Review MSI GT60 Dominator Notebook

Although MSI has reduced the number of glossy elements (the display lid now comes in matte), the GT60 still looks like a rather playful device. We still do not get - from a "Western" point of view - why MSI chooses not to follow the more subtle design language of the GS60/GS70.

In terms of visual appearance, the GT60 has a somewhat cheapish and dirt-prone look to it (especially due to the glossy areas between the keys and around the speaker bars, which gets dusty quite easily), with elegance and a certain high-quality feel being notably absent, although the brushed aluminum lid and palm rest help to rectify this a bit. Then, there is the large footprint, both in terms of weight and size. A height of 5.5 centimeters (~2.2 inches) and a weight of 3.3 kilograms (~7.3 pounds) are both quite a lot for a 15-inch device.

There are advantages to the heavy chassis concerning its stability, such as great torsion resistance of the base unit even when a lot of pressure is applied to it. The only weakness in that regard is the lid, which can be significantly distorted with two hands (then again, this holds true for almost all laptops) in addition to producing color inversions when pressure is applied to the back of the frame.

The (not-quite-silent) hinges work well. Even when the base unit is moved around, the display does not wobble - which it does for most laptops.

Software

The generous amount of preinstalled software is both a blessing and a curse, with nice tools on the one side (the keyboard illumination configurator called SteelSeries Engine and the system surveillance tool Dragon Gaming Center) and on the other, a much more sluggish system right after boot-up (due to extreme strains put on the HDD) and even later on.

As one of the screenshots below illustrates, the information area of the taskbar is full of programs. It takes some cleanup action before the hardware can play its cards. A bit less would have been better. Moreover, had an SSD be used, this issue would have hardly been noticed.

Accessories

MSI's offerings are top-notch in this regard, ranging from warranty brochures and Quick Start as well as Recovery guides to a driver DVD and an HDD bracket. In addition, the laptop comes with a 180-Watt power adapter (~850 grams; ~1.9 lbs, 16.8 x 8.3 x 4 centimeters; ~6.6 x 3.3 x 1.6 inches) and a 9-cell battery (~480 grams; ~1.1 lbs, 87 Wh).

Warranty

The Dominator comes with 24 months of warranty.

The Chiclet-style keyboard has been developed in collaboration with the gaming experts from SteelSeries. The layout is unusual, to say the least.

To optimize the keyboard for gamers, several keys have been resized, such as the left Ctrl key, or rearranged, such as the <>| keys and the Windows key, that have moved to the right of the space bar. The exact list of changes depends on the keyboard layout; the German edition even came with a much smaller return key. MSI has definitely succeeded in its goal to make a more gamer-friendly than writer-friendly keyboard.

The haptics are decent, as is the noise being generated by the keys. Pressure point, key travel, the "feel" of the keys (sized 14.5 x 14.5 mm), all of this should be sufficient for most people. Still, this is no Alienware 17 or Clevo P170SM/177SM.

Nice: The GT60 is one of very few laptops offering a 3-zone illumination system allowing for crazy color combinations and making it easy to play in the dark.

The MSI GT60 is quite future-proof thanks to a Haswell-generation Intel quad-core CPU, the Core i7-4800MQ. It is clocked at 2.7-3.7 GHz and thus approximately 10% higher than its famous (and cheaper) sibling, the Core i7-4700MQ. Both 22-nm CPUs come with 6 MB of L3 cache and a TDP of 47 Watts.

The GT60 makes use of the HD Graphics 4600 GPU. Thanks to Nvidia's Optimus technology, the laptop is capable of switching dynamically between the integrated and the dedicated graphics card, saving energy while idle or during light loads.

Unlike other GeForce 800 models, the GTX 870M is not yet Maxwell-based, but rather still relies on the slightly older Kepler architecture.

Still, some improvements have been made to make the GPU competitive, boosting the performance of the GTX 770M (GK106 chip) by increasing the 960 shader units to 1344 CUDA cores and improving the core clock speed from 811-862 MHz to 941-967 MHz on the GK104 chip of the GTX 870M.

The rest of the specs remain largely the same. The 3072 MB of 192-bit GDDR5 video RAM are still sufficient, and as the One K73-4N has shown, the GTX 870M is very well capable of coming close to the last-gen champion - despite the fact that the GTX 780M offers 14% more shader units (1536).

Despite the fact that other GT60 do indeed ship with an SSD we still cannot understand that this device (costing 1600 Euros; ~$2200!) comes without one. After all, it takes a few minutes after boot-up before the system can show its full prowess (all these loading times would be much faster with an SSD).

Still, the HGST Travelstar 7K1000 is one of the best 2.5-inch HDDs with a high capacity of 1000 GB and fast 7200 rpm, leading to above-average (for an HDD) CrystalDiskMark and HD Tune results of 120 MB/s and 111 MB/s respectively during sequential reading. However, a much better performance can be reached by adding an SSD.

For those who are willing to reduce the display resolution (whenever necessary), most games can be played even with extreme details and MSAA anti-aliasing. Only some highly demanding games such as Far Cry 3, Crysis 3, X-Plane 10 or Hitman: Absolution call for reduced details.

All other games managed to run smoothly (with more than 30 fps) with 1920x1080 pixels and maximum graphics details. Less demanding titles (such as Tomb Raider, BioShock: Infinite, GRID 2, Dota 2, F1 2013, Titanfall) can even be played in the native resolution with medium-high settings.

It may be prudent to keep the GPU driver up to date, as can be seen by looking at The Elder Scrolls Online. The new beta driver 337.50 used by the Schenker W504 (GTX 870M as well) improved the performance by 50% when compared to our ForceWare 332.35 version.

Whether the GTX 880M is worth an additional 400 Euros (~$550), everybody has to decide for him- or herself. The performance boost comes close to +30%.

The chassis remains reasonably cool, with an average value of 34 degrees Celsius (93.2 degrees Fahrenheit) after two hours under full load, including some parts reaching up to 43 degrees (top; 109.4 Fahrenheit) and 56 degrees (bottom; 132.8 Fahrenheit) respectively. However, even during our stress test with FurMark and Prime95 combined, no more than 28 degrees (82.4 Fahrenheit) was reached in the vicinity of the palm rest - a superb result.

When only tasked with running simple video, MS Office or web programs, the entire chassis remains surprisingly cold. Even after two hours of being idle, the laptop never exceeded 25-32 degrees (77-89.6 Fahrenheit).

The components fare worse, however. Both the CPU and the GPU reached up to 90 degrees Celsius (194 Fahrenheit) during our stress test. Still, no throttling occurred.

Due to the high idle power consumption values, the battery life of the GT60 fails to reach the same heights as its 17-inch sibling. Six hours while being idle and only running the Intel GPU as well as four hours of browsing the web at medium brightness are still more-than-decent values for a gaming laptop. DVD playback can be handled by the GT60 for approximately three hours (maximum brightness).

A gaming session with Nvidia's power-hungry GPU yields a short battery life of just around one hour, with a 30% reduction in terms of GPU performance (0% for the CPU) when the power brick is not connected.

Those who do not mind that Windows has been confined to an HDD (instead of an SSD, which we would recommend) will be happy with the GT60-2PC81B.

Moreover, while MSI's laptop may not be the thinnest and most beautiful device, gaming enthusiasts will rejoice. The high-contrast IPS panel offers natural colors and superb viewing angles while the sound system is no slouch either, offering top-notch sound thanks to the Dynaudio branding.

Performance levels are phenomenal, too. Nvidia's GeForce GTX 870M is more than capable of rendering almost all games with (very) high settings. Also great: The large variety of maintenance options, the ever-cool chassis (although the components themselves get rather hot under load!), the Blu-ray drive and the tons of extras. Even one of these rare keyboards with 3-zone illumination made the cut.

Still, an "excellent" verdict seems out of reach for the Dominator. The touchpad is too small, the design is old-fashioned and the device gets rather loud under full load (especially during 3D games). Some alternatives can be found at the right hand side (see "shortcut").