VERDICT 9
THE PREVIOUS FEW MSI laptops we’ve reviewed have been pretty decent but were generally located around the budget to mid-range sector of the market. However, this offering from MSI is quite the opposite. With the GE76 Raider, everything is on the larger side, including its price tag of over $3000. The 17-inch format doesn’t exactly make for the most nimble of devices either. Though it’s aimed at a fairly specific gamer target market, a laptop of this size loses the benefit of portability. So then, is this machine worth your time and money, and could you use it as a desktop?
Compared with the most recent MSI laptops, you get a feel of why this beast is almost double the price of those models. This is a large and solid bit of kit with no screen wobble thanks to its weight. Even if you have a rucksack that can fit this in, you better have the energy and strength to carry it around. It’s a big old thing, but not quite as brutish as Gigabyte’s Aorus 17 we looked at earlier this year.
The titanium blue lid gives it a nice premium color and with MSI’s crest sitting in the middle, it’s far from an eyesore. There’s a funky RGB light bar to the bottom of the laptop, which adds a nice touch to your setup. It’s not a typical LED strip, more a block of RGB that fits the shape of the laptop. When the lid is down or the RGB is turned off, you can’t even tell that it’s there. The flip side is that it’s not exactly the best thing for the battery life. Though the GE76 Raider 11UH has a huge 99.9 Whr battery, with this much power and a 17-inch screen, our advice is to keep it plugged in.