MSI GE Series GE600ND-257US 15.6" Intel Core i7 3rd Gen 3630QM (2.40 GHz) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M 8GB DDR3 Memory 750 GB HDD Windows 8 Gaming Laptop

Pros: My favorite thing about this system is you get a powerful game ready system that is still quite practical. At 15 inches and less than 5.5 lbs this is far from the monster work stations that you would normally see being labled gaming laptops. This system has handled all the HD video streaming and gaming I have thrown at it without any hitch. Yet despite its plastic construction feels quite sturdy and well made, I dont see this breaking anytime in the near future. It is one of few windows 7 systems still being sold, definately a Pro not trying to figure out 8 Plus you get all of this for under 1000, thats not too shabby.

Cons: I have no major complaints with this, a back-lit keyboard would be nice but not a deal breaker. Battery life is around 3 hours a little more would be nice.

Overall Review: I did a lot research before my purchase and found very few systems with specs that could come close to this at a similar price point. The lenovo Y500 tempted me but offered a slower hard drive and no optical drive.

Pros: I really like this laptop a lot, I got it for two primary reasons (a) doing important stuff & (b) serious gaming when traveling. If this laptop holds up for the time of the warranty (2 yrs) then MSI, you have just gotten yourselves a new life time customer. Here are some Pro's about this product: 1. The keyboard back lights controlled by MSI 'steelseries engine' with 6 ways in which any 3 customizable colors can be displayed, that's right 6. You can even allow the color(s) to move when you are listening to audio. 2. The screen is a longer 15.6" than traditionally wider 15.6" and as such 1920x1080 is achieved. None reflective screen to prevent external lights from reflecting into my eyes was very welcomed. 3. Flawless touch-pad is way better than the one I tested on a new Toshiba laptop which had me tapping away up 12 times just to get it to work . 4. A powerful NVIDIA GTX 850m. Intel hd 4600 & windows resolution is windows E.I 5.4 5. DDR3 1600 memory @11-11-11-28 via cpu-z 6. Intel i7-4700hq 800-3200 MHz, 0.681-1.035 volts in my tests. 7. Auto/ manual cooling fan control. 8. Sound blaster audio which sounds decent and can be configured for gaming, entertainment etc. 9. Anti-finger print body & screen, well-done MSI. Now 98% of the lid top leave prints while the remaining 2% is clearly design for Anti-finger printing as it is located where you open the lid. 10. It's a relatively light laptop. 11. Love the 6 cell battery instead of the common 4 cell. Normal web browsing saw over 3.5 hours and a 19 minutes 1080P utube video used 13% of the battery, this was while using a 'balanced' power management, so changing the settings for better battery life will yield better results. 12. A very cool temp laptop with great vents placement. 13. Wireless ac. I got a solid 150 Mbps on my dir655 router. switching to a ac router saw speeds of 433 Mbps. 14. The logo lights up on the top of the lid. 15. The laptop's colors 16. The 2 yrs warranty 17. The price and $80 rebate 18. The gaming performance for the price is very impressive in my book. When you add the cost of all the individual parts and features and then look at the cost of this laptop, it is a super deal.

Cons: There is one thing I don't like about this laptop and it's the 5400 hdd. It's numbers for access and write (via CrystalDisk) really aren't bad but a smaller size 7200 rpm would've been better. Now while CrystalDisk isn't the absolute best program to confirm performance, I installed Crysis (5.46 gb) and it took 28 minutes to do so. I disabled a bunch of stuff for the 5400 rpm hdd to boot & shut down quickly. I did find that you will need to keep some of the preinstalled things enabled to prevent crashes when running certain programs. I disabled everything I found in the startup except for what I have listed below: *windows host process (rundll32) *steelseries engine (4)- keyboard lights *SCM (MSI) - software that enables/disables wireless, Bluetooth, webcam etc. *persistent module (Intel)- I'm not sure what this is about but I did get a crash when doing some graphics test when this was disabled. *ETD Control Center - touchpad Here are the before and after boot/shut down results: Without disabled programs: 1 min 5 sec boot, 30 sec shut down With disabled programs: 29 sec boot, 9 sec shut down I compared the 5400 wd 1T hdd to the Seagate momentus xt 7200 750g laptop drive and my desktop Wd 10,000 600g hard drives using CrystalDiskMark. Here are the Seq read/write scores : 5400:- 99/100, 7200:-104/81, 10000:- 122/113 The 512k R/W scores: 5400:- 38.5/58, 7200:- 72/38, 10000:- 62/97 The 4k R/W scores: 5400:- 0.47/1.5, 7200:- 0.66/0.34, 10000:- 0.89/2.8 The 4k QD32 R/W scores: 5400:- 1.3/1.5, 7200:- 0.87/0.35, 10000:- 1.87/2.73 As you see these numbers aren't bad for a 5400 rpm drive but installation of large programs are a killer. Install & load times aren't really pleasing to me as this laptop is a high performance laptop and as such a 7200 rpm drive really should've been used or the buyer given the option to choose it in the purchase. This isn't enough though for it to take away an egg.

Overall Review: My desktop pc has a i7 delid 3700k @ stock & ATI 7950 @ stock for the sake of testing purposes here. Testing equipments (with the above mentioned hard drives) were Asus n61jq gaming laptop with i7-720m & Radeon 5730m. Toshiba satellite i7-4700mq & MSI i7-4700hq & NVIDIA GT 740m. 3dmark11 scores: Asus 1227...... Toshiba 2002...... MSI 4786...... desktop 8198. Heaven test average fps/score @1600x900: Asus 19.2/483....... Toshiba 18/453....... MSI 55.3/1394....... desktop 86.5/2178 I also test the GTX 850m on Heaven test average fps/score @ 1920x1080: MSI 42.6/1073....... desktop 67.9/1709.... that's impressive. P.S this would've been a Con, but...oh well: I don't appreciate the windows 8 lay out at all so a quick install of 'classic shell' gives me the windows 7 start menu and some of 7's functionality. I tested the resource hungry Crysis @1600x900 on high @79'F room temp. 99% of the test saw between 57-83 fps and 1% min frame at 34. The game ran smoothly but crashed when the cpu reached 95'sC' and windows restarted itself. Clearly a cooling board is in order. So I got the Thermaltake Massive 23 GT N82E16834991995 cooling pad and saw the temps drop by 8'C across the board on both CPU & GPU. The fan on the cooling pad starting knocking after 30 minutes so a different cooling pad was in order. However the Thermaltake Mobile Fan 12 N82E16835106140 combined with a fan-less cooling pad saw at times 10.5'C improvements. And if you get creative with how the air gets to the heat sink, I am confident that those numbers will be better......as I have seen...up to 14'C better temps ..no kidding. Browsing online does yield ideas, eh? This is an initial review, hopefully if the laptop maintains the current impression I have of it then a future review will be in order. Newegg and MSI, great combination.

Pros: At maximum settings with the High Resolution Texture Pack, this laptop can play Skyrim at 25fps, which is remarkably impressive given its small size. Turn down the anti-aliasing a tad and you easily have playable framerates at incredible graphics settings for most any AAA title. Startup and program launching is reasonably fast for a non-SSD computer. Sound is great for gaming and multimedia, with good high and low ranges. The 1080p screen has fairly wide viewing angles, meaning multiple people can watch the screen without significant color distortion. Brightness is good as well. The blue LED backlit keyboard is bright without being obnoxiously so, and actually has three different settings (all keys on, all keys off, and left 1/3 of the keyboard only on). The "maximum fan" button on the top left works like a charm, and keeps temperatures "reasonable" (see cons).

Cons: HEAT. This laptop is capable of producing very hot exhaust if improperly ventilated, so don't try playing games on a soft or cloth surface. An active cooling pad (~$15 at most major retailers including Newegg) is recommended if you will be gaming at high settings. When using a pad, exhaust temperatures drop to a much more comfortable level. As this is a first-run Haswell laptop, some may experience the USB 3.0 controller errors common to all initial-run fourth-gen Core series chips. This is likely to be fixed by a future BIOS update, but for now, I've had about a 75% success rate with devices being recognized on the USB 3.0 ports. USB 2.0 ports appear unaffected by this issue. Since both these issues are public knowledge for all laptops of this type, and are easily fixed, I see no reason to deduct an egg.

Overall Review: This is a fantastic gaming and multimedia laptop for the price. The Haswell i7 and GTX 765M together with 12GB of RAM really make this an effective machine for just about anything. The aluminum and durable plastic construction feels solid, and the styling is nice for anyone who wants to impress their friends at a LAN party.

Pros: *The no glare screen is fantastic *Runs everything I want to play without any hiccups. That includes Skyrim on ultra, guild wars 2, and Borderlands 2. *The auto turbo feature is nice too. even when its on the laptop doesn't get too hot or too noisy. *The Blu-Ray player Killer Gaming lan is amazing and works great.

Cons: *No back lit keyboard *No led indicators for caps or num lock. You wouldn't think its an issue til it is. Still not a big deal. *Lot of bloatware to get rid of when you set it up.

Overall Review: For the price you can't go wrong. Great MSI product.

Pros: I wanted to update a new review from my previous review on this laptop after using it for a few weeks now. It definitely deserves more credit than the below reviews have given it. I've been playing World of Warcraft, Diablo 3 and the Wildstar beta with no issues at all. The games run smooth at the higher settings and look fantastic on the 1080p screen. The first thing I noticed with WoW is that when sliding the preset quality to Ultra which maxed everything including AA, AF and shadows that it still obtained a nice 50-60fps in most outdoor areas. This had bogged my previous laptop down causing me to have to lower settings to medium/high. I also really like the design and feel of this laptop. The steelseries keyboard is also a perk with custom lighting and feels great to type on.

Cons: The touchpad for the cursor is known to not be all that great on these although I use an external mouse 90% of the time so it's no issue to me. I haven't been able to determine if this is an issue yet but the heat does get a little warm. I've been running Real Temp and have noticed temps up to 90-92c max on the CPU and around 88-90c max on the GPU while gaming for hours at a time. This is with me using a cooling pad and the turbo boost fan button. The only fan exhaust is on the left side of the laptop rather than the rear.

Overall Review: After previously owning an Aliewnare m14x r2 and debating on the Alienware 14, I had came across this laptop and jumped right on board with it for the below reasons after comparing it with the Alienware 14: Gorgeous 15.6" 1080p screen (Alienwares 14" models strain my eyes a little and I didn't want their heavy 17" model) The latest Nvidia GTX 860m 2gb card has been excellent for me so far and is much stronger than the GT 765m card in the Alienware 14 The i7 processor is the 4700HQ opposed to the 4700MQ in the Alienware 14 Hard drive is also noticeably better as the MSI has the 1tb 7200rpm hdd compared to the slower 500gb 5200rpm hdd in the Alienware 14 unless you upgrade it for additional cost. The RAM is the same 8gb 1600mhz except that the MSI comes with a single 8gb stick with an open slot that you can add another stick later to upgrade if needed and the Alieware 14 comes with 2x4gb sticks filling both slots. One last thing I'll point out is that the MSI has a 2 year warranty while the Alienware 14 only has a 1 year unless you pay additional of course. Total cost on the Alienware 14 with the upgraded gt 765m was going to cost me over $1500 after taxes. The MSI won me over hands down with the $1249 price tag and having the overall beefier hardware. I'm not trying to make this all about making the Alienware 14 look bad because it is really a well designed beautiful laptop and may have better cooling than the MSI although I'm only trying to compare the tech spec differences of what you get with your money.

Pros: Pros ------- Extremely fast even when running games at high details. The fan seems to do its cooling job well. The keyboard feels great and the speaker sounds extremely good. The build quality is fantastic- feels sturdy and strong

Cons: Cons ------- Trackpad takes a little to get used to. The laptop gets very warm fast when playing games, but it cools down fast once the game is turned off. THe laptop is a little heavier than I'd like it to be but that is not a problem at all.

Overall Review: I am going to swtich the HD with a SSD sometime soon this week, will update afterwards

Pros: Backlit keyboard. 1080p screen. Sound

Cons: Heat

Overall Review: This laptop is awesome. The keyboard is awesome. The back lights add to it but over all it feels solid. The video card is what is expected. I can play most games on high. The screen is vibrant and is super clear. The sound from the speakers are loud and work perfectly. There is minor bloatware but easily fixed.The quality of of the laptop is next to none. It is a very solid laptop. I would definitely recommend this laptop to anyone! I know a lot of people might be tempted to choose a Lenovo/Sager laptop(though I have personally never used either) I believe that this laptop will not only compete, but also beat those brands. I moved from a desktop to a laptop for portability and I am perfectly happy with this laptop. This laptop has all of the specs from a to date desktop. The video card may not be the strongest but it runs all games with ease.

Pros: Price/performance, build quality, keyboard is awesome plus it is backlit (more on this on down), Expansion ability, display, NVidia graphics. I bought this at a competing online store on sale (currently pretty much retail here). I had purchased the GE60 for my son to replace his ageing Asus i3 that just doesn't game at all with integrated graphics. I was so impressed with the graphics performance that I bought this for myself to replace my Sony VAIO that has the NVidia GT540M. The GTX765M is a LOT faster. For expansion, there are two msata connectors. Has the ability to run RAID 0 when both msata connectors are used, or they can simply be used as separate drives. Comes setup in the BIOS as EUFI and the HDD is GPT rather than MBR. Nice recovery program to allow you to create a 5 DVD recovery set or a USB recovery key (this requires at least 14.92GB usable space, and a 16GB USB key has around 14.8GB which isn't enough, I had to go up to a 32 GB USB key in order to create one). Has a button to allow you to boost the cooling fan should a person wish to run it on maximum all the time, otherwise it is regulated as required. The backlighting can be all on, all off, or partially lit, over the typical gaming keys on the left side of the KB. The keyboard on this laptop is the best I've used, the construction of the laptop seems to be top notch, and the style is one of the nicer looking ones IMO.

Cons: touchpad. The one on my GE70 isn't 'bad', but the one on my son's is horrible. Very inconsistent with required touch. Sometimes a light touch works, other times it seems it need to more pressure. I don't like the touchpad buttons as they are simply pressing down on the lower corners of the touchpad. This is pretty much moot for both of us as we use a wireless USB mouse. But seriously, the touchpad could be a LOT better. There were complaints about the touchpad on my Sony VAIO VPCF233FX, but in comparison, the Sony touchpad is far better.

Overall Review: I debated on whether or not to reinstall with windows 7, I dislike windows 8. From reviewing the MSI forum, I noticed some people were having driver compatibility issues with windows 7 so I am staying with windows 8, just adding the Start8 to get my desktop menu back. I had upgraded this laptop to windows 8.1, it was pretty much straight forward and worked fine. However, after upgrading to 8.1 I noticed some features about windows that I use (according to Microsoft it's not a fan favorite so they did away with it completely in windows 8.1), namely the Windows 7 Backup that allows a system image to be created. While windows 8 did away with the windows 7 backup and chose to go with file history instead, they at least left the windows 7 image creation ability in there, it is totally gone in 8.1. Also, I have a WHS2011 server at home in which I use to backup all laptops and PC's at home. The upgrade modified the system partition, and actually created a new one. Doing so would not allow the laptop to be backed up to the server so that a full BMR could be performed if necessary. This was another unacceptable to me (it's an upgrade issue, if you had 8.1 full install, this would be a problem). While I was able to go back to windows 8, and it allowed me to perform a BMR backup, it left a directory that I just couldn't remove, yet was useless. I used my USB recovery key I had made and did a total system restore which puts the notebook back to as if it were brand new, turned on for the first time. Life was all well and good again... There isn't much bloatware as some have claimed. You get trials of Norton internet security, laptop theft protection and online backup. I removed all of this. Then there is also Magic MX, and Microsoft office. I don't know about magic MX, but MS office was even a trial version. It asks for a key, or allows you to buy a key and install. Also come with an app to allow you to play android apps in windows. Removing all of that cleans it up nicely and unloads a few items from loading at startup to speed things up. I've ordered a Crucial 240GB msata drive from here and will restore the software to that drive, then use the HDD for program installation.