This is the MSI ge62 raider not to be confused with the GS 66 stealth. This one is not quite as thin nor quite as light though relatively speaking, it is quite thin and light, but I know the Raider is always my sweet spot in the MSI line for some.
It is pretty portable, but it’s not so crazy that you have to go to max q graphics, pay more money, and all that sort of thing. This is the redesign for 2020.
We’re going to look at it now. For those who can follow the radar live, this is a significant design in terms of looks and port location and all that sort of thing and the way the internals are laid out to which we’ll see later on in this review teardown.
Design
It’s a good look. I mean, I leave it up to you as to how you feel about it. MSI’s look has not been so super inspired, so the black brushed aluminum that became the kind of matte black thing has now transition to aluminum.
It is an aluminum lid with a design that’s ramming this and what we see alien. Where a little while ago, HP omens even some of the Tritons. So it’s a trendy look that’s pretty in right now. It looks like a gaming laptop.
But it’s not like over the top with graphics on it and bright colors. All that sort of thing in there their dragon logo is pretty toned down now. It’s monochromatic. However, I will notice the light bar in the front that looks like Tokyo at night.
It’s pretty cool, and yes, it’s programmable, so you know whatever colors you want on there, or you can turn it off when you go to work. So, people see if you go, that’s your light show you get the idea.
Keyboard
It’s got a perky RGB SteelSeries backlit keyboard. This is something you’d expect from MSI in a reasonably premium line. This is not the most expensive thing they make its upper mid-range in their tier.
Performance
But in terms of performance, man, this thing rocks, which is why I like the radar line personally. So, you’ve got your choice of an Intel Core i7 Intel 10th gen with six cores or even over the court i9 10980HK. The overclockable one with eight cores.
You’ve got it, and one nice I’m at the Raider is they usually don’t do max Q graphics because they don’t have to, but in one instance, they will be doing it, but you can get it with an RTX 2070 mobile of course, and that one starts at $1799 with the core i7 not bad, and a 240 Hertz IPs fast response to the spine.
If you want to go up to the RTX 2070 super that does not execute excellently, I think I’d lean towards that one, and then that’s $2199 Kevin to 240 Hertz panel. You can go to town. I mean, they send the top-of-the-line model 300 Hertz refresh this but Intel Core I nine inside and the RT x 2080 Super Max Q.
In this case and this one had to get max Q to fit in the thermal and power envelope here and that one’s pushing $3,000. With the lower-end models, you’re going to get a 512 king Nvme m2 SSD and 16 gigs around, or if you move up a little bit you get 32 gigs around Rams on too expensive right now.
So yeah, that dual channel and you’ll get a one terabyte SSD of course, these things are easily upgraded yourself another thing that I like about the MSI’s they take off the bottom cover, which I’ll show you, and you can get to all this stuff and do it yourself.
They’ve redesigned the motherboard wholly compared to the last generation on this um lots of heat pipes. Going on, they’re pretty proud of this, and it does undoubtedly help it cool. We have the most performant model, so also the hottest running model.
I was pretty impressed with the temperatures here, and even when gaming, I’m you know we could hit the thermal maximum and occasionally throttle in the core. Still, the average temperatures were in the 70s to the 80s.
Gaming Performance
When playing things, I shadow the Tomb Raider on ultra and the far crying dude on ultra, so that’s pretty demanding stuff at 1080p resolution granted. It’s almost a shame that they don’t have at least a 2k panel.
It’s not a 4k because you have so much power in this high-end model. You could easily play a game at 2k resolution and get at least 60 frames per second. There is still a 17-inch model available as the same basic specs.
Only in a bigger chassis with the bigger screen going on there and so it has not gotten the redesign yet, and MSI tells me that, unfortunately, COVID is also gotten in the way of getting that redesign done.
So we probably won’t see it until they do a major refresh for the next generation of Intel CPUs our NVIDIA GPUs at this point some little too late this year. A little too confusing if they switch on the fly.
Connectivity is good on the machine especially for a 15 inch. Even if it is a gaming laptop you’ve got three USB ports and those are three points in gen 2. You have two USB one of them only supporting the display point.
It is labeled as such so you can figure out which one that. It is a little above there’s no Thunderbolt 3 here in this price range. You might say it’s not totally necessary, you probably don’t need a GPU.
For example and you already have such high end graphics cards inside but there it is we have killer Ethernet onboard.
Audio & speakers
We’ve got a single audio jacket combo audio does support s/pdif. Msi says they’re still using the usual high quality DAC inside for a better-than-average headphone audio or speaker. If you haven’t been using speakers the stereo speakers that are built in the usual in the HemoCue.
They had like no bass honestly I was a little surprised for a gaming laptop that. We couldn’t get a little more oomph going on here perhaps the 17-inch has better audio. I know my older generation one does have better audio than this 15-inch.
Well so this time around. We have ports on the back and we also have ports on the side. Which is new for them for the radar line. The power connector is a rectangular one sort of like what lenovo does for the ThinkPad.
Laptops and the power adapter that you get will either be a 231 or a 281 and it depends on the configuration of the machine how powerful the CPU and GPU. You get to go down there. I’m glad that we had both hdmi 2.0 and mini Display Port in case you don’t want to use it.
The USB C display outer you want to connect multiple monitors at 4k 60 Hertz resolution so I’m good when it comes to graphics. We have your choice. I’m using either dedicated graphics all the time.
We’re having Nvidia Optimus enabled when I play games. I always go to DGP you only because you typically get a couple more frames per second. So all the footage that you see was done setting it on dedicated GPU only mode.
Heat And Noise
So what about the heat and the noise on this we got a good cooling solution in terms of the arrangement of the heat pipes. Nice Laureen sake lots of ventilation got out the back. We got it out the sides.
We have large air intakes at the bottom but we do have a core on the hide here and then our RTX 2080 max Q Super cards. So you will hear the fans and it’s that the fans are tuned so that. It’s not like a whole room, you know.
I mean it sounds more like water boiling when it’s working hard. So I think it up to you if you are okay with that sort of sound but it’s like now I did my gaming tests and the extreme performance mode.
Heat
You have a bunch of different performance modes if you just set it to the more like a balanced mode. you probably won’t hear as much so definitely audible. It’s a gaming laptop. Nothing kind of the ordinary surface temperatures are surprisingly not that hot.
Especially it’s summer here now the only area that doesn’t get hot is where most laptops get hot these days. Which is above the keyboard just close to where the display meets and that’s not a place you often touch but the bottom aside warm not hot.
The keyboard area is absolutely just fine so the cooling is effective given the anemic speakers you’re gonna want to use headphones probably. just to drown out the sound of the boiling water though so.
Keyboard
The keyboard in the trackpad the good news is Microsoft precision trackpad no complaints works fine. The keyboard is again nicely backlit SteelSeries perky argh you can program that just like the front LED strip to do anything that.
You want or use the preset effects the key travel on this is less than last generation. It has a nice feel to it. It’s got a fairly crispy return all that sort thing but I would like more key travel honestly so for those that are using this for productivity and actually have to type much.
It’s not the worst or something like that but I just kind of missed the last gen keyboard so for displays. Like I said your choice but 240 Hertz or 300 Hertz refresh IPS displays both of these are like really they’re overkill.
Even if you’re doing something like Apex legends where you want high frame rates and you can probably get them it’s beyond what you need most likely but hey it’s there for you we do have the 300 Hertz panel.
It has pretty good brightness and you know the usual full srgb coverage and 75% of Adobe RGB. It’s a decent enough panel msis color profiles. When we test it we put on the srgb profile which tends to be the most color accurate.
Contrast is pretty good, it’s a little bit above average. It’s also a fast response to display so they say three or five milliseconds. So you’re not gonna see ghosting going on. It’s a perfectly fine panel.
Battery Life
It’s crazy high refresh rate so this is all sounding pretty good. What’s the catch here must be battery life right it must just stink well actually they put a 99.9 watt hour battery. So that’s the biggest battery even put on and still fly under an airplane.
That’s they’re not skimping on that either that’s a pretty nice touch there and if you haven’t an Nvidia Optimus mode switchable graphics. You’re doing the productivity with the display set to 150 minutes or streaming some video that sort of.
Battery life is actually pretty good on this thing. I mean six to seven hours which is pretty good for a super powerful gaming laptop and that’s without doing anything more aggressive. Than just setting it to the balanced power profile.
Technical Specification
Processor
- Up to 10th Gen. Intel® Core™ i9 Processor
Operating System
- Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Memory
- 32GB (16G*2) DDR4 2666MHz 2 Sockets
Display
- 15.6″ UHD (3840×2160), IPS-Level
- 15.6″ FHD (1920×1080), 144Hz, IPS-Level
- 15.6″ FHD (1920×1080), 240Hz, IPS-Level
- 15.6″ FHD (1920×1080), 300Hz, IPS-Level
Graphic
- NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2080 SUPER™ With Max-Q Design, 8GB GDDR6
Storage
- 1x M.2 SSD slot (NVMe PCIe Gen3)
- 1x M.2 SSD Combo slot (NVMe PCIe Gen3 / SATA)
Keyboard
- Per-Key RGB Backlight Keyboard
Networking
Wi-Fi
- Killer™ 802.11 ax Wi-Fi 6
Bluetooth
- Bluetooth® 5.1
Interface
- 1x RJ45
- 1x SD (XC/HC) Card Reader
- 1x (4K @ 60Hz) HDMI
- 1x Mini-DisplayPort
- 2x Type-A USB3.2 Gen1
- 1x Type-A USB3.2 Gen2
- 1x Type-C (USB3.2 Gen2 / DP)
- 1x Type-C USB3.2 Gen2x2
Audio
- 2x 2W Speaker
Battery
- 4-Cell Li-Ion99.9 Battery (Whr)
Weight
- 2.38
Manufacturer Warranty
- 1 year Limited warranty (Include 1 Year Global)
Summary
If you tried harder you probably could. Wi-Fi on this is fine, is it a killer. The Wi-Fi card inks the GTX 1650 which is really an Intel Wi-Fi 6 card. so overall it’s sounding pretty good and I have to say it is not the most beautiful razorblade looking laptop in the world.
But you know for around $1,800 – $2,100 you can get yourself an incredibly powerful and fairly portable laptop with a good thermal design and good cooling that’s gonna be at the top of his class for performance.
So you think that you used to have to get a really big desktop replacement to see these kind of frame rates and games and all that sort of thing and now something that fits in your backpack really.