Is it possible for a portable four-pound laptop to present high performance? I am reasonably impressed by MSI GS63VR Stealth. Our hero is the first laptop on Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060.
The Stealth`s construction
CUDA core count, as well as memory bandwidth, are the same in mobile and desktop chips. The biggest difference between them is in the speed, where the notebook is giving up a bit. The frame is magnesium-lithium, backlight keyboard.
As far as I was testing device on GeForce GTX 1060 wondering if it would reach the desktop chip, I decided to make a GeForce GTX 1060 vs GeForce GTX 980.
4K Stealth performance
A very important issue is the laptop`s 4K performance. However, for games in 4K, you have to reduce graphics settings a lot, since the GTX 1060 is not such a cool video adapter.
Handbrake Encoding Program
Our tests usually focus on the issue that is the most important for gaming – it’s all about the graphics card. Though gaming isn’t the only thing people do on their laptops and computers. Consequently, I compared the Stealth with thicker devices.
In our test, we used a free Handbrake encoder and converted the 30GB 1080p MKV file into a smaller MP4. Performance remains at approximately the same level as the Stealth uses Skylake quad-core like other gaming laptops.
In general, Stealth is worthy enough to compete with other desktop CPU e.g. the fastest of all is the Origin EON17-X.
Long battery life: or not?
Usually, if we play on large powerful laptops we do not take into account battery life. You will spend an hour starting a 130-watt GPU to play the game on battery. In practice, gaming laptops have a battery, so you can turn it off and move from the kitchen to another room, where you can plug it back in. It is noteworthy that Stealth is a real gaming device, with the possibility to use it on the go and play games at high settings.
However, we check everything with our own hands, so I want to tell you how Stealth performs on battery. For practice, we took our usual test, starting with playing a file in 4K resolution on Windows 10’s Movies & TV player. We choose the optimum brightness for daytime between 250 and 260 nits. The next step is to connect the headphones and turn on the audio.
Few people would carry a large laptop. Therefore, I decided to compare the battery performance of the Stealth and several other devices similar to it. I`ve chosen the Dell XPS 15 and Samsung Book 9 with similar Stealth size. By the way, both have quad-cores and discrete graphics but a smaller battery and lower performance.
According to the test results, I would say Stealth gives you rather ordinary battery life. You will receive no more than four hours in normal mode. To increase the performance time, reduce the brightness. Even though Stills runs on Nvidia’s Optimus to offset workloads when performing simple tasks.
Development possibilities
Speaking about the pros and cons, Stealth equipped by GTX 1060 still isn’t that perfect.
The screen itself is not bad. It has good viewing angles, matte covering, and high contrast. But the color temperature and gamma slightly deviate from the desired values. To pass our brightness test Stealth had to be run at 100 percent.
The uniformity of the backlight, like the vast majority of laptops, floats within 8.5%. The screen refresh rate is 60 Hz. The display, unfortunately, does not support NVIDIA G-SYNC technology, which would save you from picture tearing in games.
While the display showed itself almost from the good side, the audio system leaves much to be desired. Even after updating the drivers, eliminating the conflict with one of the latest updates to Windows 10, the sound was satisfactory, but nothing more. Of course, the high density of components in a thin case affects this, which leaves no room for good speakers.
Summing everything up
For all of the flaws, this 4-pound laptop is a breakthrough in the field of gaming equipment. You can play modern games at high settings on a portable laptop! The GTX 1060 delivers 50 percent more power than, for example, Nvidia’s best GeForce GTX 970M GPU. Thus, mobility and performance in one MSI GS63VR Stealth is not a myth at all, but our new reality.
