When I first saw the new MSI GS75 Stealth-248 (also known as 9SF) gaming laptop, I said to myself that words cannot describe how much of a beast this machine is. In the following review, I’ll try my best to present the full scale and amplitude of its performance ratings, as well as give an unbiased opinion whether this notebook deserves your hard earned money or not. Spoiler alert: it kind of does, but only if you really, really need it.
Review
Where do I start? On one hand, we have an awesome looking laptop on our hands with hardware to back it up in real world scenarios. On the other hand, the price tag is somewhat steep. At least if we look at similar models, but with inferior specs. So, the real question here is one you should actually ask yourself. Do you really need this much computing power in a laptop?
Necessity apart, the MSI GS75 Stealth-248 is a great alternative for those people who don’t mind dishing out some extra cash for extra power. Keep in mind that most decent gaming laptops revolve around 1500 dollars, so you’d only pay about 1000 more for a vastly superior device. If you’re a gamer who also works in a field requiring you to render, calculate, design, edit videos on the go, you may want to give this notebook a try. I guarantee it’ll grow on you.
Otherwise, an average gamer won’t get that much bang for their buck. You honestly don’t need the best of the best, crème de la crème that the industry can provide to casually play some games while commuting or visiting your friends.
All that being said, this is such a robust product, that almost anyone who looks for a 17.3″ gaming laptop will find some feature or perk that’s right up their alley, no matter how narrow it may be.
Performance
The MSI GS75 Stealth-248 comes equipped with a state of the art, 9th Generation Intel Core i7-9750H processor. This six-core powerhouse features 12 threads, 12 megabytes of cache size, a base frequency of 2.6 GHz that goes up to 4.5 GHz in turbo mode. It does consume a considerable amount of power, namely 45 Watts, but it’s understandable and completely normal, considering how powerful it is. Cpubenchmark.net rates the 9750H at 13700 points, which essentially means that any game you can think of will be playable. Also, you can throw just about any task at it and it’ll complete it without any hiccups whatsoever. Exceptional would be an understatement.
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We can’t really talk about the performance of a processor without taking available memory into consideration, since the two can bottleneck each other. However, with the MSI GS75 Stealth-248, there won’t be any issues regarding CPU-RAM limiting factors. Since this notebook comes standard with 32 GB of RAM, games, applications or any professional work shouldn’t strain the system too much. This configuration is similar to what you get in powerful workstations!
If you still need more memory, it’s worth noting you can further upgrade it to a maximum of 64 gigabytes. You’ll need to fully replace the existing memory sticks, since the only 2 slots will be occupied by the 32 gigabyte configuration (2 x 16 GB DDR4 @2666MHz).
Storage space is roomy enough for any gamer or working professional, but not ample enough for large media collections and such. The MSI GS75 Stealth-248 has a 512-gigabyte storage capacity which fits inside an M.2 NVMe Solid State Drive. It’s blazing fast, lightweight and dependable. Now comes the real kicker: it has two extra available M.2 slots, in which you can plug additional storage as desired, without sacrificing speed.
Graphics and display
The graphics department, as expected, doesn’t disappoint the slightest. The brand new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 is powering game graphics and not only. It has 8 gigabytes of GDDR6 VRAM and a max frequency of 1620 MHz. Most importantly, this new RTX series features real time Ray Tracing technology, which until now was too advanced for video cards to instantly render while playing games. It was just way too resource intensive of a task. But now, games will look more vivid, more fluid and realistic. Considering the RTX 2070 is more powerful than the GTX 1080 Ti, virtually all modern games will be playable on this notebook, even at ultra high settings!
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The MSI GS75 Stealth-248 features a rather slim bezel width for a gaming laptop. Measuring just 5.2 mm, this allows for a smaller body to fit the same large 17.3 inch screen. Talking about the screen, it comes with a Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS display, capable of handling a 144 Hertz refresh rate, which means a smoother gaming experience and reduced eyestrain during those long sessions. You can also hook up two additional monitors configured up to 4K resolution (3840 x 2160) and enjoy some extra productivity.
Interface options
Modern and up-to-date, I/O options are what you’d expect from a gaming laptop. A great array of USB 3.2 ports extends your productivity beyond limit. Add two extra monitors, a gaming mouse, an external keyboard and an external hard drive, and you’ll still have an extra available port remaining. It will be rather hard to find yourself not having enough extension options for all your needs.
- 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C
- 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C
- 3 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
- 1 x HDMI-out (4K @ 60Hz)
- 1 x Micro SD card reader
- 1 x Mic-in / 1 x Headphone-out
Networking
Networking is great, as always with MSI gaming rigs. The GS75 Stealth has a Killer 1550 wireless card, perfect for enhanced gaming performance. It features Doubleshot Pro technology, handling bandwidth allocation separately. You can manage how much each application uses using its control center. Also, Wireless xTend tech extends your wireless range to your other devices seamlessly using the Wi-Fi card itself.
- Killer Wireless-AC 1550
- Bluetooth 5.0
- Killer Gigabit LAN
Portability and battery life
I could not believe how light this 17.3-inch gaming laptop is. It’s simply astounding what MSI have managed to achieve, and that is build a gaming laptop that’s not that much more heavy than your standard 15-inch everyday notebook, around 5 pounds. I’m not talking ultrabooks, but regular mid-range devices. Basically, if you’re comfortable with the larger size, weight shouldn’t be a major issue with the MSI GS75 Stealth-248. Thanks to a newly designed slim power adapter, mobile gaming is easier than ever before.
Also, the MSI is insanely thin, especially considering how powerful it is. And especially how much heat all those potent components emit. This is achieved without compromising on efficient heat transfer and cooling off, thanks to 3 ultrathin fans and 7 (yes, seven) heat pipes. The MSI GS75 Stealth-248 measures 15.6″ x 10.2″ x 0.75″.
Its 4-Cell Li-Polymer battery pack has a capacity of 82Whr and will hold a charge for around 8 hours of moderate use. Start a game and that number will sharply decrease. Still, considering this is a gaming laptop we’re talking about, I think a full day’s worth of work isn’t something to be ashamed of.
Conclusion
If I must conclude this whole review in one sentence, it would sound like this. The MSI GS75 Stealth-248 is a gaming laptop with an understated and elegant finish, which doesn’t seem to compromise much in terms of performance, or features, or battery for that matter. And again, if the steep price is of no issue for you, then I’d say this is possibly the best gaming laptop you could buy in 2019.
