Pros: Great Specs for the price.
Great performance - when it was working

Cons: Arrived with a sticky left control key.
Within 15-20 days a line of dead pixels appeared on the screen
The period key on the numpad stopped working soon after the dead pixels appeared.

Other Thoughts: Good product, if it's not defective.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you for the feedback and sorry to hear about the issue you reported. Please double check and ensure you were not sent an open box or used item. 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 toll free support phone number at 888-447-6564 M-F 6am tp 6pm pst. and we will be more than happy to assist you, thank you.

Thanks for choosing MSI

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

Pros: Really fast for a laptop and plays all my PC games as if I were playing on my I7 3370K processor with Gigabyte Geforce 680 video card. It shows similar benchmarks in benchmark tests I have run.

Cons: I got the 1 x 2 Year Accident Protection Plan For Item#N82E16834152817 just in case. I dropped it before it got under the Christmas tree. It was supposed to be 5 day turn around and I sent it in 11/30/15 and today is 12/23/2015. You may want to think twice about this coverage being 5 days more like more than 30 days. VT Services called me today 12\28\15 and told me they could not get parts to fix my laptop and the insurance told me I had to wait until VT Services sent them the information.

Other Thoughts: Newegg is great as usual. Keep up the great service!!!

Pros: *Decent weight for a 17'' screen (not too heavy)
*Great feel and design (doesn't feel cheap)
*No screen tears or stuck pixals
*Decent internal cooling system (with cooling boost button as well)
*Allows for Super Raid! (for super expensive costs tho)

Great power and specs but, it is not an easy system to upgrade hardware. See notes below.

However that wouldn't stop me from buying it again!

This thing plays anything I can throw at it, mostly on max settings! Screen and hardware are great, no complaints in that dept. Knocking off 1 egg for upgrading issues.

Cons: My Con about this system is that is doesn't have an easy removal panel on the back to get to the hardware. I read online that they have a few versions of this model and the older models had the removal plate, however this newer model does not. You have to remove keyboard and the whole top of the system just to get to the hard disk and memory and doing so will void the warranty.

I purchased a 500gb SSD to replace the 1TB SATA drive it comes with (secondary disk for media and games etc...). However I couldn't swap it out without voiding the warranty so I didn't do it. But with that said I don't see any crazy slowness with the 1TB Sata drive so I'm not to upset about it.

Just something you should know, if you plan on purchasing this system just be ready for you not being able to upgrade anything until the warranty expires.

That also includes the super raid. super raid is an awesome technology however those SSD sticks costs about double what a normal SSD at that size would cost... plus you cant open the back to install the SSD sticks anyways so.... again just remember that when you purchase this unit.

Other Thoughts: Even with the back panel issues, I'd still buy this system again. It looks and feels great and hard the hardware to back it up!!

Pros: Price
970m

Cons: An obvious defective pixel in the screen and it is easy to see when screen are dark. However the USA MSI customer service told me the warranty only covers if there are 7 or more affected pixels!!! I don't understand why 7 but for me it's a big defective because it's on a conspicuous position and may be a cluster of defective pixels.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Xiang,
Sorry to hear about the issue you reported. Please to our website link here regarding warranty on LCD screen. http://www.msimobile.com/warranty/2yr_notebooks.aspx
Please do not hesitate to contact us directly at usreview@msi.com or contact our support toll free support number 888-447-6564 M-F 6am to 6pm pst. and we will be more than happy to assist you, thank you.

Thanks for choosing MSI

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

Pros: Powerful fast laptop, looks great and graphics run great on most games.

Cons: Intermittent crashes. Noticed that when I play Dota 2 which runs very low graphics the computer just crashes, freezes and makes a very unhealthy sound. This also just happened on Battlefield 4 for the first time, I am hoping that it's just a one off as I would be very disappointed if there is a flaw as I spent a lot of money on this laptop. I've had the laptop since the end of August so this would be very ridiculous if there was a flaw this soon! Hope it isn't the case but will update if necessary.

Pros: -Looked Nice (Never got it to work long enough for any other pro's)

Cons: -Did not work
-Faulty

Other Thoughts: Excited that it showed out for delivery at 4.25am the laptop finally arrived 7.40pm (thought it wasn't coming). After checking the quick start guide to make sure I did everything by the book, plugged in the laptop and pressed the power button. All that showed was a single white - mark left of screen center. After 5 minutes or so of zero activity pressed the power button to shut it off. Was very scared and after a couple of minutes pressed the power button again. This time MSI logo, but then straight to BIOS screen. This is all it would do from power on, even if you chose save and exit or discard and exit on the BIOS screen. Called Newegg and they said to return it and gave instructions to do this. VERY UPSET and disappointed. Friend of mine was curious as to why it would go BIOS only, and over the phone had me go into the BOOT options in BIOS and the picture I sent was apparently fine. Then I was asked to look in the UEFI Hard Disk Priorities part and BOOT OPTION #1 showed disabled. Friend asked if WINDOWS BOOT MANAGER showed which it did, selected it saved and exited BIOS and there was life.

After going through first time setup, arrived at the desktop and decided to get windows updates. 141 updates later the machine asked to restart and on doing so got a message saying this PC needs to be repaired after which it shut itself down a few seconds later. Left it a minute, very worried and pressed power and nothing happened. Pressed again and it fired up and went to desktop and after installing more updates I installed Skype. Shortly after using Skype the machine froze and I got the blue screen with "Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart" which it did itself and after being back at desktop for a short while, got a message saying that Skype had a problem and needed to close. Then I got another blue screen about a problem needing another restart. When back at desktop, shut it down and went to bed.

Next morning, pressed power and nothing happened. I could hear a fan, but nothing on screen, no activity on lights. Pressed power button and it immediately went off. Waited a bit and pressed again, and immediately faced with a screen saying the machine needs to be repaired again. Pressed power and nothing at all. Waited a while and tried again and after another no start got the MSI logo and back to desktop. Another blue screen and friend said to restart it and use F3 and do a reset just in case it was a bit messy and just need to be put back to factory, though admitted the problems at power up were NOT good at all, should never just not turn on or fail to display etc. After a huge time, it finally completed the reset and went through all the setup again. At this point, had to go out, so turned it off and when I next hit power, had yet again the machine needs to be repaired message after it turned on. Blue screen again after it had been at desktop for a while, decided that yes, this machine absolutely has some big issues and needs to go back.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Vijendra,
Sorry for the troubles you're having with our product and any inconvenience that this may caused. We suggest you refer to our MSI website for the system full BIOS and EC update and retest. www.msi.com 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 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.

Thanks for choosing MSI

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

Pros: It runs every game and program I throw at it at 60 fps on high settings. The adjustable power settings make battery management a dream.

Cons: It gets very hot very fast when running a game, but there's nothing they can really do about that.

Pros: This laptop can run pretty much anything on high-ultra and renders/converts videos really fast. PC bootup takes no more than 8 to be 100% ready to use (on Windows 10 Pro).

Speeds on SSD are really good for OS.

1TB drive isn't slow with game loading.

Colors on the panel are perfect for my personal use.

Audio software brings life to the hardware side (you can differentiate left from right with precision and bass is good) *see cons*

This thing is really lightweight and silent (when not using the fans at 100%) which is pretty much any time you're not gaming.

Steelseries peripheral manager (software) lets me create macros or shortcuts by combining keys and change colors to your liking on the keyboard illumination settings.

With good configuration the touchpad is good. My web browsing experience is better because of the multi touch options.

Software for changing settings or monitoring work well.

I think that this display looks amazing and the software helps with adjustment for different types of media and workspaces.

Cons: Touchpad is good once you configure it, but for some reason I can't ever play any game with it because moving on the touchpad disables left click making it impossible to shoot in an fps game while moving (not that many people would make the touchpad as first option).

TEARING:
Pardon my caps... but the tearing on this is unbearable. I understand that the whole point behind a good graphics card is stable frames but I like my games beyond the 60fps mark and I could easily resolve this by connecting to a 1ms screen it would take from the portability. Defeated by this I gave up and went with vsync on any games with lots of movement and it isn't as bad.

Expected that with such power comes low battery life and to be honest I rather use AC when playing and general use but I would stay away from heavy gaming on battery life because of it's consumption and the fact that your frames will get capped to 30 or less (depending on configuration).

Other Thoughts: I love MSI, I started with motherboards then added video cards and I had no issues with durability like I had with EVGA which I supported for years. Price per performance is always fair and so far I had no need to ever RMA anything from MSI.

Most people will probably call all the software added by MSI as bloatware but all is easily uninstallable and I had no need since I make use of all the software being for audio enhancement, keyboard binds/macros changes, knowledge of temperatures and fan RPM without having to download any other software.

Overall a good machine whether you're always plugged to the charger or not. Ran Battlefront Beta at +60fps on high, Battlefield 4 Ultra 2xAA +90fps and pretty much anything I run on it runs well.

Pros: Very fast, very sleek, very silent

SSD drive, very fast gtx 970, nice screen, slim, lightweight, stays very cool

Cons: Hardware is Top, no cons

Other Thoughts: The problem is the Software itself. You need to have the resources to install a fresh Windows 8.1 including Classic Shell in order to get the Start Button of Windows 7 back. Otherwise Windows 8.1 is rather useless because of the Metro Apps nonsense. Windows 10 is even worst. Installing Windows 7 on this laptop is difficult because of the UEFI Bios. This laptop is not made for Win 7, you are loosing functions and options. Before you install a fresh Win 8.1 system, you need to extract your Product Key with a special software. The Support Team might not give you this information.

Pros: Performs very well. We bought this for one of our offices to view radiology images when travelling and it has been working flawlessly for them. The doctors love the display. We downgraded it to Windows 7 Pro and it has been running like a champ.

Cons: I'm not a huge fan of the overall appearance of the system, but that's pure personal preference. From a tech standpoint I have nothing to complain about.