MSI GS70 is ‘world’s thinnest and lightest 17-inch gaming laptop’

The race for the best console might as well be a crawl in the eyes of MSI, which has now gone and introduced what is possibly one of the world’s best gaming laptops, the GS70, says PCgamer. MSI is calling it the “world’s thinnest and lightest 17-inch gaming laptop.” We’re calling it an absolute beast, based on specs alone.

Is it thin? At 2.15cm, we’d say yes. And is it light? It’s only 2.59Kg which is a slight for a laptop with the specs we’re about to describe. The 17.3-inch display, which can output 4K content (when connected to a TV) has a max resolution of  1920×1080 and powering it is a juicy i7 CPU. Anyone customising the GS70 can choose from 2.4 to 3.4Ghz, but with the laptop starting at US$1799 (R17 999), we’d be scared to ask how costly the 3.4Ghz model is.

Anyone dropping the dime on the GS70 won’t be light on space either. Based on the chosen model, users can pick from a 750GB or 1TB hard drive, which is paired with a 128GB solid-state drive. Will this all fit into the design, which was apparently inspired by the F22 Raptor stealth fighter?

Next up, a mighty powerful Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M GPU runs alongisde 16GB DDR3L RAM. The usual ports are thrown in, along with some high-end surprises: there’s four USB 3.0 slots, HDMI, a 720p webcam and an SD card slot. As for the surprise, the GS70 has a built-in subwoofer which is rare to say the least in a laptop this fast and this thin.

With a laptop of this speed and thinness, MSI would have to create an almost legendary cooling process.  In this case, we get a dual-fan thermal cooling solution which is “intelligent” and boosts fan power during a gaming session. Speaking of gaming, there’s a cute option built into the keyboard, namely an anti-ghosting feature — sometimes keystrokes are “lost” if simultaneous keys are pressed at once. This is negated with MSI’s slick new addition for gamers.

At this price, it’s going up against the MacBook Pros, Razers and Alienwares of the world. Is this a battle MSI can win? We’ll have to wait and see when the GS70 starts shipping later this year.