directly at usreview@msi.com and we will be more than happy to assist you, thank you.

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