MSI is introducing a new high-end gaming laptop as part of its stealth gaming GS series. The new MSI GS65 is a thin and light laptop at 0.69” thick and 4.14 pounds with ultra slim (4.9mm) bezels that allow it to pack a 15.6” display into a 14” laptop form factor. The GS65 utilizes the latest Intel processor and NVIDIA graphics along with all the RGB offered with a per-key backlit SteelSeries keyboard.

The MSI GS65 features a flat black design with gold trim and accents along with rounded corners. There are plenty of vents along the back and back corners of the left and right sides. External I/O includes Ethernet (the laptop is barely thick enough to hold the RJ-45 port), two USB 3.1 Gen 2, and two audio ports on the left side, and one USB 3.1 (10 Gbps), one Thunderbolt 3, one Mini DisplayPort, and one full size HDMI video output along the right side. Up top DynAudio speakers sit above the keyboard and a large trackpad sits below it. In addition to the built-in speakers, MSI also includes Nahimic 3 audio support for 7.1 virtual surround sound when using headphones. The display is a 15.6” 144 Hz display that is rated at a calibrated 94% NTSC color gamut.

Internally, MSI is using a beefy air cooling setup with three Whirlwind Blade fans (47 0.2mm thick fan blades), four heatpipes, and independent CPU and GPU coolers and airflow. Under the hood, MSI is offering up to an Intel Core i7-8750H Coffee Lake-H processor and either a NVIDIA GTX 1070 or GTX 1060 depending on the model. The Coffee Lake H processor is a 45W part featuring 6 cores / 12 threads clocked at 2.2 GHz base and 4.2 GHz turbo and 9 MB cache. The CPU supports dual channel DDR4-2666 MHz RAM and Intel Optane storage (no vPro on this model).

MSI claims up to 8 hours of battery life when in power saving “green mode” and playing back 720p video content. Naturally, battery life when gaming will be much lower, but in those situations, you’ll want to be near a power outlet anyway and at least MSI has managed to slim down the power adapter by 28% on this model.

On the software side of things, MSI is bundling the gaming laptop with SteelSeries Engine 3 software to control the keyboard backlighting (which can be configured to show things like ammo and health remaining) as well as Dragon Center 2.0 software for system monitoring and game profiles for optimizing memory when running supported games.

The GS65 laptop looks the part with a premium finish and nice looking accents like the floating hinge and vents without going too crazy, but we will have to wait for reviews to see if the performance is there as well. The new 6-core Intel chip and GTX 1070 combo is a lot of horsepower for a portable gaming system and I’ll be interested to see what reviewers think of the build quality and 144 Hz display. As is usually the case with these things, MSI is not yet talking pricing or availability but more information should be available soon. Update: It appears that the MSI GS65 starts at $1800 with an i7-8750H, GTX 1060, 16 GB RAM, and 256 GB SSD and $2100 for the GTX 1070 model on Amazon.

Are you rocking a gaming laptop? What do you think about MSI's latest stealthy offering?

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Some more photos of the MSI GS65