MSI GT627: Bringing Balance to the Force?
by Jarred Walton on April 29, 2009 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
A Tale of Beauty and the Beast
Our first impression of the MSI GT627 is quite favorable. We have seen many notebooks that come with plastic casings, and they always feel cheap in comparison to an aluminum chassis. MSI uses a brushed aluminum cover on the top panel, as well as the keyboard palm rest, and it definitely makes a difference. The laptop feels more durable and looks nicer in our opinion.
Except, there's still plenty of plastic to go around, and some of this plastic is quite thin. We don't tend to treat our test systems very hard - there's no torture-testing going on here - and yet during the past month or so of use we managed to crack the plastic bezel below the LCD panel. Note that this didn't occur during disassembly; sometime while we were carrying our notebook around in a standard notebook bag on a trip, pressure on the chassis apparently cracked the plastic. It's ironic that this occurred with a seemingly more durable aluminum casing, which just goes to show that looks aren't everything.
There are a few other interesting aspects of the overall design and construction. A noteworthy inclusion is the complete 104-key keyboard with a dedicated number keypad. Many of us still have issues with the placement of the Fn key and would prefer to swap its location with the control key. Eventually, though, you can adapt to the keyboard layout. A far bigger concern is that the keyboard has a lot of flex - in fact, this is the flimsiest keyboard we've ever encountered on a laptop. We've only used one other laptop during the past several years that had such a cheap feeling keyboard... and that laptop also came from MSI (the S271). We've seen plenty of user posts complaining about this issue (i.e. in Newegg's comments), so we are definitely not the only ones who feel MSI needs to improve this area. This should literally be a 50 cent fix: use a stiffer back plate on the keyboard. Maybe there are people out there that like a "springy" keyboard, but it bothered me every time I used the laptop.
In terms of appearance, the other big concern is the LCD. You'll see the results later, but once again we have an LCD panel that has a terrible contrast ratio - you notice it the first time you power on the system. The $1100 price goes a long way towards helping us overlook that problem, but we would be much happier paying $1200 and getting a higher contrast ratio, along with a higher resolution like WSXGA (1440x900) or WSXGA+ (1680x1050). This isn't the worst laptop LCD we've ever tested by any means, but for a 2009 notebook it definitely leaves us wanting. 200:1 contrast ratios in 1280x800 displays were standard back in 2006, and LCD technology has improved quite a bit since then. It should come as little surprise that the manufacturing date of the Samsung LCD panel is reported as January 2007. A lot of users won't be bothered by the display, but anyone that does photo editing will see the problem immediately.
Overall, we have mixed feelings about the design. It looks great, and we love the aluminum cover on the top panel, but the cheap plastic parts in other areas and the flimsy keyboard totally counteract that. We would rather have a plastic chassis that doesn't crack easily and a keyboard that doesn't flex while we type. Component wise, the GT627 is nicely balanced, but the design of the chassis is lopsided with high-end options in some places and corner cutting elsewhere.
As far as displays go, I can pretty much guarantee that I will give a Gold Editors' Choice Award to the first laptop shipped my way that doesn't include a TN panel. Yes, manufacturers, it really is that important! Talk to your suppliers, convince even one of them to make a modern IPS, PVA, or MVA laptop panel, and as long as the rest of the laptop doesn't fall on its face you will have my full support. $200 extra for such a display? Yes, I would be willing to pay that much, and plenty of others would as well.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
Anand tested the MacBooks - he's the Mac person around here - and outside of battery life there really aren't any tests we can run on the Macs without installing Vista. As mentioned in the past, MacBooks running Vista also have battery life problems (they get about half the battery life they achieve under OS X). So why are they in where they excel? I thought it would be obvious: we want the Windows vendors to catch up to Apple, whatever it takes. If Apple can do it with a certain set of components, others can do the same thing.There's little point in installing Vista on a MacBook just to run all these tests. Frankly, you can look at the specs of a notebook and generally guess within a few percent how it will perform. A MacBook with a P8400 CPU is going to be about the same as a Vista laptop with the same CPU.
IlllI - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
i like the laptop display quality tests, would it be possible to also test the quality of the macbook display and post the results?JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
If I can get Anand to part with one of his MacBooks for a week or two.... :-D (He's in North Carolina; I'm in Washington. We typically see each other maybe a couple days a year.)Hulk - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
I agree with you 100%. We need quality displays on laptops!Thank you for pushing this issue.
andrezunido - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
Nice review, seems like a well rounded notebook for the price but I wouldn't mind paying a little extra 100$-200$ for a decent screen I mean its not even LED backlit.I mostly use my laptop for programming work and the screen (apart from battery life - I like the freedom of working anywhere) is a major concern for me, the manufacturers tend to neglect its importance making it a premium/luxury of top of the range laptops (i.e. Apple's macbook pro 15 and 17 - this later being the only with matte option, Asus U2, Dell), all being over the ~2000$ mark.
Anyway, nice, balanced feature set (the overclock button is a nice touch), might consider buying one given its competitive price to do some gaming.
Hrel - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
The Macs start at $2K!!! At least with PC you get choices, and more customization and better compatibility. Also anandtech did a review of a laptop not too long ago with the best laptop screen they'd ever seen; pretty sure it was from dell.niva - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
Well I personally think the 32 bit vista is a big no-no at this stage. I don't care if some apps still have problems working under 64 bit vista, I want to use the extra gig of ram and I want to be able to upgrade the RAM and use it w/o having to swipe the OS.Does MS offer a free upgrade of 32 bit vista to 64 bit vista on machines like this one? Or does one have to fork out the cost for the 64 bit OS?
Lord 666 - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
I received a free copy of Vista Ultimate last year at a Microsoft "Heros Happen Here" event. Tried to get the 64bit disc for it but was told by MS the SKU I have is not entitled for 64bit media.Judging by that alone, I highly doubt MS will offer 64bit upgrades in the future as they did with XP in 2005. Their 64bit coming out party really is Windows 7.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
I had a desktop that came with Vista 32-bit installed, and at some point the installation became corrupted. Just for kicks, I decided to try installing Vista 64-bit instead, using the RTM DVD. That worked fine with the code on the box. I don't know if that would work in other instances, though.IlllI - Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - link
maybe one day you can review one of these http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9050...">http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp...&typ... or http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9173...">http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp...&typ...looks like they are the same except one uses a P7450 and the other a P8400.
either seem to be very similar to the msi, except the asus comes with 512mb on the gs as opposed to 1gb with the msi. also as you can see the asus is a tad cheaper.