Pros: For your money to power factor, this laptop is great. For gaming there really very little difference for i5 to i7 right now, and I don't see it being required anytime soon. The 8gb is more than enough for now. The 860M is a good video card. Very light. Solid structure for a low cost laptop.

Cons: HEAT! I have had many gaming laptops, and I know that heat is a common issue, but this is is crazy. The turbo fan has to be on for anything other than simple usage. Even when on, high end games turn this thing to an oven. Cooling pad is required, else your going to run into shut downs and a lessened machine lifespan. I can't imagine how this thing will be after it ages when it's cooling system is not 100%. When first using out of the box your losing over 30% of your memory. The bloat ware is not that bad, but what it has is a hog. After removing the regular hogs (the keyboard light up takes up a stupid amount of memory, I know it does other stuff too, but really...) , I have it down to 15% to 18% usage with nothing else open. Anyone not knowing how to, or that it's a good idea to do this, may not get 100% out of their machine. The track pad is one of the worse I have even seen. I normally use a mouse anyways, but still, they could have done somewhat better.

Overall Review: With a good cooling pad, and a mouse, this laptop is a great deal. (you can spend twice as much for what really amounts to a small increase in power) A tip; you can always upgrade to a SSD or up the ram in the future if need be. Chances are the price will come down on both over time. (though opening it up does void the warranty) Both are easy to do upgrades. If MSI is reading this, you may want to look at better heat solutions in the future. This is marketed as a gaming laptop. Even low end games cause this thing to heat up quickly. Cooling pads really shouldn't be required. Over all however, this laptop is right in the sweet spot for cost to power. Unless you ready to spend a bunch more money to get a notable effect, get this. (and a cooling pad)