MSI GS75 8SG Stealth (i7-8750H, RTX 2080 Max-Q) Laptop Review

The GS75 inherits most of the strengths and weaknesses of its 15-inch brother, the GS65, which has now been available for a bit longer. On the positive side, we can mention the sleek design. The combination of metal surfaces (only the bottom side is made of plastic), short height and slim display bezels make for a stylish appearance. Thanks to the copper-colored hinges and the same-colored lid border, the 17-incher stands out from the crowd.

Unfortunately, the chassis wasn't completely pleasing. Analogous to the 15-inch version, the weak point is found in its stability. Under strong force, both the lid and the base unit give way and/or show a great amount of flex. Although many thin and light gaming laptops struggle with stability, the GS75 takes the bottom spot here, particularly as the case creaks in different places or produces various sounds when twisted. The workmanship and hinges are nothing special either. Even though the display can't be opened as far as on the GS65, the maximum opening angle is above-average.

One of the biggest highlights of the GS75 is its low weight. 2.3 kg is easily transported and marks the lowest value in the test field. Competitors weigh from 2.5 to 2.8 kg. In regard to the height, the GS75 comes head-to-head with the Asus GX701GX, which is likewise 19 mm thin. The Lenovo Y740 follows with 23 mm.

Ports

MSI doesn't miss a trick in terms of ports. As you can expect from a current gaming laptop, the 17-incher provides a Thunderbolt 3 port (to connect eGPUs, for example). Three USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A ports and one USB 3.0 Type-C port are also respectable. Two audio jacks for headphones and microphone are also to be found. External displays can be easily connected through the HDMI 2.0 port. Top: Despite its thin design, the GS75 houses an RJ45 LAN port. It's somehow unfortunate on the contrary that MSI didn't include a full-fledged card reader but instead only built in a variant for microSD cards. As a security feature, the GS75 provides a Kensington lock hole.

We would describe the distribution of the ports as mediocre. Due to the fan outlets being located on the sides, most ports are located quite far to the front. Depending on the amount of cable, the use of an external mouse could be hindered (keyword: movement radius).

The Wi-Fi performance is top-notch. In our range test with the reference router Linksys EA8500 (1 m distance) the GS75 took the top spot among the comparison devices when receiving data and second place when sending data. The differences are however very small, when excluding the XMG Neo 17.

While the software features were quite ample, the delivery can be described with the word "poor". Alongside a power adapter (230 Watts), only a quick-start guide and a recovery manual were to be found in the box.

Extensive maintenance options aren't to be expected from the GS75. When the 15 Phillips screws are removed from the bottom side and the cover is popped off (tip: It's best to start at the level of the RJ45 port), there's only access to the fans, battery and storage. All remaining components are glued over with a black foil, whereby the CPU and GPU can't be upgraded.

MSI honors a two-year warranty on the GS75. The service is of the pickup and return type.

Regarding the touchpad, the manufacturer used an extremely wide ClickPad. 14 cm is by laptop standards an enormous amount, even in the 17-inch range. On the other hand, the height of only 6.5 cm is quite limited, which was hardly an issue for us in practice. The most annoying aspect turned out to be stability. The click areas on the left and right corners have an extremely deep travel. Unlike on the (rather quiet) keyboard, inputs are quite loud or rather rattly.

In terms of precision, there's barely anything to complain about. The multitouch gestures (zooming, scrolling, etc.) work mostly flawlessly and are easily recognized. Also nice: Thanks to the smooth surface, fingers glide fluently over the touchpad.

Except for the missing G-Sync support, the display meets almost every standard a gamer could want for in a high-end gaming laptop in 2019. Be it the reaction time (below 10 ms) or the frequency. 144 Hz not only guarantees a buttery-smooth Windows operation, but it also affects gaming positively - at least when enough graphical power is available.

The GS75 promises to be highly future-proof in this configuration equipped with a GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q, SSD RAID and 32 GB DDR4 RAM. The hexa-core CPU shouldn't reach its limits so quickly in the coming years either.

The base clock speed is marked at 2.2 GHz, whereby up to 4.1 GHz is possible through Turbo Boost. However, this value is only applicable to single-core load. When all cores are working, the maximum clock speed possible is 3.9 GHz. The GS75 achieved between 3.1 and 3.9 GHz in Cinebench's Multi-Core test, which is neither bad nor particularly good.

In our Cinebench loop, the 17-incher lagged behind the Asus GX701GX and the Lenovo Legion Y740, which are also equipped with a Core i7-8750H. As with the competitors, the overall score dropped by several percent after the second pass, but then remained at a fairly constant level.

The built-in SSD duo not only makes for short boot times and load times but also for a generally fast system. This subjective impression was backed up by the system tests. With 5605 points, the GS75 stayed well ahead on PCMark 10 and was only beaten by the Lenovo Y740.

MSI combined in our review device two already quick NVMe SSDs (Samsung PM981) into an extremely fast RAID 0 arrangement, which provides a lot of storage space due to its 1 TB overall capacity. As expected, both SSDs performed excellently in benchmarks. However, the Asus GX701GX proved that a single SSD doesn't necessarily have to work slower, since its 1000 GB drive (also Samsung PM981) was usually on par.

If more storage space is required, a third M.2 slot can be found inside the case, which only supports SATA III instead of PCIe though. The GS75 doesn't have a 2.5-inch bay. MSI preferred to use this space for a larger battery - an understandable decision.

Since the GS75 supports Optimus for graphics switching, the computer can dynamically switch between the processor's integrated graphics chip (UHD Graphics 630 in this case) and the dedicated GeForce GPU. In order to save energy, the latter is used only for demanding 3D tasks.

The GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q found in the top-of-the-line model is currently the second most-powerful laptop GPU after the "normal" RTX 2080, which wasn't designed to be energy-efficient. 2944 shader units and 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM is a good match for current and upcoming games.

It should be pointed out though, that the GS75 is equipped with the 80-Watt version of the RTX 2080 Max-Q instead of the 90 W variant, which can be noted by the clock speeds (base: 735 vs. 990 MHz). This explains why there's a performance difference compared to the Asus GX701GX, which performs around 10% better across all 3D tests. The Lenovo Y740 falls back a few percent despite having an identical TDP.

The GS75 didn't lower its guard in our endurance test with The Witcher 3 (Full HD/Ultra). The frame rate remained fairly constant and no bottom outliers were to be seen. According to the GPU-Z tool, the RTX 2080 Max-Q oscillated at around 1245 MHz with a temperature of 73 °C (ca 80 °C @CPU). On the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark, we measured 1320 MHz on average.

The GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q is capable enough to run all modern games smoothly at native resolution (1920x1080) with high to maximum details. Only on processor-intensive titles like Metro Exodus was the 60 FPS mark not always reached. In most cases though, the display's 144 Hz rate can be appreciated adequately.

QHD monitors with 2560x1440 pixels wouldn't pose much of a challenge for the RTX 2080 Max-Q. It's only in the 4K range (3840x2160 pixels) that the high-end GPU reaches its limit.

The 17-incher's performance under load is something to criticize too. 47-48 dB is quite loud for a Max-Q laptop. The Lenovo Y740 shows how to do it better by only reaching 32-46 dB during 3D usage (admittedly with slightly lower performance).

Under the hood, the CPU heats up particularly. The Core i7-8750H made itself comfortable at around 90-95 °C during our 60-minute stress test with the Furmark and Prime95 tools. On the other hand, the GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q remained much cooler at 76 °C.

The 2.0 system integrated in the front area is unfortunately not good for the price. Sound is quite soft and tinny, so that it doesn't create a proper atmosphere for watching movies, gaming or music playback. As shown by our audio analysis, this shortcoming also affects the GS65 15-inch sibling. Deep tones are especially underrepresented. Ergo, a headset or external speakers should be used when possible.