For as long as I can remember, the concept of a “gaming laptop” has been kind of a joke among tech-savvy consumers. Companies like Dell have been using the term for over a decade to describe especially large and powerful machines designed with performance at the forefront. Buyers who went this route would pay more money to carry a heavier and uglier product. For the most part, the output of these beastly laptops would be noticeably lower than same-gen desktops.

In 2017, things are a little different. Gaming laptops are undeniably a real thing now, thanks partially to NVIDIA’s updated 10 Series graphics cards. Instead of half the performance of a desktop, this new generation of graphics cards offers closer to 90% of the desktop equivalent. For most people, that’s enough. The main downside is, of course, price. You can expect to pay about double what you’d pay for a desktop with similar specs for a modern gaming laptop. Obviously, for this to be worth your money, you need to place a high value on mobility.

In this rather niche arena of portable power, MSI’s GS63VR is a strong jack-of-all-trades. It looks beautiful and it plays almost all games on high settings. You’ll have to put up with an awkwardly placed power button and a disgusting amount of bloatware, but you’ll get a reasonably priced and deceptively powerful laptop that can hang with the big boys.

The Outside

If you’ve been wanting a Windows alternative to the MacBook Pro at considerable discount, the GS63VR is a great option. The ultra-thin body is a joy to handle. Carry it to your local cafe and start working on that screenplay- this isn’t your typical over-sized and over-designed gaming laptop. Brushed black metal contributes to a timeless look while providing a solid, high-quality texture that you’ll love to run your fingers over. The one exception is a backlit MSI logo on the lid. It’s not a dealbreaker for me, but it definitely doesn’t serve the overall minimalist aesthetic of this machine.

The Steelseries keyboard doesn’t feel great to use, but it’s not horrible either. The keys have a decent amount of travel, but I wish they had slightly more “click” and slightly less “squish”- I want my key positions to feel firmly pressed or unpressed with as little middle ground as possible. The plus side is an included number pad, a feature you’ll appreciate if you plan to use the laptop for work. Oh, and the keys are backlit as well, with customizable color for three separately controlled areas.

The touchpad is, for the most part, responsive and rather unremarkable, aside from its left-shifted position. On the first week of use, I found myself accidentally hitting it while typing with my left hand. It’s a small annoyance that I learned to live with.

The power button, on the other hand, is more of a medium-sized annoyance. It’s located on the right side of the laptop at the user-facing corner, which means that one wrong move will put your computer into a power nap. You’ll have to be especially cognizant of this whenever you re-position the laptop. I understand that it’s incredibly difficult to pack so much power into such a tiny package, and that compromises have to be made somewhere, but I think the power button placement is a rather regrettable design flaw.

A low point for the laptop is the speakers, located on the underside. The volume is there, but the quality is simply not. You should plan to use headphones and spare your ears.

Lastly, a generous five USB ports (3 type A 3.0, 1 type a 2.0 and 1 type C), SD card slot, HDMI and Mini DisplayPort provide ample options for plugging in. You won’t have to worry about using peripherals for day to day connectivity.

The Inside

When you’re ready to switch from coffee to Mountain Dew (sorry, I know you probably don’t drink Mountain Dew,) this laptop has the guts to handle your next gaming session. I regularly use it to play Overwatch on high settings with no problems to report. The area between the keyboard and the hinge can get rather hot, so it’s best to use a cooling pad when possible, but it’s not a necessity by any means. You might run into some trouble with titles like The Witcher 3 or Doom on high settings- this laptop is for people who want a near desktop experience. You’ll have to look at pricier or larger laptops to handle graphically demanding games at their highest settings- or follow the age old advice of buying a desktop. For most people however, this laptop will be more than enough.

You’ll get a capable 6th gen Intel Core i7 processor and 16GB of ram (upgradable to 32)- more than enough to comfortably multitask, or stream your gaming sessions. The NVIDIA1060 graphics card, however, is the real incentive to buy into this gen of technology. The upgrade in performance over the last gen is remarkable. Whether or not you value a svelte chassis, I would not recommend buying any gaming laptop that does not come with a 1060 or higher. It just makes gaming easy.

A couple of hard drive configurations are available- unfortunately, none of them involve any SSDs larger than 128GB. My model came equipped with the aforementioned SSD and a 1TB HDD. It’s plenty of storage space for the average user, to be sure. The one complaint I have is that the larger of the two hard drives should be easier to swap out. A “warranty void” sticker cautions users not to open up the laptop- however, according to MSI, you are allowed to remove this sticker and retain your warranty if you live in the US. On top of that quirk, the back of the laptop is just incredibly difficult to physically remove. So upgrades are possible, but they don’t make it easy.

The battery power is adequate, but not great, providing about three hours of non-gaming use. Poor battery life is a compromise you’ll still have to make for just about any high-powered gaming laptop, and the GS63VR is no exception- you should plan to use the adapter whenever possible. A laptop with this much processing capability is sure to be power hungry.

There’s one serious flaw with all of this, however. None of this wonderful new technology runs smoothly out of the box. You’re ultimately paying less for what you get, but that difference is paid in annoying bloatware that reduces the MSRP of this laptop. I was subject to a lot of frame rate issues, even when I wasn’t running any games, during my first woeful week with my computer. It wasn’t until I performed a clean install of Windows 10 that I could use it to its full capacity. I was pretty unhappy with that experience, but I don’t regret my decision considering the money I saved in the long run.

Final Words

The Microsoft Surface Pro 4, the Dell XPS13 and the HP Spectre x360 are all beautiful laptops that offer power and portability, but they simply do not have the graphics processing power of an NVIDIA 10 Series-equipped computer. The GS63VR occupies a small niche- it’s for those who want to game powerfully on as compact a machine as possible. If that’s your goal, then this laptop should be a strong consideration. You could consider going slightly smaller for the 2017 Razer Blade or slightly bigger for the Asus ROG Strix GL502VS, but I think MSI’s option is just right.