MSI GL63 8SE-209 Review - Quick Verdict
The MSI GL63 8SE-209 is a gaming laptop with affordable pricing. It comes with a solid processor, more than enough memory and a beastly graphics card. The gaming performance on this laptop is excellent, thanks to the RTX 2060, and you won’t find a laptop with a similar output in this price range. The display with a 120Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time equally contributes to the gaming experience. If you’re looking for a solid gaming laptop without having to spend a lot of money, then this is probably it.
- Gorgeous design and effective cooling system
- Beastly gaming performance
- Everyday activities are butter smooth
- Battery life not impressive
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What do you look for in a gaming laptop? Do you want a good gaming laptop without having to spend a fortune? Then you’re in the right place. The MSI GL63 8SE-209 is a high-end gaming laptop that comes with an affordable price point. If you’re serious about gaming, then this laptop is something you should have an eye on. In this MSI GL63 8SE-209 review, we take a look at this new gaming laptop that comes with neat specs and promises to replace your old gaming laptop. With excellent specs on paper, the MSI GL63 8SE-209 model is a clear winner. But how good is the performance in real life? Is it worth your hard-earned money? Let’s find that out.
How good is the cooling system in the MSI GL63 8SE-209 laptop? The cooling system here is made up of 2 fans with 31 blades each. There are 4 exhausts on the laptop that let the hot air out. There are also 7 heat pipes that help in the cooling process. This cooler boost 5 setup is pretty effective and helps in keeping the temperature in the optimum range even when you’re doing some heavy gaming. The keyboard deserves a special mention. The keys are nice to type on and comes with neat key travel. The keys come with backlighting and have glowing key edges. If you’re someone who uses them digits, then you’ll find the dedicated number super handy. The touchpad is also pretty responsive and captures your movements and gestures accurately. The battery life is, unsurprisingly, one of the weaker parts of this MSI GL63 8SE-209 model. You do not expect a good battery life from a gaming laptop and that’s true here as well. With light usage, the laptop might be able to last for about 4 to 6 hours which is not that great. When you doing some serious gaming, you can expect the laptop to stay alive for 2 to 2.5 hours at best. Before you start a gaming marathon, be sure to have a power outlet next to you. The connectivity options are extensive with 3 USB 3.0 ports and a USB type C port. These are great for transferring data and also for connecting from USB devices. There is also an HDMI port, a Display port, an SD card reader, and also a headphone jack. If you are a fan of high-speed internet, you can make use of the Ethernet port. The laptop also comes with support for both WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities.
Design
The design is one of the exciting parts of this new MSI GL63 8SE-209 model. It comes in black with a stylish design and can be easily spotted by anyone as a gaming laptop. You can find red accents all over the laptop and it does look nice for a gaming laptop. MSI calls the back of the laptop as the dragon spine design, but we’re not sure about it. One thing we’d agree is that the laptop looks pretty cool to look at. The build quality of the laptop is nothing short of solid. Though the material used is not metal, it still is sturdy and gives you confidence that it’ll last the test of time. You don’t find any creaking when you try to flex the laptop and that’s a good sign.
How good is the cooling system in the MSI GL63 8SE-209 laptop? The cooling system here is made up of 2 fans with 31 blades each. There are 4 exhausts on the laptop that let the hot air out. There are also 7 heat pipes that help in the cooling process. This cooler boost 5 setup is pretty effective and helps in keeping the temperature in the optimum range even when you’re doing some heavy gaming. The keyboard deserves a special mention. The keys are nice to type on and comes with neat key travel. The keys come with backlighting and have glowing key edges. If you’re someone who uses them digits, then you’ll find the dedicated number super handy. The touchpad is also pretty responsive and captures your movements and gestures accurately.MSI GL63 8SE-209 Specs
The MSI GL63 8SE-209 has a 15.6″ screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. This is full HD resolution and for a screen this size, it results in good pixel density leading to sharper images and texts. The display comes with coverage for 94% NTSC color gamut and 100% sRGB color gamut. When it comes to picture quality, the display does a pretty good job. You can see excellent colors on the screen with a nice punch. The screen is well suited for media consumption and you can enjoy watching movies and tv shows here. The display is also an anti-glare one, so you’re not going to see your reflections when the screen goes black in between changing episodes. The sound output of the laptop is impressive. This is one of the louder gaming laptops out there and we say it in a good way. The laptop can get really loud and can fill a medium-sized room without any problem. Even at high volumes, you don’t hear many distortions which is a good sign for media consumption.Raw Performance
The MSI GL63 8SE-209 comes with an Intel Core i5 8300H processor. This is an 8th gen chip that comes with 4 cores and has a base clock speed of 2.3GHz. With the help of turbo boost, the processor can give you more power at a max clock speed of 4.0GHz. While this is a mid-range processor, it does well in benchmark tests and gets a CPUMark score of 9492. The laptop is fine for everyday activities. You can browse all the websites you want, listen to favorite music, watch all your movies and tv shows, and even work on some office stuff without any hiccups. The laptop is beasty enough to handle even some processor-hungry applications as well. The laptop comes with 16 gigs of DDR4 type memory which is a steal at this price point. The DDR4 memory is much better in terms of speed when compared to its predecessors and offers improved performance. You can multitask the hell out of this laptop and there will not be any performance problems. You can also upgrade the memory later in the future as well. The 256GB NVMe solid-state drive is in charge of the storage. The choice of using an SSD is commendable but there are obvious complaints about the amount of storage here. However, having an SSD completely changes the way you work. Everything you do on this laptop is quick mainly because of the SSD’s performance.Gaming on the MSI GL63 8SE-209
Being a gaming laptop, the MSI GL63 8SE-209 does really well when it comes to gaming. While we’d like to give the full credit to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card with 6 gigs of dedicated memory, the display is equally gifted here. With a refresh rate of 120Hz and a response time of 3ms, you do not observe motion blur or ghosting or any kind which is fantastic. The graphics card single-handedly allows you to play all the games you want to play. Be it the latest AAA games or the most popular MMORPGs, the laptop can handle them all. We can easily say that this laptop will stay relevant for a few more years to come and that’s a nice thing to know when you’re purchasing a laptop.Battery Life and Connectivity
The battery life is, unsurprisingly, one of the weaker parts of this MSI GL63 8SE-209 model. You do not expect a good battery life from a gaming laptop and that’s true here as well. With light usage, the laptop might be able to last for about 4 to 6 hours which is not that great. When you doing some serious gaming, you can expect the laptop to stay alive for 2 to 2.5 hours at best. Before you start a gaming marathon, be sure to have a power outlet next to you. The connectivity options are extensive with 3 USB 3.0 ports and a USB type C port. These are great for transferring data and also for connecting from USB devices. There is also an HDMI port, a Display port, an SD card reader, and also a headphone jack. If you are a fan of high-speed internet, you can make use of the Ethernet port. The laptop also comes with support for both WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities.