MSI Katana GF66: The gaming laptop wastes a lot of potential

The laptops of the Katana series that MSI introduced in May are supposed to show a high craftsmanship. The manufacturer might have been successful in showing this for the workmanship of the gaming laptop. And at first glance, the benchmark results also turn out very good. In Cinebench R15, the maximum performance in the multi-core test (at full fan speed) of the Intel Core i7 used here was in parts above that of some current AMD Ryzen 7 processors. 

However, something isn't quite right in the interaction of the separate hardware components. We can even see three possible reasons for the slightly reduced performance in some benchmarks. First, there are the heat dissipation and the meager TGP of the graphics card, and then there is also the fact that the 180-Watt power supply of the gaming laptop is not quite powerful enough. Other devices with similar hardware use power supplies that are able to deliver 200 or 230 watts. With its smaller power supply, the whole system doesn't get enough power for even short peak loads.

On the other hand, while gaming, you hardly notice any of the weaknesses of the MSI Katana GF66. In none of the tested games did the frame rates drop below 30 FPS. With this, the system performance is also sufficient for the Full HD resolution of the display to play the current games in the highest quality settings. So those who don't chase after the highest possible frame rate will probably be satisfied with the MSI Katana GF66. 

The tested GF66 11UG-220 model comes without a full operating system. Only FreeDos is preinstalled.

Our current review of the MSI Katana GF66 11UG-220 offers additional information and many measurements.