MSI Stealth GS66 12UGS gaming laptop review: Powerful enough for QHD

The competitors of the GS66 12UGS include 15-inch laptops with the "classic" RTX 3070 and comparable TGPs, such as the Asus TUF A15 FA506QR, the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XD, the Alienware x15 P111F, and the Eurocom Nightsky ARX15. These laptops appear in the tables as comparison devices.

At first glance, the case closely resembles that of the GS66 10UG reviewed in 2021. However, some changes have been made by MSI when it comes to the details. For example, one of the USB-A ports has been replaced by a Type-C counterpart. Furthermore, there's now a fingerprint sensor in the upper left corner of the touchpad.

The general build of the case along with its advantages and disadvantages has remained unchanged. One of the GS66's biggest strengths is its compact design. With a width of 35.8 cm and a depth of 24.8 cm, the 15-incher takes up the smallest footprint among the test field. The Stealth is only beaten by the Alienware x15 in terms of height (19.8 mm). Things look similarly good regarding the weight. 2.2 kg, which is the same as the Gigabyte Aero 15, is pleasantly light by gaming standards as well as easy to transport.

In terms of looks, besides the colorful keyboard illumination, the chassis is rather unimpressive, which might be appreciated by some buyers. Thanks to the use of metal, the matte black surfaces look very high quality. Workmanship is also good, although the transition between the base unit and bottom cover could be a bit more refined.

Stability is okay for such a low-profile case. The keyboard and touchpad flex a bit, and the lid could have used more resistance to torsion. The hinges do a passable job. The wide opening angle of 180° is especially praiseworthy.

Ports

If you ignore the absence of a card reader, connectivity cuts a very fine figure. Despite the low build height, a full-fledged RJ45 port is on board. In addition, there's an audio jack, a modern HDMI 2.1 port (4K @120Hz), and a total of five USB ports, three of which are in the Type-C format and support the DisplayPort function. MSI even uses Thunderbolt 4 for one of the Type-C ports.

The distribution of the interfaces is a bit disappointing. Since the rear areas of the sides are taken up by fan outlets, the ports are located quite far in front, which can lead to collisions and space restrictions when using an external mouse, depending on the amount of cables involved.

After we recently updated our router setup (an Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 is used now), the results obtained aren't comparable 1:1 with older tests, which is why the values of the competition are missing. The Killer 6E AX1675i chip built into the GS66 delivers a very good performance all the same. Wired network connectivity supports up to 2.5 Gigabit (Killer E3100G).

As with almost any gaming laptop, the webcam's quality is very low. In addition to color accuracy, image sharpness is also lacking - which can be seen in our photos.

The box includes a 240-watt power adapter weighing just under 600 g, and a few information booklets.

In order to access the interior, a total of nine cross-head screws have to be removed from the bottom of the case (one is located underneath the factory seal). After this, the bottom cover can be pried out of its anchoring with a flat tool, which requires both strength and dexterity. The enormous battery, two M.2 slots, and two RAM slots protected by a cover can be found under the hood. The cooling system consists of three fans and several heat pipes.

MSI provides a two-year warranty (Pick-up and Return Service) for the product.

While the touchpad's height of 6.5 cm is no cause for enthusiasm, its width of 14 cm is more than impressive. The smooth surface provides good gliding properties. There's hardly anything to complain about in terms of precision and gesture support, either. However, MSI still needs to work on its stability. Especially at the left and right edges, the touchpad can be pressed quite significantly into the case, resulting in a lower perceived quality.

As mentioned at the beginning, the manufacturer uses a fast 240 Hz panel for the display, which also does its refresh rate justice. The response times measured in our test were under 10 ms each, something that deserves respect in the laptop sector.

Even the entry-level variant of the GS66 ranks in the high-end range. 32 GB of RAM should be sufficient for the coming years as well as a CPU with 14 cores. A 1,000 GB SSD capacity isn't bad either, especially since you can expand the storage space with a second M.2 drive if needed. The VRAM is the only area that might become limited in the near future as we'll explain in a moment.

The Core i7-12700H is a brand new model based on Intel's Alder Lake architecture with clock rates of 1.7 to 4.7 GHz. The 10 nm chip houses six performance cores that support Hyper-Threading, as well as eight efficiency cores without HT. This allows the 45-watt CPU to process up to 20 threads in parallel.

To get the most out of the processor, MSI is using very high TDP settings. According to the HWiNFO tool, we're looking at 200 watts for both PL1 and PL2. Although the values are lower in practice, the i7-12700H easily surpasses its old Tiger Lake siblings. In the Cinebench R15 multithread test, for example, this means an increase of 30% to 50% compared to the Core i7-11800H contenders. The AMD competition in the form of the Ryzen 7 5800H or the Ryzen 9 5900HX must also admit defeat, although the performance-per-watt ratio is more in favor of AMD as previous tests have shown.

The MSI GS66 also snatches first place when it comes to system performance, although the differences are much smaller here. Subjectively, the operating system responds as smoothly and quickly as you would expect from a modern gaming laptop.

We have nothing to criticize about the storage device. Thanks to PCIe 4.0, the 1 TB SSD from WDC (PC SN810) built into our test device excels with an outstanding performance that can only be rivaled by the Samsung drive in the Gigabyte Aero 15. In the AS SSD benchmark, sequential rates of around 5,000 MB/s are achieved - an excellent result.

With the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, Nvidia has launched a somewhat more powerful version of the RTX 3070. Instead of 5,120 shader units, the GPU now offers 5,888 shaders, which corresponds to an increase of 15%. Furthermore, the amount of tensor cores (184 vs. 160) and ray tracing cores (46 vs 40) has also been increased. However, the performance of Nvidia's current Ampere generation not only depends on the base specifications, but also heavily on the cooling system and the predefined TGP. Similar to the RTX 3070, the TGP of the RTX 3070 Ti ranges from 80 to 125 watts (without Dynamic Boost). MSI opted for a pretty low value with the GS66: Including Dynamic Boost, it's "only" 105 watts. Therefore, the RTX 3070 Ti's potential is not taken full advantage of.

This is also visible in the benchmark course. In spite of its better configuration in terms of shaders and the like, the GS66's performance rating is roughly on par with the Eurocom Nightsky ARX15 and the Alienware x15, both of which have RTX 3070s with a TGP of 115 and 110 watts, respectively. Only in the Port Royal ray tracing test does the GS66 come close to the top spot. It's very annoying that Nvidia didn't increase the video memory when refreshing the GPU. Even today, 8 GB of GDDR6 VRAM reaches its limits at higher resolutions and detail levels from time to time. Considering the price and the high-end requirements, at least 10 GB of VRAM would be necessary in 2022 (more like 12 GB). After all, the RTX 3080 Ti offers 16 GB of GDDR6 memory straight out of the box - the VRAM configuration is adequate here.