MSI GE73 Raider RGB hand-on

The reason I brought that up is because the new GE73 RGB Edition is essentially the same laptop but with the addition of RGB lighting on the front panel. The two lines which look like inverted 7s are now RGB backlit with 24 individual zones for some impressive and seamless lighting motion. I am sure that the moment you open the laptop all eyes will gravitate towards it. The RGB lighting can be controlled by the Mystic Lights app that is MSI’s RGB control app. But these lights aren’t just for ornamental purpose, they can also be programmed to respond to your gaming status. The Steelseries keyboard also gets per key RGB lighting that can again be controlled via the software and there is also a dedicated button for changing the lighting modes for it. What I appreciate is that the lights on the cover and the keyboard can be controlled individually. Apart from this the fit and finish remains much like the previous version which means that this laptop is still a fingerprint magnet. The 3 USB 3.0 ports get red lighting for easy access in case there is no ambient lighting.

Coming to the specs, this laptop gets the 6 core, 12 thread Intel Core i7 8750H processor. The processor clocks at 2.2GHz stock but can boost up to 4.2GHz. The difference in core count and the higher clock speed is immediately evident as you fire up the Cinebench CPU test. We achieved an impressive score of 1039 for the CPU and 103fps in the OpenGL test. The laptop gets 16GB of DDR RAM running at 2400MHz. In terms of storage you get 512GB via two NVMe M.2 SSDs in RAID 0 and a 1TB HDD. Your gaming needs are taken care of by an Nvidia GeFore GTX 1070 GPU. Gaming performance on the previous GE73 was already great and with the new 6 core i7 CPU, things are looking bright for people with productivity workloads as well. While I did not get to test that now (but soon I will) I am sure that the two extra cores will surely reduce render times and allow for multiple apps to be open and working without a flaw.

The display is a 17.3 inch 1080p TN panel with a super fast 120Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time. Although technologies like G-Sync and FreeSync are still missing. We did not have enough time to test the colour calibration but MSI claims that this is a 94% NTSC panel and it has been calibrated for 100% sRGB plus there are different display modes as well. So we expect the overall result to be quite satisfying, at least for gamers. There was also no apparent colour or contrast deterioration when viewing the display from the extreme angles. This new GE73 RGB Edition also gets a new and improved Dragon Center app that looks even more futuristic and has a lot of helpful features as well. This time around there are presets as well, that can control not just the clocks speeds for your CPU, GPU and fan speed. It can also store lighting information in the same preset profile. MSI is trying to turn Dragon Center into a unified solution for all your regular and basic needs. There is also the new and improved Nahimic 3 app for sound calibration and settings. We did not have too much time to mess with it but the sound from the two gigantic speakers is still loud and clear.

The price for the new GE series starts from Rs 1,64,990 and the laptops are already available for pre-order. This base price is for the GE63 that gets a smaller display. We are quite happy with what MSI is offering in this update of the GE73 and are looking forward to seeing the two other laptops – GS65 Stealth Slim & GT75 Titan, when they launch on 17^th April 2018. Be sure to check back in this space as we will be covering not just the launch but also be conducting a full review of these mean machines!