Meet the MSI GS75 Stealth
MSI did a nice job ramping up this laptop from 15 inches to 17 inches while keeping the profile on the slim side. It measures 0.74 by 15.5 by 10 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.02 pounds, admirable for a 17-incher.
A Luxury Color Scheme
The GS75 Stealth resembles its smaller GS65 Stealth Thin sibling, but it isn’t a simple scaled-up remake. They obviously share design language, with a sleek black look trimmed with gold accents. Here, the lid is outlined in gold, and MSI’s dragon logo is a more minimal gold tracing versus the red-and-black shield on most MSI gaming laptops.
A Better Build
The build quality also feels sturdier here. The chassis is solid-feeling aluminum alloy, with no flex on the speaker grille, unlike that weak spot on the GS65. The hinges, also now in gold, are a bit thicker and sturdier to support the larger panel size.
High-Refresh Display, But No G-Sync
The 17.3-inch IPS screen is using some advanced features aimed right at its gaming audience, though it is missing G-Sync support. It bears a full HD (1080p) native resolution. You might want that to be higher for this price, but it pairs well with the 144Hz peak refresh rate.
A Competent Keyboard
The keyboard on this system was designed along with gaming-hardware masters SteelSeries, and if you’ve seen one of these in an MSI machine before, you know what to expect. You get per-key backlighting on this system, customizable through included software.
A Top Touchpad
The touchpad is both nice and roomy and feels good to use. It tracks smoothly and clicks in without feeling cheap or flimsy. It’s also trimmed with shiny gold, matching the lid outline.
Cool It, MSI
The perforated strip forward of the keyboard is additional cooling for the powerful hardware inside. Our $2,999 test unit is built around a 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-8750H processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q GPU, 32GB of memory, and a 512GB SSD.
Traditional Bottom Ventilation
Unlike the competing Asus ROG Zephyrus S GX701 and its foldout bottom panel, the GS75 uses a traditional laptop layout with bottom and side cooling flush with the bottom of the chassis.
Connections on the Left...
This side is home to the power connector, an Ethernet jack, a USB 3.1 Type-A port, a microSD card slot, and discrete headset and mic lines.
...and on the Right
On this side are two more USB 3.1 Type-A ports, two USB Type-C ports, and an HDMI output. One of the Type-C ports also supports Thunderbolt 3.