The MSI GS66 Gaming Laptop: A Comprehensive Review

I recently had the opportunity to test the MSI GS66 gaming laptop with Optimus enabled, which allowed me to take full advantage of Quicksync. This test was particularly useful since it can utilize Quicksync, resulting in the fastest export time so far. However, it's worth noting that there are diminishing returns once you have a 1660 Ti, and other specs may not yield the same results.

For benchmarking tools, I used Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine, as well as Firestrike, Timespy, and Port Royal from 3DMark. If you want to see the detailed results of these tests, feel free to pause the video. I also tested SPECviewperf, which evaluates various professional 3D workloads. Additionally, I used Crystal Disk Mark to test the storage, and the 1TB NVMe M.2 drive performed quite well. However, it's essential to note that different storage options may yield varying results.

Updated pricing information is available in the description section, as prices can fluctuate over time. At the time of recording, the GS66 with the same specs I tested here was priced at $3000 USD in the US, but there are more affordable alternatives available. In Australia, the laptop is currently available for a higher price due to limited GPU options at pccasegear.

Now, let's summarize the good and bad aspects of the GS66 gaming laptop.

I thought the muted black design was quite clean, and it's personal preference. I prefer it over the gold-trimmed GS65, although it would have been nice if MSI could also black out the white logo below the screen. The laptop is made entirely of metal and feels solid, a welcome improvement over the slightly thinner GS65. However, the matte finish makes it quite prone to fingerprints.

One significant advantage of the GS66 is the motherboard flip design change, making upgrades much easier for users. I also appreciated the large battery, which allowed me to improve performance by lowering the refresh rate. The laptop's I/O selection is nice, with Thunderbolt 3 and Type-C charging, as well as all USB ports being 3.2 Gen2. However, there is a 2.5-gigabit Ethernet port that may get in the way of your mouse hand.

Unfortunately, MSI still does not take full advantage of Nvidia's advanced Optimus feature, which would have been preferable. The option to disable Optimus after a reboot is available, but it would be more convenient if MSI could integrate Nvidia's new advanced Optimus feature seamlessly. Additionally, having G-Sync included at this price point would have been beneficial, as one requirement for it is direct connection from the display to the Nvidia graphics, which the GS66 has.

However, the laptop can run hot to achieve high performance levels, which is expected given the 8-core Intel i9 processor and RTX 2080 Super Max-Q graphics in a thinner body. It was possible to remove thermal throttling by boosting fan speed, and other modifications can be made to improve temperatures, such as using a cooling pad or undervolting. However, it's worth noting that undervolting is not fully supported on the GS66.

Finally, I found it strange that MSI is selling the 300Hz screen with DDR4-2666 memory despite the 10th gen platform supporting faster memory. While it didn't make a significant difference in my testing, I would expect to see more premium features at this price point from other manufacturers.

Overall, I believe the GS66 looks like an improvement over the GS65, offering some nice extras that others are missing. However, users should be aware of the higher price due to these additional features and the potential trade-offs in performance and design. If there weren't other products with OLED screens and SD card slots, I could see myself buying this laptop for content creation. Nevertheless, for its intended purpose – gaming – it performs quite nicely.

Let me know what you thought about the MSI GS66 gaming laptop down in the comments, and if you're new to the channel, get subscribed for future laptop reviews and tech videos like this one.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enThe MSI GS66 Stealth is a gaming laptop availablewith some powerful specs while still remainingon the thinner and sleeker side, let’s checkit out in this detailed review and see whatimprovements they’ve made over the olderGS65.My GS66 is one of the highest specced optionsavailable, there’s an Intel i9-10980HK overclockable8 core processor, Nvidia RTX 2080 Super Max-Qgraphics, 32gb of memory in dual channel,though not running at the DDR4-2933 speeds10th gen is capable of, a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD,and a 15.6” 1080p 300Hz screen.For network connectivity it’s got 2.5 gigabitethernet, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.The GS66 is available with different specsthough, you can find examples and updatedprices linked in the description.The laptop is made out of aluminium on thelid, interior and bottom.The lid is a clean matte black, and same onthe inside.The whole device is pretty much black withthe exception of the silver MSI logo belowthe screen, which is too bad as even the lastgen GS65 had that blacked out.There are no sharp corners or edges anywhere,and the front was actually plastic with ashiny finish along the edge.MSI list the weight of the GS66 as 2.1kg,though mine was closer to 2.2, and with the230 watt power brick and cables for chargingthe total rises to 3.1kg.The dimensions are on the slimmer side fora 15” gaming laptop, however it’s a coupleof millimeters thicker than the older GS65,which I think was a good move as the chassisseems more solid as a result.This smaller footprint means the screen bezelsare just 8mm thin on the sides.The 15.6” 1080p 300Hz screen has a mattefinish and viewing angles looked fine.Before tons of people comment that 300Hz isuseless, it has its place for esports titles,and I’ve tested quite a few games that couldhit 300 FPS without much trouble on it.I’ve seen demos of 240Hz and 300Hz sideby side in games like CS:GO and Dota 2 andthere is actually a noticeable difference.Don’t want it?No problem, there are other screen optionslike 240Hz or 144Hz available too.There’s no G-Sync here, however there’sa MUX switch which lets you disable or enableOptimus, and MSI have advised me this is presentin all configurations.This means we can use the Intel graphics outsideof GPU intensive tasks for increased batterylife, or after a reboot disable Optimus andonly use the Nvidia GPU for improved gamingperformance.G-Sync or advanced Optimus would have beenicing on the cake, but having this is stilla good option.Speaking of new Nvidia features, there’sno Dynamic boost available here either.I’ve tested the screen with the Spyder 5,and got 96% of sRGB, 69% of NTSC, 74% of AdobeRGBand 74% of DCI-P3.At 100% brightness I measured the panel at299 nits in the center with a 1000:1 contrastratio, so fair colour gamut, contrast ratio,and ok brightness.Expect different results with others likethe 240Hz or 4K panels.Backlight bleed was minimal to my eyes, itdidn’t look too bad in this worst case scenario,but this will vary between laptop and panel.There was some screen flex when intentionallytrying to move it, despite the metal buildthe lid isn’t too thick.The hinges felt quite sturdy though, theyhave a metal exterior and are found out towardsthe far corners.MSI noted that the hinges have been improvedover previous models, which is good to seeas many people have complained about theirhinges in the past, however it’s difficultfor me to say how the improvements will helpwithout long term use.The laptop can be opened up easily with onefinger, demonstrating an even weight distribution,and the screen can go back the full 180 degrees.Despite the thinner bezels, the 720p camerais found above the display in the center,and it has IR for Windows Hello support whichworked well.Even with the fan at low speed you can stillhear it quite easily.Here’s what typing on the keyboard soundslike, and this is what it sounds like if weset the fan to maximum speed.So it is pretty loud, but you can still hearme ok over those fans.The keyboard has per key RGB backlightingwhich illuminates all keys and secondary keyfunctions.There’s no numpad so it doesn’t feel cramped,and unlike the older GS65 the power buttonis found on the top right corner next to delete,so you might want to change the setting inWindows to prevent accidental presses triggeringsleep, which is the default.Overall I enjoyed typing with the keyboardand didn’t find the key presses loud, here’show it sounds to give you an idea of whatto expect.There are 4 levels of key brightness whichcan be adjusted either through software, orwith the function and F10 and F11 shortcutkeys.I did have an intermittent issue with thekeyboard though, for about a day I wasn’table to adjust the lighting, either throughthe steelseries software, or with the shortcutkeys.Holding the function key usually lights upthe keys that you can press, but that didn’twork either.Rebooting didn’t fix the issue, it justwent away on its own after a day or so, butit would appear I’m not alone with thisbug, so hopefully it gets resolved with anupdate.Keyboard flex wasn’t too bad when intentionallypushing down hard, no issues during normaluse, definitely an improvement over the olderand slightly thinner GS65.The precision touchpad physically clicks downanywhere when pressed.I found it to work pretty well with no issuesto note.It’s quite wide, however my hands nevercame into contact with it while typing.Others have reported crap palm rejection,but that’s just not my experience at all.Even while typing if I intentionally startmoving my hand over onto the touchpad to tryand move it or click, my typing isn’t interrupted.Others have also mentioned an issue whereif you press down between the touchpad andkeyboard it triggers a click, however I didnot experience this either.The front facing speakers are found on theleft and right corners, the gap is a littlelarge and I can’t see any sort of filterso don’t dropping any crumbs in there Iguess.I thought they sounded quite average quality-wise,however they did get very loud at maximumvolume where there was some vibration in thewrist rest area, and the latencymon resultslooked good.Fingerprints and dirt show up very easilydue to the matte black metallic finish, andthey needed a little extra effort to cleanwith a microfiber cloth despite the smoothsurface.On the left from the back there’s the powerinput, Type-C Thunderbolt 3 with 4 lanes plusType-C charging, HDMI 2.0 output and USB 3.2Gen2 Type-A port.On the right there’s a 3.5mm audio combojack, second Type-C port, no Thunderbolt onthis side just USB 3.2 Gen2 for this one butwith DisplayPort support, two more USB 3.2Gen2 Type-A ports, and 2.5 gigabit ethernetfacing the preferred way, however as it’sclose to the middle a cable may get in theway of your mouse hand.The HDMI port and Type-C ports are also wireddirectly to the Nvidia graphics.The back just has air exhaust vents towardsthe corners, and there’s nothing on thefront.Underneath is pretty clean, with just someair intake vents towards the back, and thereare rubber feet in the middle which wouldhelp reduce center chassis flex.The bottom panel can be removed taking out9 Phillips head screws, and only the one downthe front in the middle was smaller than therest.I found the panel a little hard to remove,but was able to pry it off from around theback.Once inside we’ve got the large 99.9Wh batterydown the bottom, then above that from leftto right there’s the killer WiFi 6 card,two M.2 slots for storage, the left is PCIeonly while the right supports PCIe or SATAand two memory slots.It’s also great that the motherboard isn’tupside down like the older GS65, making upgradeseasier, however for some reason MSI are usingslower DDR4-2666 memory in the GS66 when theIntel 10th gen supports DDR4-2933.I’ve tested the difference this makes inthe GS66 in a dedicated video, you can checkthe card at the top right of the screen orlink in the description for the full comparison,but the difference isn’t all that much onaverage.The 99.9Wh battery is basically the largestyou can legally take on a plane.I’ve tested it with Optimus enabled, thescreen brightness at 50%, background appsdisabled and keyboard lighting off.With the screen at the default 300Hz speedit lasted for 5 and a half hours while watchingYouTube.While playing the Witcher 3 with medium settingsand Nvidia’s battery boost set to 30 FPSthe battery lasted for an hour and 19 minutes.At this point the frame rate dipped to 13FPS and was no longer usable despite having27% charge remaining.I’ve also run the same watching YouTubetest with the screen set to 60Hz instead,and it lasted for 7 hours and 17 minutes withthe slower refresh rate, so it can offer muchbetter results with that simple change.I’ve also tested with Optimus disabled,where we just got 3 hours of battery lifewith only the Nvidia graphics in use.The dragon center software also lets you setthe charge level too, so you can prolong batterylife by not keeping it consistently at 100%charge if you’re always plugged in.As mentioned, the GS66 also has Type-C chargingthrough the Thunderbolt port on the left handside, so you could use this with a smallerType-C charger when travelling instead ofthe larger 230 watt power brick, so long asyou aren’t doing resource heavy workloads.I’ll just summarise the thermals, you cancheck the card in the top right or link inthe description for far more detailed information.The MSI Dragon Center software lets you selectdifferent performance modes, which from lowestto highest are silent, balanced and extremeperformance.Only extreme performance lets you enable coolerboost,which sets the fan to maximum speed, and usermode gives you some basic fan adjustment.Extreme mode also applies a GPU overclock,which can be adjusted here.I’ll note that my software seemed buggyand didn’t properly apply this, so I manuallyused MSI Afterburner instead and set the sameOC for all testing in extreme mode.By default undervolting is disabled, howeveryou can either do it through the advancedBIOS, or preferably via XTU or throttlestopsoftware once enabling it through the BIOS.Just press right shift, right control, leftalt and F2 in the BIOS to enable the advancedoptions, but note there are plenty of optionsin here that could brick your machine if youdon’t know what you’re doing.Inside there are 7 heatpipes in total, 2 sharedbetween the CPU and GPU with 3 fans, and inaddition to coming up from underneath, airalso gets pulled in through the vents abovethe keyboard.Thermals were tested with a 21 degree Celsiusambient room temperature.Idle results down the bottom were on the warmerside but no real issue with that.Worst case stress tests were done with theAida64 CPU stress test with CPU only checkedand the Heaven benchmark at max settings atthe same time, and gaming was tested withWatch Dogs 2 as I find it to use a good combinationof processor and graphics.The CPU would thermal throttle at 95 degrees,however we could remove this simply by boostingfan speed with coolerboost mode.In the game tests, undervolting and usinga cooling pad helped further, and I didn’tsee that much worse results with the lid closed.Clock speeds were looking pretty good in thesetests, again remember the CPU results in theblue bars are averaged over 8 cores with thei9, so reaching 4.4GHz in the game test and4.3GHz in the stress test are pretty goodresults.Given the all core turbo of the i9 is barelybeing hit, there’s no point trying to overclockfor these tests, however MSI seem to set theall core boost speed to 5.3GHz anyway.Outside of silent mode, the 2080 Super Max-Qhad no issues running at its 80 watt limit,and the CPU would only hit power limit throttlingaround the 55 to 60 watt mark, it varied dynamicallybased on thermals and I couldn’t adjustit with software.Here’s how CPU only performance looked inCinebench with the different modes in use,so that basic not tuned in the slightest undervoltat the top allows us to boost the multicorescore by 11%.Here’s how the GS66 stacks up against other8 core laptops I’ve tested.Interestingly it’s only just ahead of theAero 17 below it with 8 core i7 despite theAero not supporting undervolting, and thisis because the Aero 17 could run this workloadat 95 to 100 watts.It’s also slightly ahead of the 4900HS inthe ASUS G14, though that runs at 35 wattsin a smaller machine and it does win in singlecore.As for the external temperatures where you’llactually be putting your hands, at idle itwas in the mid 30s, a little warmer than manyother laptops tested but no issue.With the stress tests running in silent modethe center was actually hot to the touch andI’d say WASD was starting to feel uncomfortablehere.In balanced mode it’s performing betterand also cooler in the center now due to higherfan speed.Extreme mode seemed the same as balanced,which makes sense given it performed equivalently.With cooler boost mode the wrist rests feltcool now, only the middle was warm, so despiteit being a metal machine which usually meansit easily conducts heat, it felt pretty coolnow, though as we'll hear next the fan isquite loud to achieve this.The fans were only just audible in silentmode, but they would spin up ever so slightlyfrom time to time, and I did notice a verysmall amount of coil whine when the fans werequiet.With the stress tests in the same silent modeit’s still on the quieter side.Both balanced and extreme modes were aboutthe same, then coolerboost is about 10 decibelslouder and is quite loud.Although max fan speed is loud, I see thisas an advantage, you’re not locked to alower fan speed and hotter machine, the userhas some control.Next let’s find out just how well the GS66actually performs in games.I’ve tested with extreme performance modeand coolerboost enabled for best results,and just as a reminder this does apply anoverclock to the GPU.In Battlefield 5 I’ve got the GS66 highlightedin red near similarly specced machines.In this test the 1% low is one of the bestout of this selection of laptops, while theaverage FPS is second best here.It’s very close to the Triton 500 just belowit though, and although that has the non Super2080 Max-Q graphics, it does gain a benefitby being the 90 watt variant, the GS66 runsthe GPU at 80 watts.These are the results from Far Cry 5 withultra settings in the built in benchmark.This time the average FPS is only a littlebehind the much more powerful 180 watt 2080in the Triton 900 just above it, but interestinglyalso a little behind the 2080 Max-Q and i7in the Triton 500.The 1% lows are still higher when comparedto most other laptops tested, and either waythis is still one of the best results outof the laptops I’ve covered.These are the results from Shadow of the Tombraider with the built in benchmark at highestsettings.This time the GS66 was outperforming the higherwattage 2080 Max-Q in the Triton 500 oncemore, however it’s still about 10 FPS behindthe 180 watt 2080 in the Triton 900 aboveit.If you’re after more gaming benchmarks checkthe card in the top right corner where I’vetested 20 games in total on the GS66.Overall the gaming performance from the MSIGS66 is quite impressive, especially whenwe consider that it’s got a lower powered80 watt RTX 2080 Super Max-Q rather than saythe 90 watt limit that others will have.Keep in mind that I’ve got the highest CPUand GPU options available in my GS66, so expectlower results with lower specced models, thisis kind of a best case.That said, the GS66 does allow you to disableoptimus, so there will be a nice speed boostin many games as a result of that, and aswe saw, it’s possible to get some extraperformance with faster memory.I’ve used Adobe Premiere to export one ofmy laptop review videos at 4K, and I’vedone this with Optimus enabled as this testcan utilize Quicksync.The GS66 with these specs gave me the fastestexport time so far, granted there’s diminishingreturns once you have a 1660 Ti.Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve testedHeaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,as well as Firestrike, Timespy and Port Royalfrom 3DMark, just pause the video if you wanta detailed look at these results.I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which testsout various professional 3D workloads.I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test thestorage, and the 1TB NVMe M.2 drive was performingquite well, but expect different results withdifferent storage options.For updated pricing check the links in thedescription, as prices will change over time.At the time of recording, in the US the GS66with the same specs I’ve tested here is$3000 USD, however there are much more reasonablespecs for almost half the price too.Here in Australia we’re looking at a fairbit of money, however they’ve only got thehigher end GPU options at pccasegear for now.With all of that in mind let’s concludeby summarising the good and bad aspects ofthe GS66 gaming laptop.I thought the muted black design was quiteclean, it’s personal preference but I preferit over the gold trimmed GS65, though it wouldhave been nice to also have the white MSIlogo below the screen blacked out too.It’s all metal and feels quite solid, anotheradvantage over the slightly thinner GS65,however the matte finish makes it quite thefingerprint magnet.Speaking of improvements over the GS65, nothaving the motherboard flipped was a welcomechange, all upgrades are now much easier.The large battery is also welcome, and itwas possible to improve the performance afair bit by lowering the refresh rate.The GS66 has a nice I/O selection, there’sThunderbolt 3 with Type-C charging, and allUSB ports are 3.2 Gen2, no slower Gen1 insight.The ethernet port is 2.5 gigabit, howevera cable could get in the way of your mousehand.While it’s nice that MSI have added theoption to disable Optimus after a reboot,it would have been preferable for them totake advantage of Nvidia’s new advancedoptimus feature.It also would have been good to have G-Syncincluded at the price point given one of therequirements to do it is that direct connectionfrom the display to the Nvidia graphics, whichthe GS66 has.The option of disabling optimus when combinedwith the higher end specs and GPU overclockin extreme mode gave us excellent gaming performance,other applications like Adobe Premiere alsoperformed very well, the GS66 is currentlythe fastest laptop I’ve tested there.The GS66 can run hot to achieve this though,which is expected with an 8 core Intel i9processor and RTX 2080 Super max-q graphicsin a thinner body.That said, it was possible to remove thermalthrottling by boosting fan speed, plus thereare other modifications we can do to improvetemperatures like using a cooling pad or undervolting.It’s also good that undervolting is at leastpossible, even if it’s tucked away in theadvanced BIOS, other 10th gen machines I’vetested just have it completely disabled.The 300Hz screen would only be beneficialin esports titles at lower settings, so ifyou don’t want that then you might be ableto save some money getting a 240Hz or 144Hzscreen instead.Otherwise in terms of colours and brightness,the 300Hz panel was pretty average for a moderngaming laptop and bleed was fine.Given you’d want every drop of performanceyou can get for that high refresh rate panel,I found it strange that MSI are selling itwith DDR4-2666 memory despite the 10th genplatform supporting faster, perhaps thereare shortages of faster memory?Yeah on average it didn’t make that muchof a difference, but as a seemingly more premiumpositioned laptop I’d expect the best likeothers are offering.All things considered, the GS66 looks likea nice improvement over the GS65 in my opinion.You’re definitely paying a bit more forit due to the extra features, but there aresome nice extras on offer that others aremissing.If there weren’t other products with OLEDscreens and SD card slots, I could almostsee myself buying this for content creation,but for what it’s designed to do, gaming,it performs quite nicely.Let me know what you thought about the MSIGS66 gaming laptop down in the comments, andif you’re new to the channel get subscribedfor future laptop reviews and tech videoslike this one.\n"