MSI aims to give the Razer Blade line a run for its money with this laptop, the appropriately named GS65 Stealth Thin. While it’s designed to offer top-tier performance without weighing you down, it’s not without its share of compromises.
Design
While Razer’s Blade lays claim to being the most portable gaming laptop on the market, the reality is the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin is a full half-pound lighter, weighing a svelte 4.1 pounds. Its 24mm of thickness puts it a hair thicker than both the Blade and the Asus Zephyrus S, but just barely. On the other hand, from a design standpoint, the Stealth Thin isn’t much to look at. Gold accents give certain elements a cheap appearance, and never is this more noticeable than in the grilles on either side of the chassis, which feature two layers of crosshatching, black metal on top of gold. It’s a goofy design that looks less like an intentional design choice and more like a rushed mistake. While it’s built out of aluminum, the whole affair manages to feel a bit flimsy, likely a build decision necessary to keep the weight to a minimum. While the keyboard is fine, I had a lot less love for the touchpad, which didn’t track perfectly and whose buttons were considerably difficult to tap with accuracy.
Features
Extras are limited on this machine, which is typical of devices looking to keep their overall weight and thickness to a minimum. The screen’s hinge allows it to fold back flat, and very thin bezels give it a television-like appearance in this orientation. The webcam is also placed above the screen, rather than at the bottom, a problem common with many competing thin-bezel systems. It’s also worth noting that the GS65 Stealth Thin’s power adapter is surprisingly portable for this category, though the fan squeals loudly and at a high pitch, and it runs often in order to combat the generally hot temperatures the machine tends to reach.
Specs
Specs on this machine are standard across the board. That includes a 2.2GHz Core i7-8750H CPU (eighth generation), 16GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 GPU. As is typical for this group, the included 512GB SSD might be on the small side, but it’s again a necessary concession to keeping the weight down. Ports include three traditional USB 3.1 ports, one USB-C port, full-size HDMI, a mini DisplayPort jack, and full-size Ethernet. That’s a better selection than most laptops in the field, though a memory card slot would be a nice addition.
Performance
The MSI GS65 Stealth Thin didn’t overly impress with its performance, with nearly all of the benchmarks I ran on it coming in below the average of the field. That said, performance isn’t at all bad, with general application performance (comprised of web page rendering, business productivity applications, and digital media creation work) just a hair below the average of the field, and gaming benchmarks largely falling within 10 percent of the average. (Only the Heaven 4.0 test saw the Stealth Thin fall 15 percent behind the field.) It’s also worth noting that the Stealth Thin had some usability problems in my testing. Out of the box, it had no working Wi-Fi driver installed, requiring updates to be run over a wired connection before it could access a WLAN. On another occasion, when I plugged a USB hard drive into the machine, a pop-up asked me what type of speakers had been connected. Users looking for trouble-free performance might think twice before diving in.
Battery
Lightweight laptops usually imply that a small battery has been included in the rig, but the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin bucks that concept by including a powerful cell that managed 7 hours, 27 minutes of running time on my full-screen video playback test. That was nearly an hour longer than the next closest competitor and stands as a benchmark that puts the machine on par with business-class laptops designed for all-day running time.
Conclusion
It is difficult to find this exact configuration of the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin online, but you can expect to pay $1999 for the machine (with slight adjustments based on the particular configuration you manage to uncover). Considering its merely average performance, usability concerns, and some iffy hardware features, its ultralight build will have to really appeal to you to merit a buy decision.
