MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 Review

Are you searching for a big-sized gaming laptop that offers you more than your regular gaming machine? Then you’re in the right place. The MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 is a 17.3″ gaming laptop that comes with excellent specs and entices you with super-smooth gameplay. With impressive specs on paper, the laptop carries a price tag that is well suited for gamers than for other users.

In this MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 review, we are going to dissect this new gaming laptop and see how well it does in real-life conditions. Is it really the gaming laptop it promises to be? How good is the laptop when it comes to things other than gaming? We’ll answer these questions and more in the full review below.

Design

The MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 is a big laptop and it shows. It takes up more place than your usual laptop and feels like a hunk on your table. The laptop comes in a nice shade of black and has a soft touch feel to it. Contrary to the design of other gaming laptops, the MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 takes a much simpler approach in the design department.

For any gaming machine, the cooling system is very important. The MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 gaming laptop knows that and it comes with a pretty impressive one. The cooling system here comprises of two cooling fans and six to seven heat pipes. Even when you’re in a serious gaming marathon, this cooling system does well to keep the temperature of the laptop under control.

The keyboard in the laptop is a Steel Series keyboard. This is a solid keyboard and comes with a key travel of 1.9mm. The keys have RGB lighting and you can customize it to your needs without any problem. The keyboard is made for gamers and comes with an optimum WASD zone. 45 keys on the keyboard come with support for anti-ghosting which is great. 

Apart from gaming, the regular use of this keyboard also resulted in pleasant outcomes. The keys are nice to type on and your speed is on point as well. The touchpad is also pretty impressive but regardless, you’re going to need a gaming mouse as well.

MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 Specs

The MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 comes with a 17.3″ screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The good thing here is that you get a bigger screen than usual and with that, you get much more immersive gaming experience. But it’s not without its flaws. Increasing the size of the display also brings down the pixel density as well. The images are not as sharp as they would be in a 15.6″ display but that’s to be expected.

The overall image quality saves the show for the MSI GL72M 7RDX-800. You get nice colors that make this display perfect for gaming and media consumption. Also, this is a non-reflective display, so you’re not going to see your face on the screen whenever something dark is happening on the screen. The viewing angles are also pretty good making this laptop excellent for media consumption.

The sound quality coming out of the laptop is pretty impressive. The laptop can get really loud and can fill a medium room without any problem. With higher volumes, you might get a bit of distortion but that’s to be expected. If you’re someone who doesn’t want the best and crisp audio, then this laptop is great when it comes to audio quality. If you’re an audiophile, just get a pair of good headphones.

Performance

The MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 comes with a high-end processor. The Intel Core i7 7700HQ processor is a high-performance one and has 4 cores. This Intel chip comes with a base clocking frequency of 2.80GHz and a maximum clocking frequency of 3.8GHz. It is notable that the processor also comes with a smart memory cache of 6MB as well.

The processor does well when it comes to benchmarks as well. It gets a CPUMark score of 8678 which is pretty neat. How well does this translate into real-world performance? Well, the laptop is a beast when it comes to everyday activities. It can run all the apps and games without breaking a sweat. You can even throw some high-end applications on the device and it’ll handle it like a pro.

There are eight gigs of DDR4 type RAM in the memory department. This might not look like a lot of memory for a gaming laptop in this day and age, but trust us when we say it’s more than enough. In a gaming laptop like this, it is more important to have an impressive GPU than to pile up the memory. This RAM allows you to multitask your heart out without affecting the performance of your laptop. You can also increase the memory later if have the need for it.

The storage situation on the MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 gaming laptop is well thought out. We have a 1TB hard drive disk and a 128GB solid-state drive. The HDD gives us all the space we need for storing our games and other media content. The SSD, on the other hand, improves the performance of the laptop wherever possible. Some might feel like this SSD is not big enough, and that would be true. They could have opted for a bigger SSD is what we feel as well.

Gaming on the MSI GL72M 7RDX-800

The graphics card is the single most important spec in any gaming machine. The GPU we have here is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card with a dedicated video memory of 8GB. This is a pretty good GPU, though a bit old. We have the like of RTX and Polaris GPUs dominating the space, but this one is no slouch either.

With the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, you will be able to run most games without any issues. If you’re a fan of eSports, then you’ll have a lot of fun. The frame rates when running MMORPGs are super high and you’re going to get a fluid gaming experience with those games. If you’re a fan of AAA titles, you’ll love this laptop. However, with the latest games, you might have to bring the settings down to achieve a playable frame rate.

Connectivity and Battery Life

The MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 gaming laptop comes with a ton of connectivity options. You have a couple of USB 3.0 ports, a USB 2.0 port and also a USB type C port for data transfer and connectivity. The laptop comes with a mini display port and also an HDMI port for high-end connectivity. You also get an Ethernet port for connecting to high-speed internet.

You also get the usual audio in and out jacks as well. The laptop comes with support for both Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. This will allow you to go wireless and remove some clutter on your computer table. 

The battery life on this MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 model is not that great. With a bigger screen in place, the laptop loses its battery faster than ever. With a light load, you should get around 3 to 4 hours of battery life which is not that 2019. When you’re gaming, anything more than 2 hours would be a miracle. So before you start a gaming marathon, make sure you place yourself next to a power outlet.

Bottomline

That’s the end of this MSI GL72M 7RDX-800 review. This gaming laptop comes with a screen that is bigger than your everyday gaming laptops. With a 17.3″ screen, you get a better immersive experience and the GPU makes sure that your gaming is on point. You can play any game without worrying about performance and that’s what makes this gaming laptop stand out. If you’re looking for a 17.3″ gaming laptop, then this one here is a solid choice.