Well , i'm not a newcomer to gaming laptops , however my previous laptops have always been Dells and aside from the poor quality screen on my L702x (my own fault really) the build quality has always been superb.
Anyway i'll give you a mini review.
Screen, I opted for the 1080p as i dont see the point in a Uhd or 4k screen without the Gpu to drive it. First impression of the screen were good , it had ok contrast and ok brightness but during gaming i had to always play with the gamma (if avaliable) especially games like Alien isolation and Elite dangerous. Also there was a significant amount of motion blur which in the end was the deal breaker for me.
Chassis. First impressions are a sleek lightweight chassis, the upper covers of the base and lid are anodised brushed alloy which looks nice and feels cool to the touch. The base is just the usual hard plastic, its just the bezel that lets it down, its a nasty flimsy plastic that looks distorted where its clipped to the lid.
Cooling. This was the one bit i really liked, the Gpu and Cpu are cooled by separate fants and heatsinks to the rear left and right of the base. The fans intake from the sides and exhaust to the rear. The only negative is that by design the cpu fan spins at 2800rpm all the time regardless of cpu state or battery mode.
Touchpad. I dont know what it is about modern laptops and elan touchpads, i dont think i have a good thing to say about the touchpad , no wait , it looks nice, other than that its a quirky , awkward piece of crap, the plus side is you can turn it off !
Battery life. I have a strong suspicion that my battery was duff from the factory, HWmonitor showed the wear level at 10% when new and at 12% after 2 days little use. I think i managed about 1 hour between charges just basic browsing on battery saver plan , screen at 50%. Verdict: Dire.Also note that the battery is internal which is another huge negative in my book.
Overall performance : Well its ok, not great. I guess this is an expectation thing. Compared to my last dell it felt laggy, even with a fresh Windows install, gaming wise it will play most games at high to max settings but to maintain 60fps you can forget about AA and any post processing effects such as Gameworks features and Physx.
Internals. Even as msi say you can break the warranty seal to replace the Hdd or upgrade the memory the only this you can really replace is the included 1tb 2.5 sata drive,the 2 M.2 ssd slots and ram slots are on the top of the motherboard and getting to them is not for the faint hearted, for anyone who isnt skilled in laptop repair the likleyhood is that you will end up damaging one of the dozens of ribbon cables and connectors that need to be removed. it really is nasty to work on.
Overall verdict: This had been a disappointing lesson, i have found out that the GS60 Ghost pro isnt a slim portable gaming latop, its just a slim portable desktop replacement and the only place its usable is on a desk, you can't sit on the sofa and browse the web without it being plugged in, the build quality is mediocre and performance isn't what i expected. The screen and battery are by far the worst aspects of this laptop.
My search continues, i think a Clevo chassied latop is probably the way forwards.
