Review: MSI GT60 2OD 3K IPS Edition

Conclusion

...the GT60 2OD 3K IPS Edition has bags of potential where it counts and you'd be hard pushed to find any laptop as capable as this for under £2,000.

MSI keeps doing what it does best by creating gaming laptops that offer some of today's most advanced components in a well-built and familiar package.

The GT60 2OD 3K IPS Edition takes a tried-and-trusted chassis and equips it with a quad-core Intel Haswell processor, dedicated Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M graphics, 16GB of memory, a trio of mSATA SSDs in RAID 0, and a lush 2,880x1,620 display that's nothing other than a feast for the eyes.

The end result may not be the most stylish or portable laptop, and it's a long way from being the thinnest, but the GT60 2OD 3K IPS Edition has bags of potential where it counts and you'd be hard pushed to find any laptop as capable as this for under £2,000.

The Good

High-quality 2,880x1,620 display
Quad-core Intel Haswell processor
Dedicated GeForce GTX 780M graphics
Comfortable backlit keyboard
Extremely fast storage array
Convincing Dynaudio sound system
Can drive three external screens
User-upgradeable components

The Bad

Not the prettiest laptop
Pixel density brings UI quirks to the fore
Ships with a fair amount of bloatware

HEXUS.awards

MSI GT60 2OD 3K IPS Edition

HEXUS.where2buy

The MSI GT60 2OD-092UK laptop is available to purchase from Scan Computers.

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3K in 15.6inches is actually a waste of resource.

Ironic that the feature they hope to be it's biggest selling point, is precisely the reason I wouldn't want it.

Utterly stupid resolution for a 15' laptop.

I partially agree about the resolution.. it needs further software optimisation from developers, moving to a PPI approach (perhaps adjustable globally as DPI can be on some Android ROMs) before it really becomes a help rather than a hindrance, unless you have a specific requirement for the high resolution.
I suspect ideally this would be a 17“ laptop. I have 1080p in my 15” and I wouldn't want a higher PPI in that at the moment.

Any word on thermal throttling ?
Previous MSI's with the single cooler setup have had issues maintaining stock clocks never mind the turbo boost clocks when using both the cpu and gpu to the max (as you do when gaming!) so they perform much lower than other 780m equiped laptops.

Personally i'd go for (and did) the i7-4800 over the 4700 as it's not that much more expensive and is 300mhz faster in both base and turbo clock speeds.
The 4900 is only 100mhz faster again and is a lot more expensive

Gah, I'm liking the high res display in a non-ultrabook (8GB of RAM and low voltage CPUs aren't enough for those who do serious work on their laptops), I'm not liking the MSI styling or the weight. I lean towards Clevo and their 15" machines shave a half a kilogram off this one. Unfortunately because these resolutions practically require a high end GPU there won't be much that can be shaved off the size and weight so I guess I'll see what the competition comes up with but this is definitely on the shortlist of laptops I could buy next.