MSI GV62 8RD-200 Review

Modern gaming laptops are brilliant. If you are a gamer who is always on the move, then there are laptops that can help you out. But if you don’t have a big budget, then you may have to make some compromises. In this MSI GV62 8RD-200 review, we are discussing this new gaming laptop which comes with very few compromises and a very affordable price tag.

While there are gaming laptops that cost $2000 and more, the MSI GV62 8RD-200 model comes with a price tag of under $800. With such a low price for a gaming notebook, this model is not going to be perfect, but it brings gaming to people who can’t afford high-end gaming laptops. With enough power in the processing and graphics areas, the laptop fares better than you’d expect. Read the full review below for more information about this model.

Design

MSI laptops are usually good-looking, and this one is no different. The laptop comes in matte black color with a bit of red here and there. You get a nice premium feeling when you touch the device which is nice. MSI has been doing an excellent job in fitting more and better components in thinner packages. The MSI GV62 8RD-200 model is also considerably thinner when compared with its predecessors.

You’d expect a good cooling system in a gaming laptop, and this one doesn’t disappoint. The laptop comes with cooler boost four technology which has three heat pipes for the GPU and three heat pipes for the CPU. At high workload, the cooling system gets activated quickly and makes sure the temperature stays within acceptable limits.

We have a steelseries keyboard here, and it is a pleasure to use. You get an anti-ghosting key which can be handy at times. The keyboard comes with red backlighting which might be a bit too much for some, but it’s more of a preference thing. The typing experience is nice with enough key travel on the keyboard. The trackpad is also decent, but you’ll want to have a gaming mouse to make things a bit easier.

Performance

The display here is a 15.6-inch full HD display with an IPS-level performance. We get really impressive colors out of the box. The picture quality is excellent, and this makes this display a good one for both media consumption and gaming. With an IPS-level display, you get excellent viewing angles with minimal loss of color accuracy when viewed from the sides.

The MSI GV62 8RD-200 comes with an Intel Core i5 8300H processor. This is a Coffee Lake processor from Intel that comes with a base clocking frequency of 2.30GHz. With six cores, this processor comes with excellent multi-core performance. It has an 8MB cache which can be useful as well. When more processing power is required, this Intel chip can clock to a maximum of 4.0GHz.

In terms of sheer processing power, this Intel chip can do a lot. Your daily tasks like browsing the web, doing some office work, and more can be done without lifting a finger. The processor is also suitable for high-end stuff like editing videos, working on audio files, and running simulations. The processor gets a benchmark score of 9469 in CPUMark which is pretty impressive.

There are only eight gigs of RAM in the memory department. This might be just enough for a modern gaming laptop like this one, but one could always use more memory. The good news is that you can add more memory as the laptop supports a maximum of 32GB.

The MSI GV62 8RD-200 gaming laptop comes with an Intel Optane memory of 16 gigs which improves the overall performance of this device. The Optane memory acts like an SSD, and makes things much faster. It finds your frequently used documents, pictures, videos, and apps, and stores them in memory before you turn off.

This way, when you turn back on and launch one of the stored applications, they will start faster offering you a better user experience. We also have a hard drive with a capacity of 1TB. The hard drive comes pre-installed with Windows 10 as the operating system.

Gaming Performance

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti is an upper mid-range graphics card that is based on the Pascal architecture. The GPU performs impressively, thanks to the cooling system you find here. With a dedicated video memory of 4GB, the GPU can play some of the most graphically intense games without any problems.

You can run modern games like Just Cause 4, Battlefield V, and Fallout 76 at high settings and get around 35 to 45 frames per second. If you want to get a better frame rate, then you can reduce the setting a bit which will improve the output by a good deal.

The graphics card is also pretty good at handling eSports. If you are an eSports lover, then you have to nothing to worry as the laptop is very good at running them without any real-time lag.

Battery Life and Connectivity

The MSI GV62 8RD-200 laptop is no different than any other gaming laptop when it comes to battery life. You get around 6 to 7 hours of battery life when handling simple applications like video players and web browsers. But when you are doing something intense like playing games, editing videos, and photos, or anything that’s system intensive, then the battery life doesn’t last long (expect 2 to 3 hours at best).

There are a lot of connectivity options in the MSI GV62 8RD-200. You get a couple of USB 3.0 ports, a USB C port, a USB 2.0 port, an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, a display port, and also a headphone jack. The laptop also comes with 802.11ac WiFi which allows you to connect with the Internet without wires seamlessly. There is also built-in Bluetooth for connecting with external devices.

MSI GV62 8RD-200 Review – Our Verdict

The MSI GV62 8RD-200 makes gaming on a budget a pleasant experience. It comes with a capable processor, adequate memory, and an impressive graphics card which allows gamers to play any of their choice. Overall, if you are looking for a gaming laptop that performs well and doesn’t cost you much, this one’s a good option.