MSI GS Series GS60 Ghost Pro-064 15.6-Inch Laptop (Aluminum Black)

This is just my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt, as you should all opinions, and please read the rest of the reviews. Use this opinion as a data point in your decision if you like. I try to be fair in my reviews, and do not believe in overlooking flaws just because I like a company or product. Even if we are big fans of one camp or another, overlooking/ignoring flaws may slow the urgency for product improvement and leave all of us worse off.I have had this laptop for around half a year now and very much like it. It is super fast and very light. As with any other laptop, there are pros and cons. A bit of my background: I do heavy Excel work, write many emails, game here and there, and travel quite a bit (including with this laptop).Build quality:Everyone has different expectations for build quality. However, no matter the expectations, if we remove biases, one cannot objectively say that the build quality of this laptop is comparable to that of MacBooks, as some reviews have mentioned. I am not an Apple fanboy, nor any fanboy for that matter. I own a 2011 15" MBP, owned a 2014 13" MBP and a 15" Samsung ATIV Book, and own the MSI Ghost Pro 064. I love the Ghost Pro and use it much more than my MBP. While its build quality is superior to that of many PC laptops, it is unfortunately a bit inferior to the build quality of MBPs and even some Samsung and HP models.1) The Ghost's body has many plastic parts, which are very much evident in the screen, bottom cover, and the screen hinge cover (which isn't attached in the most secure of ways).2) The Ghosts's screen is very thin and VERY flimsy. You can bend it almost effortlessly. I understand that this may be the result of keeping weight low -- and that's appreciated -- but there are metals MSI could have used to make the screen less flimsy. Would the cost increase? Most likely. Everything is a tradeoff.Despite some of the build quality issues, the laptop feels relatively solid. It's also VERY light. At the end of the day, tradeoffs had to be made between chassis rigidity, weight, and price, and this is understandable.Performance:Glorious. Blows any other laptop even close to the thickness and weight of this one out of the water. This thing is so fast. You probably will never really take advantage of the 6GB of video memory unless you are running games that involve very large amounts of distance draw, or are running external monitors on 4K resolution. It is very, very impressive for a thin, light laptop. It can certainly run the newest games very well on its own screen. For reference on the computer's gaming performance: I ran Shadow of Mordor on the internal screen and on an external 30" Dell U3014 (2560 x 1600 at 60Hz) and the game played without a hitch on max graphics. The external screen wasn't 4k resolution, but it was still a very high resolution.Laptop rarely gets hot, but when it does, the areas under your palms stay comfortable.Portability:Very light, lighter than any 15" Apple counterpart, or really any laptop I have found with specs even close to those of the Ghost. Seriously, this is a feat of engineering. The amount of power in this laptop is amazing. The only problem with portability is the battery -- it lasts max of 3 hours (this is a hard max), and 1.5 - 2.5 hours most of the time. I knew this going in, so it's not a problem for me but may be for some.Keyboard:Very nice. You can customize the key functions! You can also customize lights. One drawback is that some of the keys are not where you would expect them to be -- especially the insert, delete, home, and end keys. I had to re-program the pause key to be a delete key for instance. Also, the windows key is only present on the right side...and is un-re-programmable for some reason.You also cannot program keys to have a mouse function for some reason. I cannot find a way to do this. It would be very useful in spreadsheets to have a key programmed to be the right mouse button.The keys are good, and one can type on this keyboard for a while without being uncomfortable. In fact, I am typing the review on this keyboard now. One problem is that the keys are not curved (concave). Concave keys are more comfortable, especially during long typing periods. The Ghost's are perfectly straight, which I found is also a problem if your fingernails are anything but clipped very short. Some keys also make creaky/squeaky noises once in a while -- I have never experienced this with premium laptops. All in all, this is a good keyboard that could (and hopefully will) be even better.Look:Laptop looks fine. The glowing logo may be a little obnoxious for some. What is really obnoxious is all the branding! There is the huge Dynaudio logo, the Steelseries logo, the giant MSI logo. Then there is the glowing power button -- for some reason, while we can program individual key colors, we cannot change the color (read -- turn off) on the power button.The power brick is huge! And I mean huge and heavy. Please MSI, take a cue from Razer Blade and make a smaller power brick.Noise:The laptop is fairly noisy in the idle state when compared to many non-gaming laptops, but is similar in noise when compared to other gaming laptops at both idle and under stress. With that said, you can download a fan pattern file and re-program the fans to be silent under whatever temperature ranges you desire. This is very handy, but I do not recommend you go high in the temp range to silence your fans. Use at your own risk.Screen:Excellent. Crisp, clear. Sometimes wish it were touch, other times am thankful that it's not. Resolution is good. It isn't retina or whatever else the high-res scaled screens are called, but Windows is still not great at scaling high resolutions so that's OK. Great screen all in all. It's also matte, which is nice.--Conclusion:Great laptop, and I do not regret buying it one single bit. Do I wish some things were different? Yes. Am I satisfied? Yes. Was it worth the price? Yes, although if some of the above points were rectified, it would be an overwhelming 'hell yes'.

I did a lot of research before buying this product. I ended up going for this model for a few reasons. I wanted a slim light gaming laptop that had some power. I also wanted to be able to connect a higher resolution monitor. This was the best choice specs for my money on the market right now. It came with the latest gen i7 4720. I can connect my 1440p Asus via the display port and it works very well on high settings. That is where the 6gb 970m came in. On the laptop itself the 15 inch 1080p looks clean and works great. There is no need for a higher resolution on a 15 inch screen or smaller. Its just too small. Its just the right resolution and with the 6gb GPU and display port out to a higher resolution monitor I couldn't have made a better choice.Now the only reason I am giving this 3 stars is because my power supply died in the first week of use. You would think this is a simple RMA process for MSI. But they have had my power supply for a week and I still haven't heard anything. This laptop requires a higher watt adapter at 150w. Its not easily found right now. So the laptop became useless to me until MSI decides to send me a replacement. Their process says 5-25 days. I can understand that amount of time if it was something more serious but we are talking a simple power supply. This is the first week I got the laptop. Why cant they just send one out? Their only response to me was that they would get back to me when they get back to me.So I spent 50$ on amazon and ordered the upbright 150 watt said to work with this laptop. Came in 3 days. And now I have a working laptop again. I still haven't heard a peep from MSI. I am disappointed in the RMA process JUST for a power supply. I wonder what could happen if something more serious happens to the laptop.Also, The laptop does not come with recovery DVD. You have to pay MSI 35$ plus shipping for them to send it to you. They have you fill out your credit card information on a word doc. HA.