Gaming is a serious business. The growing community of PC gamers in the country has made gaming the fastest growing PC segment, with numerous PC makers — Alienware (Dell), MSI, Asus, HP, Acer, Lenovo—vying for market share. Gaming systems are expensive for the simple reason that these have higher-end components compared to the ones in run-of-the-mill consumer laptops. An interesting observation this reviewer has made over the years is that gamers are a highly engaged lot, enthusiastic about their technology, and continuously seeking bigger and better experiences. Additionally, gaming laptops are larger, heavier, and burn through battery power faster.
Experts advise that when buying a gaming notebook, get the machine that will last you for a few years. That means, a good combination of GPU and CPU, a faster display, plenty of storage (games take up a lot of space) and of course, a great battery life.
The MSI GE66 Raider is a high-tech machine for the new-age consumer. It aims to appeal to passionate gamers who are looking for a particularly powerful 15.6-inch laptop. It is sturdy, weighs a little under 2.5 kg and with Intel’s 10th Gen Core i9 processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super graphics, there’s plenty of performance to go around with the Raider. The machine is capable of delivering 300Hz refresh rates.
Switched on, the entire front edge of the deck lights up, along with the keyboard. The full-size keyboard has individually lit RGB keys, with a touchpad that’s centered with the keyboard. On the front is the RGB Aurora Mystic Lightbar that looks downright cool. There’s a 1080p webcam centered above the 15.6-inch display, which has narrow bezels on either side, with thicker bezels on the top and bottom. In other words, there is no need to connect an external webcam; just boldly stream your gameplay with the build-in one.
The GE66 Raider comes with a comprehensive set of I/O ports spanning three different sides to support all kinds of data transmission or display output. On the back, you’ll find a mini DisplayPort, a USB-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, a E3100 Gigabit Ethernet jack, HDMI 2.0 port and the power connection. On the left side is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port and a USB-C 3.2 Gen2x2 port that can handle upto 20GB of data speeds. There’s also a headphone jack on that same side. On the right side of the housing is an SD card reader, and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports. The GE66 Raider has 99.9Whr large battery capacity which provides a pretty long run time.
Under the hood, the Raider packs some serious power. It comes equipped with the latest 10th Gen Intel Core i9 processor and is powered by Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics. In fact, this new GeForce RTX Super Series has more cores and higher clocks for extremely fast performance compared to previous-gen GPUs. At a user level, great graphics and racy performance is a given here. The display is pretty with extremely fast refresh rates, keyboard is comfortable and audio is icing on the cake. During the trial period, I played a couple of graphics-intensive games (Mindcraft Dungeons, Call of Duty: Warzone, Asphalt 9 Legends, etc.,) and the GE66 Raider kept up with whatever I could throw at it.
In summary, the GE66 Raider is a very good gaming laptop in an elegant design. It offers great gaming and overall experience, has a comfortable keyboard and long battery life.
SPECIFICATIONS
- Display: 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080), 240Hz, close to 100%s RGB
- Processor: 10th Gen. Intel Core i7-10750H, Intel HM470 chipset
- Operating system: Windows 10 Home
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super, 8GB GDDR6
- Memory & storage: DDR4-2666 8GB x 2, 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen3x4 SSD storage
- Battery: 99.9Whr battery capacity
- Estimated street price: Rs 2,23,990
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