Call it the attack of the awesome Ivy.MSI's GT60 is one of the first notebooks to hit the market with Intel's third generation Ivy Bridge processor.Combine that with a vibrant 1080p display,good audio quality, and a powerful Nvidia GPU and you have got a recipe for hours of questing, grinding and saving the day at a rather affordable price.
The GT60 isn't as pretty as say, the Alienware M17x, but it's still a handsome piece of machinery.While we loved the lid's central panel of black brushed aluminum with a backlit MSI logo,we're not fans of the wide strips of plastic lining the slides and bottom.However the side panels' distinct slope created some interesting angles throughout the design we couldn't help but admire.
We don't foresee many people moving the 7.8-pound MSI GT60 anywhere further than another room in their house.However, the notebooks 14.9 x 10.2 x 1.8-inch frame can fit into a large backpack or messenger back.
The MSI GT60's 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080p full HD display delivered mesmerizing color and crisp detail, whether we were reading text, watching video or playing games.At 268 lux, the GT60 outshines the 220 lux desktop replacement category average.
Powered by Dynaudio premium speakers, a subwoofer and the THX Sound Pro control panel, we enjoyed a great sound experience. Although the GT60's audio definitely benefits from the THX control panel ,we couldn't tweak as many things as we would have liked.We could only move a slider on settings such as Surround, Crystalizer, and Smart Speaker.It would have been nice to adjust settings for Music, Movies and Gaming similar to what HP's Beats Audio control panel offers.
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| MSI GT60 (www.laptopmag.com) |
Keyboard
Similar to Alienware notebook's the MSI GT60 features an island-styled keyboard with a full number pad with customizable colored back-lighting.We enjoyed configuring our keyboard to to our color-coded liking using MSI's Keyboard LED Manager.While we would have loved the ability to blend colors similar to Alienware's Command Centre Utility,we created a pretty bad-ass keyboard.The 10 keyboard statuses (including Standard, Idle, Gaming ,Normal ,Breathing) added a welcome level depth and customization.
The black flat keys were a little on the smaller side, especially the Backspace and Right Shift keys.Still, we enjoyed ample feedback and achieved 55 words per minute with a 1 percent error rate on the Ten Thumbs Typing Test.That's slightly larger than our desktop average.
Touchpad
The glossy polygonal border surrounding the 3 x 1.8-inch brushed aluminum touchpad make it appear smaller than it actually is.We had no problem sliding our fingers across the stimulating striated surface.
Ports
A lone USB 2.0 port resides on the laptops along with jacks for headphones, a mic, audio in, and audio out accompanied by a tray-loading DVD burner.Three USB 3.0 ports and a 7-in-1 card reader can be found on the right.Ports for HDMI ,eSATA ,VGA and Gigabit Ethernet Jack sit along the notebook's rear.
Performance
Talk about super powered.The MSI GT60 features a third-generation (Ivy Bridge) 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 3610QM processor with 12 GB of RAM, dual 500 GB ,7,200 rpm hard drive and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 670M GPU with 3GB of VRAM.We has an absolute blast cleaning up the mean streets in ''Batman:Arkham City''.As we played ,we had 10 open tabs in both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer while running a full virus scan.The Dark Knight went about his crime-fighting duty without any noticeable latency.
Booting the 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium only took the GT60 53 seconds,thanks to the dual 500 GB 7,200 rpm hard drives.
The GT60's dual drives duplicated 4.97 GB of mixed media files in 1 minute and 8 seconds, a blazing fast transfer rate of 74.8 Mbps, far above the 37.4 Mbps category average.
During the Open Office test, the GT60 matched 20,000 names to their corresponding addresses in 4 minutes and 26 seconds.That's slightly below the 4:24 desktop replacement average.
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| MSI GT60 (www.laptopmag.com) |
Graphics and Gaming
Playing games on the GT60 is an absolute joy.We couldn't keep the smile off our faces during ''Batman:Arkham City'' as we cleared out a room of 10 or more thugs.We made easy work of them with fluid roundhouse kicks, batarangs and bathands, with our ebony cape billowing menacingly all the while.The views of the dilapidated prison were grim, yet breathtaking complete with neon signs glowing weekly against the unshakable gloom of the night sky.
Models
The MSI has three versions of this notebook.The first one, which we tested right now, is powered by an Intel Core (Ivy Bridge) i7-3610QM processor which gives us 2.3 GHz speed.It also has 12GB of RAM,dual 500 GB 7,200 rpm hard drives and an Nvidia GeForce GTX670M GPU with 3GB of VRAM.Price-$1,559.
The base model,$1,399 (GT683-841US) offers a 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7-2670QM processor with 12 GB of RAM, a 750GB 7,200 rpm hard drive, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX560M GPU with 1.5 GB of RAM.There's also the $1,499 GT683DX-840 US ,which comes equipped with a faster Nvidia GeForce GTX570M GPU with 1.5 GB of RAM.
Battery Life
During the laptop battery test (continuous web surfing over WiFi) -the GT60 lasted over 4 hours and 37 minutes.That's 1 hour and 2 minutes longer than the 3:35 desktop replacement category.
Source:www.laptopmag.com
6:45 AM
Sanjeev Saju
After record-breaking success with popular Angry Birds series, Rovio is all set to launch its next major game-the Amazing Alex.The new game,likely to be launched within next couple of months, is a Rube-Goldbergesque physics puzzler based on Casey's Contraption game, recently acquired by the Finnish developer.
He also acknowledged that the ''quality pressure is high'' and that the company is working to ''maintain the high standard Angry Bird's fans have enjoyed so far''.He was referring to the massive success of the Angry Birds franchise, notched up 648 million downloads in 2011.
