MSI Katana GF66 test: New hardware but old problem areas

On paper, the MSI Katana GF66 12 UGS looks like a very powerful gaming laptop. A 144-Hz display, an Intel Core i7-12700H, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti belong to the equipment that any gamer likes to see in a laptop. But unfortunately, things aren't that easy, and the elegant gaming laptop has both some strengths and weaknesses. 

The design and workmanship mainly belong to the strengths. They remain unchanged. As was already the case in last year's model, the current MSI Katana is able to score with a high-quality workmanship. 

Unfortunately, the problem areas of the laptop begin with the 144-Hz display with Full-HD resolution. The overall image is characterized by high color deviations and bad response times, and the gaming laptop is more at the level of an office laptop here. 

MSI's laptop also seems to continue to have problems with the cooling. The TGP and TDP are reduced so drastically, that although the benchmarks in various games still result in more than 100 frames per second, at the same time many other laptops with supposedly weaker hardware are able to achieve similar results. Even the highest performance mode or even setting the fan speed control to a constant 100% won't help here. Even if it is at a high level, the gaming laptop quickly runs out of steam. The benchmarks such as our CineBench R15 loop show that a higher performance would be possible here. After a few runs, the powerful Intel Core i7-12700H drops to the performance level of the previous generation, even though it had started out promising more. 

You can find all our measurements, information, and comparison values in the current review of the MSI Katana GF66 12UGS.