MSI have yet again gone and brought us something new to
tinker with here in the office.. The GS30 is a high end portable laptop with a
docking station that includes internally a full sized PCI-e x16 slot, 3.5” SATA
slot and 450w power supply. On the outside of the dock you’re greeted with
addition 4 USB3.0 ports, Killer Gb LAN port, audio jacks and stereo speakers.
It’s an interesting piece of tech to review; the demo unit
they sent us does feature a full-sized MSI GTX 980 so at its time it is a
pretty high end gaming machine. But we’ll get to the dock a bit later one.
First let’s take a look at the actual laptop and the kind of power it holds in
its super sleek, lightweight and crafted LED display edge lights.
Intel® Core™ i7-4870HQ Processor
16GB Memory
256GB SSD
Iris Pro OnBoard Graphics
13.3” Full-HD Anti-Glare Display
1.2Kg
Link: http://www.centrecom.com.au/search/MSI-GS30
16GB Memory
256GB SSD
Iris Pro OnBoard Graphics
13.3” Full-HD Anti-Glare Display
1.2Kg
Link: http://www.centrecom.com.au/search/MSI-GS30
Design:
It’s not an Ultrabook but it certainly feels like one. It’s
sleek, covered in black and features a darkened Intel Core i7 sticker. The GS30
is executed in a manner which all manufacturers should look up to (Including
MSI themselves in regards to a few of their other models). It isn’t plaster
with colourful branding stickers bragging about the feature sets and doesn’t
contain too many different colours over the chassis. To be honest there’s not
really too many bad things to say about the overall external design of the
GS30, it keeps it simple and does a good job. Unfortunately for me, I like it a
bit too much, it’s the kind of laptop I would take around with me on a daily
basis, then when I get home, I can plug it into the powerhouse docking unit
(subject to what GPU you put in it).
The Dock:
This is where things kick off for the GS30. With a full
sized PCI-e x16 slot, you can throw in almost any desktop GPU and pushed this
laptop the extreme. Aside from the GPU you can stick in here you’ve also got
room for an additional hard drive for the added local storage when you’re back
on the dock.
Externally the GS30 dock has a few extra USB3.0 ports, audio
jacks and a LAN port for awesome online gaming.
The Laptop:
It’s a great laptop. That’s about as easy as I could put. It’s
super lightweight while having beefy enough specs to be used as a work laptop
to carry around with you. With a 1080p screen and super awesome wide-viewing
angle it provides an excellent mobile laptop experience
Conclusion:
To be honest, this review has kind of left me short for
words. It’s hard to describe what and how this laptop feels like to use, the
only thing that I can say about it is that I really like it. It can totally
double as a desktop replacement with the docking box while being an amazing
on-the-go laptop. Stick as powerful of a GPU in it as you like, with the extra
USB ports and LAN ports on the dock just connect up a few monitors with the GPU
and it becomes your new desktop gaming PC.
The downside to such a unit is the $2500 asking price; add a
high end GPU to that and you’re looking at $3000+ for a new PC. On the plus
side, for $3000 you do almost get 2 complete machines powerful enough to run
practically anything you want.
The GT80 Titan is still my number 1 laptop for 2015, however
for half the price and almost similar performance, the MSI GS30 Shadow is a
super close 2nd. Is 2015 the year of MSI laptops?
Note. There's also a non-docking version for $400 less.
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