MSI has launched a new laptop designed to handle some heavy-duty gaming, but which doesn’t have a heavy case. The MSI GS40 Phantom notebook has an Intel Core i7 Skylake processor, NVIDIA graphics, and a 14 inch full HD display.
But the laptop only measures about 0.9 inches thick and weighs just about 3.5 pounds.
With a power-hungry 45 watt Core i7-7800HQ processor and NVIDIA GTX 970M graphics, I wouldn’t expect stellar battery life from a reasonably thin and light notebook like this. But even if you need to plug it in every few hours, the compact size makes this notebook relatively easy to tote around.
The GS40 Phantom has two SODIMM slots for up to 32GB of DDR4-2133 memory, a 2.5 inch drive bay and M.2 PCI Express slot for storage, and features a USB 3.1 Type-C port, two USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, Bluetooth 4.1, 802.11ac WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet, and support for Killer DoubleShot Pro networking.
The notebook has a backlit keyboard with red illumination and you can connect up to three external displays thanks to the HDMI, Mini DisplayPort and USB Type-C ports.
via MSI
I’m sure MSI’s gaming notebooks are technically up to snuff.
But why don’t they hire a professional industrial designer for their laptop cases,
or at least copy one of the companies that does use professional designers?
When Lenovo notebooks look less of a dog’s breakfast than MSI’s stuff, you know there’s something wrong.
Even Dell figured out about hiring actual designers – granted, it took them a decade or more, but their stuff doesn’t look like its the 80’s anymore.
What don’t you like about it? It seems fine to me…
Fashionista Alert!
Good design goes well beyond fashion. It has to do with making the material aspect of a product work really well, in a pleasing manner, and avoid extraneous stuff, which would seem fashionable to some and an annoyance to others.
What kind of resolution are you going to get out of an external display over USB-C?
Oh, you can drive a high-resolution monitor with USB-C. That’s nice to know.
2 usb 2.0 ports. Serious? How in the hell can you have a forward thinking gaming machine without at least having usb 3.0 ports on it. The type-c addition doesn’t excuse this. That’s like bringing out a 2015 laptop with a VGA connector on it. Either spend the minuscule money required to bring them up to USB 3.0 or follow the trend and integrate a type-c only laptop.
Per the specs page, it’s supposedly USB 3.0 (USB 3.1 Gen 1?):
https://www.msi.com/product/notebook/GS40-6QE-Phantom.html#hero-specification
Typo, sorry about that. I also referred to the USB 3.1 Type-C port as a UBS port.
It’s been a long day. 🙂