hey guys jarrod here and today we're
going to check out the gf62 vr 7rf
gaming laptop from msi
and see how it performs through a number
of game benchmarks and help you decide
if it's a laptop you should consider
inside the box we've got the laptop
itself manual and warranty information
power brick and power cable first up
let's look at the specs of the model
i've got here there's an intel 7700 hq
quad core kb lake cpu which runs at 2.8
gigahertz and can turbo up to 3.8
gigahertz i've got 16 gigabytes of ddr4
memory running at 2
400 megahertz here but the two slots can
support up to 32 gigabytes
for storage there's a 128 gigabyte
kingston m.2 sata ssd
and a one terabyte hgst 2.5 inch 7200
rpm hard drive installed the ssd is in
the single m.2 slot which supports pcie
3 and vme
so you can optionally upgrade to a
faster ssd for the graphics we've got
nvidia's 1060
in combination with a 15.6 inch 1080p
wide view panel we'll see how this
performs later in the benchmarks for the
network connectivity there's a gigabit
ethernet port and killer wi-fi
which supports up to 802.11 ac as well
as bluetooth 4.2
the laptop has a black brushed metallic
look to it on the outside of the lid but
inside things are a bit different
rather than msi as usual black there's a
brushed gray plastic going on here which
feels nice and smooth and is unique to
the gf models
i've been told that in australia this
model is exclusively sold through harvey
norman
the physical dimensions of the laptop
are 38.3 centimeters in width
26 centimeters in depth and 2.9
centimeters in height
the total weight of the laptop is
advertised at 2.2 kilos and when testing
mine
it weighed just a little more and when
including the power brick and power
cable for charging the total increases
to around 3 kilos so it's fairly light
and good for transporting as mentioned
the screen here is a 15.6 inch 60hz
1080p
wide view map panel the wide view panel
here looks mostly all right front on
the contrast seems to be lacking a bit
though and once you start looking from
above or below the colors shift quite a
bit and it looks pretty bad
left and right sides are okay though so
as long as you're looking at it directly
from the front it looks fine i've also
measured the colours produced by the
screen using the spider 5 pro
and my results returned 98 of srgb 78
of ntsc and 83 of adobe rgb
so in terms of color reproduction it's
actually pretty good compared to the
other laptops i've tested i've also
performed my usual backlight bleed test
on the display which involves having the
laptop show a completely black screen in
a dark room to help emphasize any
bleeding around the edges
i then take a long exposure photo with
my camera to help display any bleed so
basically this is a worst case scenario
test
the result was pretty surprising there
was no noticeable bleed at all
although this will of course vary from
laptop to laptop while moving the
display there was a little flex
but no big deal unfortunately you can't
open the laptop with one finger all the
weight seems to be placed towards the
back which prevents this
above the display is a hd camera so it's
only capable of 720p video
at 30fps the camera looks quite grainy
even with decent lighting the microphone
sounds okay it's not the best but it'll
get the job done there's an rgb steel
series keyboard which i enjoyed typing
on
overall the key presses felt a little
mushy but required there was a little
bit of flex while pushing down hard on
the keyboard but this wasn't at all
noticeable under normal typing
conditions
there actually seem to be more flex in
the wrist rest areas the lighting can be
adjusted through the included software
and there are a number of effects
available
unfortunately there's no individual key
lighting customizations here however i
think it looks pretty nice
msi seem to have the best looking rgb
keyboards out of all the laptops i've
tested so far
at least in my own opinion the power
button is found towards the top right
while the two buttons next to it can be
used as a shortcut to msi's dragon
center software which lets you monitor
the system
control the keyboard lighting and more
while the button furthest to the left
will max out both the cpu and gpu fans i
also found the touchpad to work pretty
well it's got a very smooth surface and
i had no problems using it there are
physical left and right buttons which
are quite loud and very clicky
moving on to the available i o on the
left we have a kensington lock gigabit
ethernet port usb 3.0 type a port hdmi
port
mini display port another usb 3.0 type a
port
a usb 3.1 gen 2 type c port and 3.5
millimeter headphone and mic jacks
over on the right there's a usb 2.0 type
a port a built-in sd card reader
and the power input there's nothing on
the front other than some status leds
and the speakers
and nothing on the back other than a
couple of air exhaust vents towards the
corners
up on the lid there's the msi logo which
lights up white while the laptop is
powered on
the metallic lid was a fingerprint
magnet but nothing a quick wipe with a
microfiber cloth couldn't fix
the grey plastic palm area did a better
job at hiding these but it still needed
to be cleaned
underneath there's some air intakes to
keep everything cool as well as some
rubber feet which both help prevent the
laptop from moving around on flat
surfaces when in use and also rise it up
slightly to let in cool air as mentioned
the speakers are underneath the front of
the laptop and i found that they didn't
sound very
good they sounded tinny with a distinct
lack of bass i definitely recommend
sticking to headphones here
powering the laptop is a 41 watt hour 6
cell battery and with a full charge and
doing basic tasks such as browsing the
internet and watching youtube with a
screen on around half brightness
keyboard
lighting off and background apps
disabled i was able to use it for 2
hours and 17 minutes
while playing the witcher 3 with medium
settings and nvidia's battery boost set
to 30 fps the battery lasted for 35
minutes
overall i thought the battery life was a
little low considering the size of the
laptop i would have thought there would
have been space for a larger one during
normal use with an ambient room
temperature of 25 degrees celsius the
cpu idled at 38 degrees celsius while
the gpu idled at 39 degrees celsius and
here are the external temperatures of
the laptop where you'll actually be
putting your hands
for some reason the touchpad was
noticeably warmer with the cpu and gpu
maxed out for around half an hour with
the same room temperature the cpu
reached a maximum of 95 degrees celsius
while the gpu peaked at 82 degrees
celsius
so the cpu got fairly hot and was
throttling by around 20
however this stopped if the gpu load was
removed it only happened with both fully
utilized we can see that the keyboard
area has warmed up quite a bit more
mostly towards the middle and it was
quite noticeable while typing despite
this the fans weren't running at full
speed
after turning them right up manually the
gpu cooled down to 78 degrees celsius
however the cpu stayed the same and just
throttled slightly less
so there's not enough cooling if you're
planning on smashing both the cpu and
gpu at the same time with full load
otherwise it's probably fine i also
found the laptop fairly quiet when not
gaming at idle it sat around the 37
decibel mark and i could barely hear it
this is what it sounded like
while maxing out both the cpu and gpu it
went up to 51 decibels
which i found to be pretty typical of
most gaming laptops and here's what that
sounded like
with the fans fully maxed out manually
it went up just a little more to 54
decibels
here's what that sounded like in
comparison
i also didn't notice any coil one while
testing finally let's take a look at
some benchmarks we'll first cover some
real world gaming benchmarks
followed by tests with various
benchmarking tools all tests will run at
the 1080p resolution with all windows
and nvidia updates to date installed
playerunknown's battlegrounds was tested
with the latest 1.0 version
in my testing i was consistently getting
around 90 fps on average
on all settings with the exception of
ultra which still averaged above 60 fps
with the 1 lows not too far behind the
other settings i've used the new replay
feature to perform this testing
so in theory it should be more accurate
than previous pubg benchmarks that i've
done
as i can now consistently perform the
same test run shadow of war performed
all right it was fairly smooth even at
high settings
you could even get away with ultra
settings if you don't require 60fps
i think it still played nicely the
battlefield 1 averages are quite good
however the 1
lows are substantially lower in
comparison during intense moments i did
notice this but in general it was an
overall smooth experience
the witcher 3 played great however the 1
lows outlined the small dips in
performance that were experienced from
time to time despite the 1
lows being quite a bit lower than the
average frame rates they're still not
too far below 60 fps so it wasn't that
noticeable watchdogs 2 is a fairly
resource
intensive game while it was definitely
playable living at max settings i found
higher or lower settings to deliver the
best experience
rise of the tomb raider is doing pretty
well too with directx 12 giving a nice
little boost to performance
allowing us to average over 60 fps with
max settings ghost recon is a fairly
resource intensive game to get decent
frame rates you'd need to look at higher
or lower settings
as you can see the laptop was struggling
with ultra settings ashes of the
singularity is another resource
intensive game
not really too much else to say here
these are the results under directx 11.
doom performed fairly similarly at all
setting levels
and even on ultra settings the one
percent lows are close to the 60 fps
sweet spot so this laptop should be able
to handle mac settings here no problem
although most of these are fairly
intensive games the laptop didn't have
many issues running them even at higher
settings
i've said before the 1060 is a great
sweet spot for 1080p
60fps gaming and that remains true here
in most cases
now onto the benchmarking tools while a
useful indicator note that these results
are less practical compared to the real
world
gaming results previously shown we'll
start with the unigine benchmarks this
is how the laptop performed in heaven
benchmark with the tessellation set to
extreme and anti-aliasing set to 8.
here's how valley benchmark performed
with anti-aliasing set to 8 at various
graphics settings
and finally these are the 1080p results
from their newest super position
benchmark
for the last graphics benchmarks i ran
fire strike and time spy from 3dmark and
got scores of 9093
and 3467 respectively so pretty fair
in crystal disk mark the 128 gigabyte
sata 3 m.2 ssd performed around 550
megabytes per second in sequential reads
and 200 megabytes per second in
sequential writes
which is pretty typical for a sata 3
based ssd although a little lower on the
write speeds
the one terabyte hard drive gets around
130 megabytes per second in both
sequential reads and write speeds which
is pretty typical for a 7200 rpm disk
with these exact specs at the time of
recording the laptop can be picked up in
australia for 1916 australian dollars
although that appears to be with the
current 20 discount so that may change
that's about 1 500 us dollars for my
international friends with tax included
so what did you guys think of msi's gf62
vr 7rf gaming laptop
overall i think the laptop performs
quite well however it does get quite
warm when gaming for a while as shown
nvidia's 1060 is an awesome sweet spot
for 1080p 60fps gaming in many current
games at higher to max settings
this hardware unfortunately also
requires quite a bit of power which is
why i think we're not getting that much
battery life out of the laptop
even at the 20 off price there are other
laptops with the 1060 and 7700 hq cpu
available for less which i'd personally
prefer let me know what you guys thought
down in the comments or simply leave a
like or dislike on the video to let me
know what you thought thanks for
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