There’s a steady trend of gaming laptops becoming slimmer, with no compromise on power. Going with the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin’s design aesthetic, a near bezel-less display and powerful internals, this is MSI GF63 8RD, an ultra-slim gaming machine designed for those on a budget. But it is worth it? especially when there are options too, well, let’s find out.
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MSI GF63 8RD Gaming Laptop Review
The MSI GF63 8RD packs a bezel-less display giving out immersive gaming experience. This laptop is just under Rs 1 lakh, and pretty evidently is not the most expensive out there, but it isn’t in the affordable range as well.
The MSI GF63 will be competing against ASUS TUF Gaming FX504, which also lands on the same price if not lesser than this. We have already compared both of these laptops, and both stand out respectively on different ranges. Sliding apart, does the MSI GF63 8RD worth the price you’re paying as a serious gamer? let’s find out.
MSI GF63 8RD Gaming Laptop: The Intro!
In a general overview (long story short), the GF63 8RD puts a great display which is near bezel-less, average keyboard, better trackpad, underwhelming audio, and pretty decent battery life, powerpack performance with good heat dispersion and all these are nicely packed in a relatively thin chassis, which is stand straight against ASUS TUF Gaming FX504.
MSI GF63 8RD Gaming Laptop: Specs Overview
- 15.6–inches Full HD (1920 x 1080) display
- Intel Core i7-8750H @ 2.2 GHz
- 8GB DDR4 RAM (upgradable), 2400MHz
- 4GB Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti DDR5 GPU
- 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD storage
- Windows 10
- 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 5.0
MSI GF63 8RD Gaming Laptop: Design
The GF63 8RD doesn’t give out gaming like a look or say a minimal design, which we don’t generally see in gaming laptops, but a pleasant work machine. The laptop has a slim form factor with a thickness of 21.7mm and weighs just around 1.9kg (which is impressive).
MSI GF63 looks stealthy, thanks to the black brushed aluminum lid (which also smooth touch along with smudges) with the dragon emblem stamped near the top with no glow. With our long-term usage, we found that the laptop isn’t really sturdy as we encountered flexing issues easily, so it’s best not to add any unnecessary pressure on it.
PORTS
The MSI GF63 gets a pair of USB 3.1 (Gen 1) ports on the right with a USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen 1) port, Ethernet and a security lock slot with jacks for a microphone and a pair of headphones. On the left, there’s another USB 3.0 port and the power input. No, HDMI is not missing, it is at the rear end of the system.
MSI GF63 8RD Gaming Laptop: Display
The MSI GF63 comes with 15.6-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) IPS (near bezel-less) display, produces great colours with good viewing angles and contrast that makes the visuals look great. And unlike the FX504, the GF63 has thinner bezels, which makes the gaming experience stellar.
Games and movies look really good thanks to a good amount of clarity and anti-glare finish, which also means a more distraction-free gaming experience. Mind you, the laptop only gets you 60Hz, but at this price point, you can get 120Hz displays on ASUS TUF Gaming FX504. Overall, the display is pretty satisfying.
ALSO READ: ASUS TUF Gaming FX504 Vs MSI GF63 8RD Comparison: A Close Hardware Encounter!
MSI GF63 8RD Gaming Laptop: Keyboard, TrackPad, Audio & Webcam
The GF63 has a has a bright red outline around the keys with (only) red coloured backlit, which is kind of disappointing in some ways. Keeping the cosmetics apart, the keyboard experience wasn’t that good, the keyboard lacks Numpad, the keys aren’t tactile enough.
Coming to the trackpad, the machine has well laid out trackpad with Microsoft’s Windows Precision Drivers. The accuracy and the gestures worked really well. No complaints here.
The speakers on the machine aren’t majestic. The sound gets muted when you keep the laptop on any surface, which means you’re going to get a muffled sound quality, which again, doesn’t help in gameplay or even music listening experience, in general. Well, the webcam on this laptops gives out a realistic experience with colours, however, the quality isn’t appreciatable. Overall, the webcam is decent, if not poor.
MSI GF63 8RD Gaming Laptop: Performance
The GF63 comes with Hexa-core Intel Core i7-8750H CPU, coupled with 8GB DDR4 RAM (up to 32GB) and Nvidia GeForce 1050Ti (4GB RAM) graphics, which isn’t quite top-end but good enough to run most games smoothly on a 1080p display. We tested FarCry 5 and the graphics were pretty smooth throughout with any drop in frames.
The laptop boots up in under 15 seconds thanks to the 128GB of SSD that helps the laptop run pretty fast throughout. Along with that, the GF63 also packs a 1TB HDD, which is quite sufficient for your storage needs.
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MSI GF63 8RD Gaming Laptop: Battery And Heat
MSI houses a 3-cell Li-Polymer 51WHr battery and claims 7-hour battery backup on paper, but we never actually hit 7 hours on a single charge. We managed to reach around to 3 hours 50 minutes of usage backup on a single charge with 70-80 brightness, docs files opened, Chrome (10 tabs), minor photo editing in Lightroom and YouTube videos. While gaming, not more than an hour.
Evidently, it is not the best battery life you can get actually, but it should be enough to get you through. The heat is managed well, thanks to the X-shaped ventilation with a vent. The air is let out through the vents below and on the side. The fan inside is pretty quiet and it won’t bother you even when it’s on max cooling speed.
PROS
- Very affordable
- Good display
- Good gaming performance
- Good heat dissipation
CONS
- Design looks could have been better
- No SD card slot
- Keyboard could have been better
- Sound output could have been better
Verdict
MSI GF63 8RD comes with a sleek and minimal look with brushed metal design, great IPS bezel-less display with colour accurate panel, unquestionable performance, and last but not least the lightweight design, which let you double this laptop as work laptop when you’re not gaming.
The MSI GF63 8RD comes at a price tag of Rs 84,490 (as of now), which is pretty expensive compared to others laptops like ASUS TUF Gaming FX504, which has almost the same specification of that of this laptop. No denying, you can also go for the Core i5 model, but that will be a performance tradeoff. Overall, if you have the budget of Rs 1 lakh for a gaming rig, you probably won’t go wrong with MSI GF63 8RD.
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