This is MSI’s cheapest budget friendly gaming laptop right now, but lower price point usually
means compromises have to be made, so check out both the good and the bad in this review
to help you decide if it’s worth it.
My model has an 8 core Intel i7-11800H processor, Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics, 16 gigs of memory,
and a 15.6” 1080p 144Hz screen, though there are also cheaper options like with Nvidia
RTX 3050 or 3050 Ti graphics and you can find examples and updated prices with those links
in the description.
Now this laptop is known as either the Sword 15 or the Katana GF66.
As far as I’m aware, they’re both the exact same chassis.
The main difference seems to be that the Katana GF66 is all black with red keys while the
Sword 15 is all white but with blue keys.
The laptop has an all plastic design, and yeah it does feel kind of cheap which is to
be expected from an entry level gaming laptop option, but at least there aren’t any sharp
edges or corners.
There’s some flex to the lid, which is normal, however there was some screen wobble while
typing, so perhaps it needs stiffer hinges.
Keyboard flex actually wasn’t too bad considering the plastic build, it’s there when pushing
hard, but it’s perfectly fine during normal use.
The laptop alone weighs 2.3kg or 5.1lb, then under 2.9kg or 6.3lb with the 180 watt power
brick and cables included.
The lower specced models have a lower 150 watt brick, so might be a bit lighter.
It’s not too large either, definitely quite portable and not super thick or anything.
The 144Hz screen is actually pretty decent, much better than I expected, though there’s
no MUX switch here, but there is adaptive sync.
Color gamut isn’t super amazing, but I’ve seen far worse in more expensive machines.
That said, contrast was low, however brightness could still get above 300 nits when at maximum,
and it drops off evenly at lower levels.
The MSI Center software, the control panel for the laptop, let’s us enable or disable
panel overdrive, which affects screen response time.
With overdrive enabled, which is the default, we’re looking at a 5ms average grey-to-grey
response time, a very impressive result considering the rest of the machine.
If we turn overdrive off we’re instead looking at 8.4ms, there’s a link in the description
if you need an explanation on these numbers.
It compares quite nicely compared to much more expensive and higher tier laptops.
Honestly I was expecting it to be closer to those 15ms and slower panels, as many of those
laptops are in the same sort of price range.
Total system latency wasn’t too bad, likely owing to the fast screen.
This is the total amount of time between a mouse click and when a gunshot fire happens
on the screen in CS:GO.
It’s worth noting MSI’s website also lists another panel without the refresh rate specified,
so not sure if it’s 60 or 120Hz, but I’m guessing it’s a cheaper option with worse
stats compared to what I’ve tested here.
Backlight bleed in mine wasn’t great, though I never noticed this during normal use, but
this will vary between laptops.
There’s a 720p camera above the screen in the middle, but there’s no IR for Windows
Hello face unlock, again to be expected in a cheaper laptop.
This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like, this is what it sounds like
while typing on the keyboard and it does wobble the screen a little bit, and this is what
it sounds like if I set the fan to full speed, so it’s not doing the best job of isolating
my voice over the fan noise, granted chances are you’re probably not going to be playing
a game while in a meeting or something.
My keyboard has one zone of red backlighting, but the white model would have blue lighting.
All keys and secondary functions get lit up, and the F8 key can be used to cycle between
three levels of brightness or to turn them off.
The keys have 1.7mm of key travel, and my first impressions were that it wasn’t a
great keyboard.
Typing isn’t too bad and it gets the job done, but the numpad was so squashed and the
enter key being underneath zero caused problems.
The precision touchpad wasn’t great.
It was a little loose on the right side but fine on the left, but sometimes the presses
just didn’t seem to register properly until I got used to it.
I’d be sticking with a mouse.
On the left from the back there’s the power input, an air exhaust vent, and two USB Type-A
ports.
The blue one is USB 3.2 Gen1 while the black one is the older and slower 2.0.
The right side has a 3.5mm audio combo jack, a second USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A port, the Type-C
port is the same speed, and there’s a HDMI 2.0 output and gigabit ethernet at the back,
which is also the preferred way so you don’t need to lift the laptop to unplug, though
no air exhaust on this side.
The back is clean with just air exhaust vents towards the corners.
There’s nothing on the front, but the lid was still easy to open despite no dedicated
groove, and the screen goes 180 degrees back.
Unfortunately the Type-C port cannot be used to charge the laptop, and it also doesn’t
have Thunderbolt or DisplayPort support.
The HDMI port on the other hand connects directly to the Nvidia graphics, so that means that
you can connect an external screen to boost performance in games, and we’ll check this
too.
Getting inside requires removing 13 Phillips head screws, and one of them towards the back
right was shorter than the rest for some reason, so keep track and don’t put a long screw
in there.
I found it very easy to open up using the tools linked in the video description.
We can see that it’s actually got quite a lot of holes for airflow.
The big blue part down the front corner covers the 2.5” drive bay, and for some reason
it’s a big chunk of metal, which results in the bottom panel alone weighing 408g, much
heavier compared to other laptop panels.
Inside we’ve got the battery down the front, a 2.5” drive spot to the left of that, two
M.2 storage slots above, Wi-Fi 6 card above the installed SSD, and two RAM slots towards
the back near the middle.
There’s a spot for connecting a 2.5” drive, however I didn’t find any mounting hardware
included in the box, so I'm not sure how that works.
The Wi-Fi performance was decent owing to the Intel Wi-Fi card.
As we can see from these results, Intel generally does better compared to the RealTek and MediaTek
options.
Interestingly my model had faster x8 memory, rather than the x16 sticks that most 2021
gaming laptops have, including more expensive models, though this could vary by region,
especially in a cheaper model like this.
The two speakers are found underneath on the left and right sides towards the front.
I thought they were average, not too bad, there’s a little bass but they also sound
slightly muffled and there’s some wrist rest vibration.
The latencymon results weren’t amazing, but not terrible.
There’s a 3-Cell 53.5Wh battery inside, so on the smaller side, and this results in
some pretty poor battery life.
It’s getting just 2 hours 39 minutes in the YouTube playback test, and I double checked
the result.
It only lasted for 39 minutes in the game test, at least at the 30 FPS cap, it dipped
to 19 FPS after this time and lasted for 54 minutes in total if you count the decreased
performance.
Let’s check out thermals next.
There are some shared heat pipes between the CPU and GPU and two fans towards the corners.
The MSI Center software let’s us change between different performance modes, which
from lowest to highest are silent, balanced and extreme performance.
Extreme performance mode optionally let’s you enable cooler boost, which sets the fan
to maximum, and you can optionally overclock the GPU here too, though I did all testing
at stock, as that was default.
User mode can be used with fan speed set to advanced to customize the fans.
You can also hold the function key and press the up arrow key to enable cooler boost at
any time to max the fan out, regardless of the performance mode in use.
The internals were on the warmer side when just sitting there idle, and as you’ll hear
soon that’s with the fans being audible.
I’ve run stress tests with both the CPU and GPU loaded up to represent a worst case,
as well as playing an actual game, with the CPU shown by the blue bars and GPU in the
green bars.
The GPU in the green bar was thermal throttling in balanced mode, whether playing the game
or running the stress test, though extreme mode was able to remove this as the fans are
louder, granted the CPU temperature gets higher instead.
Enabling cooler boost was able to lower temperatures quite a bit, and a cooling pad could be used
to further lower temperatures too, the one I test with is linked in the video description.
These are the clock speeds for the same tests just shown.
As expected, performance increases as we step up to higher modes.
Speeds are lowest in silent mode, better in balanced mode, even though the GPU was thermal
throttling here, then extreme mode was even better, while increasing fan speed was able
to help reduce thermal limits and further increase speed.
The RTX 3060 graphics is listed with an 85 watt power limit through Nvidia’s control
panel, and this can happen with dynamic boost when the GPU isn’t loaded up, otherwise
with the CPU and GPU active at the same time the 3060 is capped at 80 watts, which was
being reached with extreme mode.
Balanced mode probably has the same cap, I’m not sure, it’s being held back due to thermal
throttling in these tests.
Silent mode was stuttering in the game test due to the low 35 watt GPU power limit, so
not a great mode for gaming.
Otherwise the CPU was limited to 45 watts in extreme mode, and given we could get the
temps relatively low with higher fan speed it might be possible to tweak the limits through
the advanced BIOS for a performance boost, more on BIOS settings later.
All things considered, even when running a worst case stress test in extreme mode or
optionally with cooler boost, the temperatures are honestly kept pretty well in check, but
yeah ultimately this is due to lower power limits which will result in less performance.
Here’s how an actual game performs with the different modes in use, so better performance
at the higher levels, and as mentioned an external screen can give us a little extra
boost as the HDMI port connects straight to the Nvidia graphics, bypassing optimus.
Here’s how CPU only performance looks in Cinebench R23, so the GPU is now idle.
Again as expected, higher performance modes are able to offer better performance, big
surprise.
It’s not amazing when compared to other 8 core laptops, the single core result is
still decent, but the multicore score is the lowest for an Intel i7-11800H that I’ve
recorded, so plenty of other laptops are ahead.
Intel laptops typically do worse when running on battery power in this test, which is why
Ryzen options are now towards the top half of the graph.
Performance is at least nowhere near as bad as Acer’s Helios 300 here, but there are
6 core options that are doing better now like HP’s Omen 15 above.
The keyboard area was warmer compared to others at idle, most laptops are around 30 degrees
Celsius in this test.
With the stress tests running in this same lowest mode it’s actually quite warm in
the middle, approaching uncomfortable.
Balanced mode was quite similar in the middle, 50 in the middle is fairly hot.
Extreme mode was similar despite the higher fans now, as the power limits of the CPU and
GPU increase.
Coolerboost lowers the temperatures as the fans are maxed out now, WASD always felt fine
and the wrist rest was always cold, let’s have a listen to the fans.
The fans were still audible when it was just sitting there doing nothing in the lowest
silent mode.
It gets louder in the higher modes to compensate for the higher power limits, as more power
equals more heat, and maxed out in coolerboost mode was quite loud, but at least there’s
some fan control to customize it.
Now let’s find out how well MSI’s Sword 15 / Katana GF66 performs in games and compares
against other laptops!
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested the same on all laptops, and I’ve got MSI’s laptop highlighted
in red.
It’s the lowest result I’ve recorded so far for an RTX 3060 gaming laptop, even coming
in behind the smaller ASUS Zephyrus G14 with a lower GPU power limit, though of course
that machine is also much more expensive too.
It’s still ahead of a top spec RTX 2060 in the RP-15 just underneath it, so not terrible
performance, just not quite as good as other 3060 laptops, including other budget friendlier
options like Acer’s Nitro 5.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the game’s benchmark, and the MSI laptop moves
up a few positions now.
This test generally seems more sensitive to memory, so I suspect we’re seeing the x8
memory helping it out here.
It’s actually a little ahead of the higher tier 3070 in the ASUS TUF Dash F15 just below
it, granted that is a quad core model with a low GPU power limit.
In any case, MSI’s laptop isn’t too far behind a number of 3060 machines here.
MSI’s laptop drops back a little in Control.
This is a GPU intensive test, so it’s not too surprising to see that it’s back to
being the slowest 3060 result given its lower power limit, granted that said the G14’s
range is technically lower.
The frame rate difference isn’t that much, and as this game favors Nvidia graphics, the
Sword 15 is ahead of Lenovo’s more expensive Legion 5 with RX 6600M graphics.
Here are the 3DMark results for those that find them useful, now for some content creator
tests.
Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systems benchmark, and the top of the graph is dominated
by Intel 11th gen laptops, as content creator workloads like this seem to benefit.
This is a great result from such a budget laptop, considering the lower CPU performance
noted earlier in Cinebench.
Adobe Photoshop typically depends on processor performance, and although the MSI laptop is
ahead of higher specced machines here, those two XMG units with lower tier RTX 3050 and
3050 Ti and same i7 processors are ahead because they have higher power limits and better CPU
performance by extension.
DaVinci Resolve is more GPU heavy, but the 11th gen processor still gives it an edge
over some other higher tier laptops like Dell’s G15 just below it, which does have a higher
GPU power limit, but slower x16 RAM.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
Intel 11th gen supports PCIe gen 4, however the MSI spec sheet explicitly notes gen 3,
so I’m guessing they’re not utilizing it in this more budget friendly model.
The 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD was doing alright for the reads, though write speeds were half comparatively.
Now despite this being a cheaper laptop, you still get full access to MSI’s advanced
BIOS after you enter this epic cheat code to unlock it.
From within here you can tweak pretty much anything, including thermal limits and apply
undervolting, plus there’s TPM 2.0 for Windows 11 support.
Linux support was tested by booting an Ubuntu 21 live CD.
By default the keyboard, touchpad, Wi-Fi, ethernet, speakers and camera all worked.
The keyboard shortcuts for screen and key brightness and volume control all worked too,
and you can still enable max fans with the function plus up arrow shortcut as that seems
to be baked into firmware, but there’s no easy way of changing performance modes.
Let’s discuss pricing and availability next.
This will of course change over time so refer to those links in the description for updates.
At the time of recording, I can only find the 3060 model sold from a third party through
Newegg, and honestly it’s kind of a rip off when you consider the far superior Legion
5 is more than $300 less.
The lower spec 3050 Ti model is a bit better on Amazon, but still, I’d definitely suggest
paying just $100 more for the Legion 5, because on average the 3060 is more than 50% faster
than the 3050 Ti in games, but also it’s just better in almost every regard.
Definitely worth saving the extra for in my opinion.
I’ve also been told that if you’re in Australia, you can get this bundled with the
laptop with these two models, however I’ve also seen the bundle offered through Newegg
in the US too.
I’m not exactly sure where I’m going to put it just yet, but it is a kind of cool
extra.
So then is MSI’s Sword 15 or Katana GF66 worth considering?
Let’s summarize both the good and the bad to help you decide if it’s worth it.
Now obviously this is meant to be a more budget friendly design.
I believe it’s MSI’s cheapest gaming laptop currently available, so with that in mind
we’re going to have to accept a lot of the negatives, there’s just no way you can make
a perfect laptop at a more budget price point.
Every lower end gaming laptop is going to have compromises, it’s like asking water
not to be wet.
At least that’s what I would be saying if the price actually matched up, but right now
it doesn’t.
Whether that’s due to supply shortages or what it’s hard to say, but the fact is right
now you can get higher tier models for less money than this laptop, so if that’s the
case when you’re watching this video, this laptop just isn’t worth considering based
on that alone.
If the 3060 mode was available for say $1100 or maybe $1200 it might be a bit more attractive.
Current pricing aside, it’s an all plastic laptop, the battery life is objectively bad,
the lower power limits can hold back performance in some tasks compared to others with same
specs, like gaming, but it’s not all bad.
I was surprised that mine had x8 RAM in dual channel.
The 144Hz screen was surprisingly decent compared to others that it’s competing with, you
get decent upgradeability options, and lower power limits mean lower temps after boosting
the fan speed.
Check out these laptop reviews next if you want to see what spending a bit more money
can get you from MSI.
Make sure you’re subscribed to the channel for future laptop reviews like this one and
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