MSI had a hit on its hands when it debuted the GS65 Stealth Thin in 2018, and again with its larger-screen evolution, the GS75 Stealth, earlier this year. Now, thanks to Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics, MSI's hit a home run. The MSI GS65 Stealth ($1,699 as tested) is an appealingly priced gaming laptop that offers the premium build and feature set of a high-end machine with few sacrifices. Frame rates won't reach the heights of the pricey Razer Blade 15, but our GS65 Stealth tester still delivers greater-than-60fps gaming in AAA titles. (Pricier configs are also available with GeForce RTX 20-Series GPUs.) Plus, it's portable enough to be your daily driver, and the battery lasts longer than most in this laptop class. We have no major quibbles, so the MSI GS65 Stealth powers its way to our Editors' Choice for midrange gaming laptops.
All That Glitters Is Still Gold
The GS65 Stealth is a handsome gaming laptop, maintaining its use of a black-and-gold color scheme from the debut version (also seen on the GS75 Stealth ($0.00 at Amazon) ). It gives the machine a luxe look, and combined with the restraint in other aspects of the design versus other gaming laptops, it's a classy-looking chassis.
The lid has a smooth finish, while the gold is used sparingly on the logo, lid trim, ventilation, and hinge. Crucially, MSI has fixed some of the flex issues that afflicted the debut version of this laptop. There was some significant flex around the keyboard deck and speakers in that model, which was disappointing on a pricey product, but it's all much sturdier this time around. I note some flex on the lid and along the bottom of the display if you push them in, but in any reasonable situation, why would you do that?
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When I first lifted the GS65 Stealth out of its box, I thought it felt a bit hefty, but the scale doesn't lie: It weighs only 4.4 pounds. That's a good weight for any 15.6-inch-screen laptop, and great for a gaming laptop, so it's more that it's just dense, given its tidy footprint (0.69 by 15.1 by 10.2 inches, HWD).
MSI GS65 Stealth (2019) Review
My initial impression aside, it's a highly portable machine that can double as both your gaming hub and your daily driver or travel buddy. You can find slimmer ultraportables, but as far as gaming laptops go, it doesn't get much better. The ultra-premium Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition ($1,319.99 at Amazon) is trimmer (0.7 by 14 by 9.25 inches) but weighs the same 4.4 pounds, while the closer-in-price Lenovo Legion Y740 comes in at 0.88 by 14.2 by 10.5 inches and 4.8 pounds.
Very narrow screen bezels help the GS65 achieve its shape, a trend we've seen across most late-model laptops. Narrow bezels help reduce the footprint, and they simply look better. The display itself measures 15.6 inches diagonally, and it supports some (but not all) of the fancy gaming features of the moment. The IPS panel is capable of refreshing at 144Hz, giving gamers the room for higher frame rates in the titles that need them most. These include MOBAs, competitive shooters, and battle royales, where you'd be more inclined to go for frame rate over fancy visual effects. In a moment, I'll talk about how well the hardware in this unit can handle that in reality, but that's the idea behind this screen, and this machine. The panel has a so-so 7ms refresh rate, and some diehards may be disappointed that it lacks support for Nvidia G-Sync. The picture quality is above average, though, with vibrant colors and good brightness.
As for the rest of the build, it's as well put together as it appears. The keyboard is satisfying to type on, with semi-clicky feedback and decent vertical travel for the laptop's profile. The keys are individually backlit, as well, for customizable patterns and colors. I will say that the out-of-box key color scheme matching the laptop's gold accents is a nice touch that adds to the overall aesthetic. But you can, of course, change it to whatever you want.
The glass touchpad is another highlight, as it was on the previous GS65 Stealth edition and the GS75 Stealth. It's extra-wide, so there's plenty of space for swipes and gestures, and it offers silky-smooth tracking.
Component Considerations: Meet the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
After a run of laptops using similar core components, this unit is packing some new hardware of note, courtesy of Intel and Nvidia.
In addition to a 9th Generation Intel Core i7-9750H processor, the main item of interest is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GPU, the latest release in the graphics giant's lineup. That's not to say it's the most powerful, however: The released-in-April GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and its equally new partner, the GeForce GTX 1650, occupy a space between the last-generation 10-Series "Pascal" GPUs, and the current top-tier 20-Series "Turing" GPUs.
This is the first time we're reviewing a laptop with a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (or the Core i7-9750H, for that matter), so the testing section below will be setting the benchmark, if you will, for its performance going forward. Note that the GS65 Stealth is also available with the usual lineup of GeForce RTX 20-Series hardware, but that's not what we were sent for review and can't speak to those different, pricier configurations.
In theory, given its place in the hierarchy, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti's raw performance should be close to a GTX equivalent like a GeForce GTX 1070, but below that of a GeForce RTX 2060. The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1650 are based on Nvidia's Turing architecture, like the 20-Series GPUs that bear GeForce RTX prefixes, but they instead carry GeForce GTX monikers, like the preceding-generation Pascal GPUs.
Why? This is because, despite using Turing architecture, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and GeForce GTX 1650 don't offer the advanced ray-tracing lighting technology or have the Tensor cores (needed for the fancy anti-aliasing DLSS feature that has rolled out in a few games) of the top-tier line. The idea is that it's a more affordable option that can still perform well without these prime features, and the GS65 Stealth indeed comes in at an appealing point compared to similar laptops. You can read more about the RTX-versus-GTX differences at a higher level in our GeForce RTX 2060 vs GeForce GTX 1660 Ti comparison. It discusses the desktop versions of these GPUs, but the principles are exactly the same.
Rounding out the specs here are 16GB of memory and a 512GB SSD, which is an adequate, if not ideal, amount for storing a lot of games. A 512GB boot drive isn't uncommon, but between all of your other programs and files, you'll have to keep only your current or most consistently played games installed to keep the drive from filling up. As mentioned, other configurations of this machine are available. The GeForce RTX chips (the RTX 2060 through the RTX 2080) are the main differences, but certain loadouts have different storage and memory amounts, too, and the price jumps significantly as you start stacking on two or three of these upgrades.
The GS65 Stealth is loaded up with an admirable port selection, one I'd say is better than most in a laptop of its trim level. On the left side are two USB Type-A ports, mic and headset jacks, and an Ethernet jack. The right flank, meanwhile, includes the power connector, another USB Type-A port, a USB Type-C port with Thunderbolt 3 support, a mini DisplayPort connection, and an HDMI port.
Other features include a 720p webcam (located on the thin top bezel, where it should be).
Testing the New Turing: A Great Power Value
Since this is the first time we're reviewing a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti-based laptop, picking laptops for performance comparisons isn't all that straightforward. The same goes for a 9th Generation processor, which we haven't seen yet in a laptop at 15 inches (at least in mobile guise; the Alienware Area-51m uses a desktop-class 9th Generation chip.) There are no other matching GPUs, obviously, but several options below still serve as useful points of comparison. The laptops in the chart below have those GPUs, and are otherwise similar in price, size, and feature set.
The Alienware m15 is our representative from the previous generation of graphics, showing us what a roughly comparable Pascal card could do on the same tests. The Razer Blade 15 stands as our current ideal for a thin, powerful gaming laptop, though it and the similarly svelte Acer Predator Triton 500 ($1,606.99 at Amazon) pack much more potent GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q and GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q GPUs, respectively. Finally, the Lenovo Legion Y740 is another 15-incher with a GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q; its price is a bit closer to the GS65's, though still a tad higher.
All of the comparison systems use the same CPU, the previous-generation equivalent to the GS65's 9th Generation Core chip, making for a good head-to-head battle. The GS65 is the least-expensive system on this list, so bear that in mind as you read through the results.
Productivity and Storage Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet use, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a specialized storage test that we use to assess the speed of the PC's drive subsystem.
There isn't much to remark on with these results, as all of these laptops performed quite close. The baseline here is high, as they're all expensive gaming laptops that are more than capable of handling daily home and office tasks. The Legion Y740 is the standout, with the Predator Triton 500 close behind, though all of the machines are in the solid-performance zone on PCMark 10.
As for PCMark 8, as has become expected, the speedy SSDs in these laptops are all roughly equally fast. This means state-of-the-art boot and load times on your desktop and in games.
Media Processing and Creation Tests
Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time. This stresses CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters. (Systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.)
The six-core/12-thread Core i7-9750H 9th Generation CPU starts to show its strength more clearly on these strenuous multithreaded tasks. The GS65 Stealth posted the fastest Photoshop time, which adds up to saving you real-world seconds, and eventually minutes if you're using this laptop for photo editing. It's a little less explosive on Cinebench, but it still pulled in one of the higher scores. While primarily for gaming, this system is capable of handling media projects as well, slightly more so than these other machines (and for a lower cost).
Synthetic Graphics Tests
Next up: UL's 3DMark suite. 3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores.
The following chart is another synthetic graphics test, this one from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes. In this case, it's done in the company's eponymous Unigine engine, whose different 3D workload scenario presents a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess.
It may be disappointing to see the GS65 Stealth at the bottom of most of these results if you're considering it, but this is more or less what is supposed to happen given the pecking order of the hardware here. The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is a more budget-friendly GPU, and it can't stack up to the higher-tier GeForce RTX hardware. Only the Alienware m15's GeForce GTX 1070 should be in striking distance. That was the case on the desktop version of the GPU we reviewed on these tests, but it's not shaping up that way, at least in this laptop. We'll have to see if other manufacturers can pull more juice from the GTX 1660 Ti in their laptops on these synthetic tests, but things fell more as we expected in the next set of tests—the ones that matter most.
Real-World Gaming Tests
The synthetic tests above are helpful for measuring general 3D aptitude, but it's hard to beat full retail video games for judging gaming performance. Far Cry 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider are both modern AAA titles with built-in benchmark schemes.
These tests are run at 1080p on both the moderate and maximum graphics-quality presets (Normal and Ultra for Far Cry 5; Medium and Very High for Rise of the Tomb Raider) to judge performance for a given laptop. Far Cry 5 is DirectX 11-based, while Rise of the Tomb Raider can be flipped to DX12, which we do for that benchmark.
As you can see, the GS65 Stealth does top the Alienware m15's GTX 1070 in these real games, which is encouraging. This card is maybe better suited to MOBAs and the like than AAA games with cutting-edge visual effects, but you can clearly pull 60fps or more in demanding titles if that's what you're looking to play.
For the price, these are solid results and indeed fall right between the 10-Series and 20-Series GPUs as expected. Adjusting detail settings to push your games beyond 60fps on AAA titles ensures there will be few, if any, choppy-looking dips below 60fps. In less-demanding games, it also means you can push frame rates closer to the display's 144fps limit, to actually make use of the screen's high-refresh feature.
Going off-chart for a moment to add more context, the GTX 1660 Ti is a marked improvement over some GTX 1060 laptops we've tested. The entry-level version of the Razer Blade 15 Base Model (not charted here) uses that GPU, and it averages only 61fps and 66fps on these games at maximum settings. Going further down the GPU hierarchy only makes the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti look better; on the synthetic 3DMark Fire Strike test, it roughly doubles the performance of a few non-gaming laptops we tested that use a GTX 1050 Ti.
Battery Rundown Test
Finally, the battery-life testing. After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video-rundown test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop in Airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the Blender Foundation short film Tears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system conks out.
You can chalk this up as another win for the GS65 Stealth. Its longer-than-7-hour battery life stands tall against some of the others, behind only the Alienware m15 here. Razer's laptops generally have quite good battery life, so it's a strong showing for the GS65 Stealth to outlast it (though in the Blade's defense, the test model was running more-draining, superior graphics hardware). It's a boon for a compact gaming laptop to show endurance like this off the charger. The models on this chart that die in just a couple of hours undermine being light and travel-friendly in the first place, a pitfall the GS65 Stealth avoids.
At the Nexus of Features, Power, and Price
It's difficult to find much fault with the MSI GS65 Stealth. The physical build is appealing and feels sturdy in all the spots that matter, with a battery life that leverages its portability. The overall performance is snappy, and while it falls behind truly high-end gaming laptops in 3D capability, it's still a more-than-competent 1080p gaming machine. Given the price range of our GS65 Steath tester, it doesn't demand any real caveat or sacrifice.
Now to be sure, you can find budget-friendlier options. The GS65 Stealth as we tested it isn't exactly inexpensive, sitting near the top of what we'd consider midrange pricing. But looking downscale puts the guarantee of stable 60fps gaming into question, and searching for a $800-to-$1,200 laptop is a different ballgame entirely than considering this $1,700 model. (See our favorite budget gaming laptops.)
The reality is not everyone can or will pay for a laptop that costs $2,000 or more, but many shoppers are only willing to concede to a point on performance. For those folks, the 2019 reboot of the MSI GS65 Stealth earns our Editors' Choice for midrange gaming laptops, thanks to its excellent combination of price, power, and portability.
MSI's GS65 Stealth delivers better-than-60fps gaming performance and a premium, portable build with long battery life. With no real flaws, an appealing price, and power topped only by pricey alternatives, it's our top midrange gaming laptop.
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