MSI P65 Creator 8RF-450US Laptop Review

MSI is a company that is famous for their gaming laptops. With the P65 series, they are making a leap into another category of users offering them more than they usually receive.

In this MSI P65 Creator 8RF-450US review, we are taking a deep dive about this new laptop from MSI that is aimed at business people and creators. MSI is calling this laptop a productivity device for business people and creators.

How well has that worked out? Let’s find out.

Design

The MSI P65 Creator 8RF-450US laptop comes in a limited edition white color which will look fantastic if you are going to a business meeting. There is also a regular silver color option if don’t want your laptop to look too shiny.

Made out of aluminum, the build quality of the laptop is solid. If handled with care, the laptop should age pretty well. You can expect some minor scuff with rough use, but that’s the case with most laptops.

The laptop is one of the thinner laptops you see. With a thickness of 0.69 inches, the notebook can slide into any of your backpacks. The laptop also weighs just around 4.2 pounds which is not that heavy considering what’s inside the hood.

Typing experience and Touchpad

You have a standard laptop keyboard without a number pad. The keys are rigid and have good key travel. The typing experience is neat, but some may find it a bit clicky. The lack of a number pad might not be a good choice for a business laptop, but that’s how it is.

The touchpad is nothing spectacular. It does what it is supposed to. There is also a fingerprint sensor on the top left of the touchpad. The laptop comes with Windows Hello support, and you can log in quickly with your fingerprint.

Display and Audio

A good display is an essential component for any laptop. The MSI P65 Creator 8RF-450US comes with a 15.6-inch LED-backlit display that has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels.

The first thing you’ll note about this display is the bezel. We have super thin bezels that are 4.9mm in size. This bezel size allows the user to have an unobstructed viewing experience.

Let’s talk about the display itself. The panel is an IPS-level panel and comes with excellent viewing angles. There is almost no color loss when you are looking at the screen from a different perspective. The display also has nearly 100% sRGB color gamut which is perfect for people who work on photos and videos.

As MSI is known for its gaming laptops, they have a solid display here. Apart from the dynamic pictures, the screen comes with a refresh rate of 144Hz and a response time of 7ms. These specs are great for gaming and also for media consumption.

The speaker grill is located just above the keyboard. The speakers are loud, but we don’t see a lot of distortion at high volumes. You won’t need a separate speaker, but if you are too picky about your sound, you should consider investing in a quality headphone.

Performance

The MSI P65 Creator 8RF-450US laptop comes with some excellent hardware inside.

We have an Intel Core i7 8750H processor. This chip is a hexacore processor that comes with a clocking frequency of 2.20GHz and can clock up to a maximum of 4.10GHz.

With 6 cores, this processor is more powerful than your regular quad-core processors. As the thermals in the laptop are good, you can expect the processor to hit peak loads without any kind of throttling.

With a CPUMark benchmark score of 12463, the processor can crush almost any application you can throw at it. Be it any app of your choice; this one will handle it without making any fuss.

The memory department is full of memory that can complement the processor. We have 32 gigs of RAM which are great for multitasking. This memory increases your productivity as you can do more at the same time without facing any performance lag.

One of the major contributors to the performance of a laptop is the storage device. The MSI P65 Creator 8RF-450US laptop is equipped with a 512GB NVMe solid-state storage.

This SSD storage is super fast and takes the performance of the laptop to the next level. Right from booting the operating system to opening up everyday applications, you can see how fast operations are. Once you use this SSD, then you won’t be going to back to traditional or even hybrid drives.

Gaming

Though the MSI P65 Creator laptop is touted as a creator-oriented laptop, this is a gaming laptop in its own right.

The graphics card here is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card. This GPU comes with a dedicated memory of 8GB which makes it one of the best graphics card you can get in this laptop.

With this GPU in place, you can play any game you want. Be it online games like World of Warcrafts or AAA games like the Fallout franchise and Red dead redemption 2; you will be able to play them with excellent frame rates.

The Cooler Boost Trinity technology keeps the laptop cool even during intense gaming sessions. If you are a serious gamer, then this laptop is perfect for you.

Connectivity

Connectivity in the MSI P65 Creator 8RF-450US laptop is pretty good. The laptop comes with 802.11ac wireless connectivity and also Bluetooth 4.1 which opens up a lot of avenues for connectivity.

There is a Thunderbolt 3 port which is versatile in action. You can use to connect external devices, output 4K video to an external monitor, charge your laptop or other devices and more.

You can also find USB 3.0 ports to which we are more used to. There is also an Ethernet port for those who prefer it. Other ports include an HDMI port, a headphone jack, and even a mini display port.

Battery Life

Battery life of a laptop is significant to some people as it should be. MSI promises a battery life of 8 hours which is insane for a laptop like this. Does the device really last that long?

Well, for light loads, you might actually get the battery to last for about 8 hours which is pretty good. But with a slightly heavier load, the battery life will plummet. With heavy loads, you can expect a battery life of about 3 hours at best.

MSI P65 Creator 8RF-450US Review – Our Verdict

That’s the end of this MSI P65 Creator 8RF-450US review. MSI has tried its best to produce a laptop for creative professionals and succeeded as well. The laptop gives bells and whistles to professionals who are only used to plain business notebooks so far. If you are a creative professional who’d love to have some power, then this MSI P65 Creator 8RF-450US model is a good fit for you.