The Laptops that Ruin Good Hardware: A Critical Look at MSI's Aggressive Software Strategy

As we began to set up our test laptop, it quickly became apparent that something was amiss. The Windows installation process was unusually slow, and the various applications that came pre-installed seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time to load. At first, we thought that perhaps the laptop's specifications just weren't suitable for a fast bootup, but as we delved deeper into the operating system, it became clear that something more sinister was at play.

The software that comes pre-installed on MSI laptops is a veritable arsenal of unnecessary applications and tools. There's CyberLink power DVD, which seems to be an attempt to bundle together a suite of media players and editing software. Then there's Dragon Center, an MSI tool that appears to be little more than a fancy screen saver. And don't even get us started on the various Intel and Microsoft applications that seem to have been bundled in without any discernible reason.

But perhaps the most egregious offender is Norton Online Backup. This application seems to have been installed solely for the purpose of collecting data on our laptop usage, and we couldn't help but wonder why an antivirus program would be included by default. It's a curious decision, especially when you consider that MSI has access to its own software development resources.

Of course, not all of the pre-installed applications are without merit. The Magic's Edition suite, for example, seems to offer some useful tools and features. And there is, admittedly, some value in having the MSI True Color software, which appears to be a clone of a popular third-party tool. But these positives are far outweighed by the sheer number of unnecessary applications that seem to have been included.

And then, of course, there's the question of why these applications were included in the first place. We can't help but wonder if MSI has some sort of agreement with Norton or other software companies to bundle their products into its laptops. The presence of SCM, a useless application that seems to serve no purpose whatsoever, is particularly suspicious.

But perhaps the most insidious aspect of MSI's approach is its complete lack of transparency about what it's doing. Rather than providing clear explanations for why certain applications are included or excluded, MSI simply shrugs and says "that's just how we do things." It's a curious attitude, especially when you consider that this approach can have serious consequences for the user experience.

For example, the presence of sizing options seems to be an attempt to monitor our laptop usage habits, but it's executed in a clumsy and invasive way. The application pops up at random intervals, following our mouse cursor as we move around the screen. It's annoying and intrusive, and we can only assume that MSI is collecting data on our behavior without any clear explanation of why.

The Steel Series Engine, which appears to be a tool for controlling RGB LEDs on keyboards, is another example of this trend. While it may seem like a useful application at first glance, its true purpose is unclear, and we couldn't help but wonder if MSI was simply trying to collect data on our gaming habits without any discernible reason.

And then, of course, there's the issue of xSplit Gamecaster, an application that seems to be included solely for the sake of having it. While it may offer some useful features for gamers, its presence is still puzzling, especially when you consider that other applications like Steel Series Engine are more clearly tied to specific hardware or software.

But perhaps the most egregious offender of all is the Synaptics pointing device driver. This application seems to be included solely for the sake of including it, and we couldn't help but wonder if MSI was simply trying to collect data on our mouse usage habits without any clear explanation of why.

In short, the pre-installed software on MSI laptops is a veritable mess of unnecessary applications and tools. Rather than providing clear explanations for why certain software is included or excluded, MSI seems to be relying on a series of opaque agreements with other companies to justify its approach. It's a curious attitude, especially when you consider that this approach can have serious consequences for the user experience.

But what's even more concerning is that MSI HQ appears to be weighing the pros and cons of this approach in a way that doesn't seem to align with the company's actual interests. Rather than taking steps to streamline its software and eliminate unnecessary applications, MSI seems content to continue down the path of including as many extraneous tools as possible.

The result is laptops that are slow, bloated, and difficult to use. And it's not just the user experience that suffers – it's also the reputation of MSI itself. We can only hope that the company will take steps to address these issues in the future, perhaps by simplifying its software and eliminating unnecessary applications.

But for now, we're stuck with a laptop that feels like a bloated, overly-complicated mess. And if you're considering purchasing an MSI laptop, be warned: you may find yourself struggling to use it at all.

The Verdict

In conclusion, the pre-installed software on MSI laptops is a disaster. Rather than providing clear explanations for why certain applications are included or excluded, MSI seems content to continue down the path of including as many unnecessary tools as possible. It's a curious approach that can have serious consequences for the user experience, and it's not something that we would recommend.

If you're in the market for a new laptop, we would strongly advise against purchasing an MSI model until this issue is addressed. Until then, you may find yourself stuck with a slow, bloated machine that feels like a chore to use. And if you do decide to purchase an MSI laptop, be prepared for a frustrating and confusing experience.

The Future of Software

In the end, this debacle serves as a reminder that software development should always prioritize the user experience above all else. Rather than relying on opaque agreements with other companies or attempting to collect data on our habits without any clear explanation, software developers should strive to create tools that are simple, intuitive, and easy to use.

It's not too much to ask for software that doesn't feel like a bloated, overly-complicated mess. And it's certainly not too much to expect from a reputable manufacturer like MSI.

Until the company takes steps to address this issue, we can only hope that users will find ways to work around the problems presented by its pre-installed software. But for now, it seems that the status quo is more than happy to persist – and that's a sad state of affairs indeed.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enlet me ask you a question how many control panels do you need MSI probably won't like this video they'll probably ask us to change the title again like they did last time we published something critical of them but the point isn't to be mean to MSI the point is not to make msih HQ upset over things because it's not glowing praise the point is to show that this is not an acceptable state for a product that is otherwise perfect perfectly fine MSI you are ruining your laptops by installing all of this bloatware on it and it's going to damage your reputation that's the point not trying to step on toes I'm not trying to burn Bridges I'm trying to say you can improve this you can make it better in fact I've said this before I said it last year when we did a laptop bloatware test and found that depending on which bloatware was running there was sometimes tremendous Improvement in games particularly in frame times to the point that if you didn't know better about bloatware and that it was on there and you were a consumer who bought the thing you might go return it because the numbers don't match benchmarks because it looks like garbage because there's all this stuff in the background running all the time in fact in that opening shot that we had for this video there were a lot of control panels on the screen I didn't install those those were there out of the box in fact I spent about an hour uninstalling those and everything else on the system but the thing is there are 11 control panels just in the system tray when you turn it on just turning the system on and that's not even the worst part there are I'm not even sure what the worst part is one of the bad parts is that boot times are heavily impacted by this we did a test pretty simple one out of box configuration push the power button repeat several times how long does it take to boot from cold boot from off the answer for a clean windows install nothing installed but windows was even steam because we figur that's probably normal and a couple of applications that sit in the background or never open at all but not 11 control panels so we tested in that config the answer was about 18 to 18.6 seconds depending on test pass the numbers were 18 18.4 18.4 18.4 18.6 so about 18.4 seconds what happens when you test it out of box when you test it with MSI configuration for gamers it takes about 40 seconds for The Hourglass to stop spinning that was our criteria push the power button when does The Hourglass stop spinning that's when we consider it fully loaded for this 40 seconds and sometimes actually quite regularly if you try to start typing even at that 40c point the typing in whatever you're typing with notepad whatever it is the search bar it will lag so far behind your actual physical human input that it feels kind of like when you're using a phone that is loaded with bloatware coincidentally and all the letters pop up on the screen all at once that's what it feels like using this laptop because that's what happens and then they' they' even got all kinds of stuff like you can drag a window there's this little hovering box that follows you around and that box is to help you pin the window to different corners of the screen it's insanely annoying it slows things down and outside of just the boot time difference which is bad enough that people who don't know any better should absolutely not buy this laptop cuz they would think the hardware is bad which isn't the case and again MSI I'm telling you this because people think this is going to be a laptop because it doesn't boot quickly that's not the problem it is clearly capable of booting just as fast as any other system with Windows on it that isn't loaded with bloatware but outside of the booty and stuff battery life we did some battery life tests we did a few some with gaming like grid Auto Sport on Loop until it died and some that were production focused so we used PC Mark we ran the office workload where it's basically just doing a repeated automated typing test typing web browsing Excel some video playback but not a lot that kind of thing that was tested on Loop it is automated for the the most part we saw about a six to 8% reduction in battery life in this default outof box State versus a clean install after I uninstalled everything for about 40 minutes to 1 hour so it's a 6 to 8% battery life difference that is enough that when you're loading the thing with all his production and workload office workloads you would notice it you're losing sometimes 10 minutes off your battery life sometimes 15 and if you do lighter workload tasks like maybe get rid of the video you're just doing web browsing and typing now that is exacerbated now you have a an amount of battery life that is taken from you that becomes pretty noticeable because of the bloat Weare and again it's not just boot times it's not just battery life there are other performance indicators as well let's take an uncommon performance metric noise we've already shown bloatware and its impact on gaming but noise is not one we've talked about before we took a DB meter we use these all the time for our case reviews pointed at the the laptop 20 inches away from the screen and took some noise measurements if you test when it's a clean install it's not too bad we've got numbers for it and it's really not that bad now gaming sure it spikes up over time we actually have an overtime chart for gaming that will be in the review that shows how the fan ramps up as the load increases but that's gaming that's okay it's not great but you're putting a lot of load on the system you expect the fan to ramp up what you don't expect is to to boot to Windows and hear your fan doing something like over and over and over and the reason it does that is because these things in the background are pinning the CPU in a way that every now and then it'll go oh I got to enter turbo State enters turbo the fan follows and boosts the fan RPM so now instead of having a steady State fan which is much better uh than what we have you have something that's spiky and the delta in noise Peak to Peak is a whole lot more noticeable than just a flat line at maybe 3334 DBA so that's a big deal too just the noise alone gaming performance sometimes we see no impact to frame rate it looks just the same sometimes we see a big impact of frame times like the 1% 1% lows particularly 0. 1% lows but if you plot it as a frame time graph it's a bit easier to see what's going on we can see the impact depending on what software is triggering in the background what it's doing if it's trying to apply anything to the screen if it's trying to uh enter any kind of scans or other different states that may be configured with all these tools audio software all that stuff is on here so depending on that you can lose on frame times in a way that increases the stuttering to a noticeable level and you can lose on your average frame rate maybe not a huge amount depends again on what's going on but with a clean windows install it doesn't happen at all so that's it seems like an easy choice let me give you an idea of some of the applications that come on here just so you don't think that they're actually offering something of tremendous value we'll just do an a toz read through of the programs list in Windows battery calibration burn recovery CyberLink power DVD Dragon Center that's an MSI tool if you couldn't tell Firebird SQL Server Magic's Edition why is there a SQL server or SQL client on here by default I have no idea uh help desk which provides useful popups just kind of randomly while you're using the system that's always nice to have they normally pop up in the bottom right corner whole bunch of Intel stuff that you would expect and then some that you might not want like the pro set wireless software but hey maybe Intel controls them there other things that we don't want killer performance Suite I can't stand killer performance Suite but maybe they have a requirement there because the hardware used what don't they have requirements for maybe Magic's content and sound tools or Magic's Music Maker silver Magic's photo manager 16 Microsoft Office 3 65 Microsoft One drive I guess that's on Windows 10 now MSI remind manager that's another pop-up dispenser MSI true color which is a flux clone and aimik 2 however you say that one Norton online backup Norton Security my absolute favorite we've got SCM which is an annoying useless application we have sizing options which is the most annoying application that pops up and follows your mouse cursor when you move things around the screen we have steel series engine for the the RGB LEDs on the keyboard we have the synaptics pointing device driver that you would expect however it has some extra stuff on it windzip enough said and xsplit gamecaster which is probably the only one of those that add some level of value to the customers buying this thing and it's not running in the background all the time how hard is that why do we need all this other stuff on there so that's what they load up here now the question why do they do it we have to think about why if we're going to criticize it I'll tell you why the reason manufacturers do this and MSI will tell you as they did us that other people do it so it's okay the reason they do it is because they have MDF agreements or other agreements that would be marketing Development Fund either money or favors exchange hands we're not slamming them for that that's a business thing it happens all the time for example system integrators will sometimes get MDF from Intel AMD or Nvidia to ship systems to reviewers with certain parts in them it's something that happens in the industry it's not necessarily the best thing but we can forgive it to some extent this is a little crazy because the problem here is that msih HQ is not weighing the pros and cons to a way that they can actually see what's happening to their business when you have this level of software on here because you're saying to Norton we can install you on x million system shipped Norton's like great that we set up a deal let's do that then you say it to someone else and someone else someone else then you install a whole bunch of your own stuff on there MSI you're damaging your reputation people will use the laptop think it's bad because it's slow or slows down and they'll either blame windows or they'll blame you if they blame Microsoft I'm sure Microsoft's not happy about that they turn around they go buy Apple because Apple's always worked for them it just works it's out of box it's fast it boots so quickly this can do all of that but you don't let it so I suppose that covers most of this why the answer is because they have agreements with companies does that make it a good reason no and hopefully MSI will consider terminating some of those agreements in the future because until that point in time these laptops out of box are garbage until you fix them the hardware is perfectly fine MSI you're ruining good Hardware with bad software so that's all for this video because this video was a bit critical in some ways we're not going to run a normal ad on it what we will do is say that if you want to help us out making these types of videos because our independence is what allows us to do this you can go to patreon.com Gamers Nexus and help us directly join in on Discord and talk about the content thank you for watching subscribe for more MSI no hard feelings you know that we like your products when they are good but this is not a good move hopefully you fix it in the future I'll see you all next timelet me ask you a question how many control panels do you need MSI probably won't like this video they'll probably ask us to change the title again like they did last time we published something critical of them but the point isn't to be mean to MSI the point is not to make msih HQ upset over things because it's not glowing praise the point is to show that this is not an acceptable state for a product that is otherwise perfect perfectly fine MSI you are ruining your laptops by installing all of this bloatware on it and it's going to damage your reputation that's the point not trying to step on toes I'm not trying to burn Bridges I'm trying to say you can improve this you can make it better in fact I've said this before I said it last year when we did a laptop bloatware test and found that depending on which bloatware was running there was sometimes tremendous Improvement in games particularly in frame times to the point that if you didn't know better about bloatware and that it was on there and you were a consumer who bought the thing you might go return it because the numbers don't match benchmarks because it looks like garbage because there's all this stuff in the background running all the time in fact in that opening shot that we had for this video there were a lot of control panels on the screen I didn't install those those were there out of the box in fact I spent about an hour uninstalling those and everything else on the system but the thing is there are 11 control panels just in the system tray when you turn it on just turning the system on and that's not even the worst part there are I'm not even sure what the worst part is one of the bad parts is that boot times are heavily impacted by this we did a test pretty simple one out of box configuration push the power button repeat several times how long does it take to boot from cold boot from off the answer for a clean windows install nothing installed but windows was even steam because we figur that's probably normal and a couple of applications that sit in the background or never open at all but not 11 control panels so we tested in that config the answer was about 18 to 18.6 seconds depending on test pass the numbers were 18 18.4 18.4 18.4 18.6 so about 18.4 seconds what happens when you test it out of box when you test it with MSI configuration for gamers it takes about 40 seconds for The Hourglass to stop spinning that was our criteria push the power button when does The Hourglass stop spinning that's when we consider it fully loaded for this 40 seconds and sometimes actually quite regularly if you try to start typing even at that 40c point the typing in whatever you're typing with notepad whatever it is the search bar it will lag so far behind your actual physical human input that it feels kind of like when you're using a phone that is loaded with bloatware coincidentally and all the letters pop up on the screen all at once that's what it feels like using this laptop because that's what happens and then they' they' even got all kinds of stuff like you can drag a window there's this little hovering box that follows you around and that box is to help you pin the window to different corners of the screen it's insanely annoying it slows things down and outside of just the boot time difference which is bad enough that people who don't know any better should absolutely not buy this laptop cuz they would think the hardware is bad which isn't the case and again MSI I'm telling you this because people think this is going to be a laptop because it doesn't boot quickly that's not the problem it is clearly capable of booting just as fast as any other system with Windows on it that isn't loaded with bloatware but outside of the booty and stuff battery life we did some battery life tests we did a few some with gaming like grid Auto Sport on Loop until it died and some that were production focused so we used PC Mark we ran the office workload where it's basically just doing a repeated automated typing test typing web browsing Excel some video playback but not a lot that kind of thing that was tested on Loop it is automated for the the most part we saw about a six to 8% reduction in battery life in this default outof box State versus a clean install after I uninstalled everything for about 40 minutes to 1 hour so it's a 6 to 8% battery life difference that is enough that when you're loading the thing with all his production and workload office workloads you would notice it you're losing sometimes 10 minutes off your battery life sometimes 15 and if you do lighter workload tasks like maybe get rid of the video you're just doing web browsing and typing now that is exacerbated now you have a an amount of battery life that is taken from you that becomes pretty noticeable because of the bloat Weare and again it's not just boot times it's not just battery life there are other performance indicators as well let's take an uncommon performance metric noise we've already shown bloatware and its impact on gaming but noise is not one we've talked about before we took a DB meter we use these all the time for our case reviews pointed at the the laptop 20 inches away from the screen and took some noise measurements if you test when it's a clean install it's not too bad we've got numbers for it and it's really not that bad now gaming sure it spikes up over time we actually have an overtime chart for gaming that will be in the review that shows how the fan ramps up as the load increases but that's gaming that's okay it's not great but you're putting a lot of load on the system you expect the fan to ramp up what you don't expect is to to boot to Windows and hear your fan doing something like over and over and over and the reason it does that is because these things in the background are pinning the CPU in a way that every now and then it'll go oh I got to enter turbo State enters turbo the fan follows and boosts the fan RPM so now instead of having a steady State fan which is much better uh than what we have you have something that's spiky and the delta in noise Peak to Peak is a whole lot more noticeable than just a flat line at maybe 3334 DBA so that's a big deal too just the noise alone gaming performance sometimes we see no impact to frame rate it looks just the same sometimes we see a big impact of frame times like the 1% 1% lows particularly 0. 1% lows but if you plot it as a frame time graph it's a bit easier to see what's going on we can see the impact depending on what software is triggering in the background what it's doing if it's trying to apply anything to the screen if it's trying to uh enter any kind of scans or other different states that may be configured with all these tools audio software all that stuff is on here so depending on that you can lose on frame times in a way that increases the stuttering to a noticeable level and you can lose on your average frame rate maybe not a huge amount depends again on what's going on but with a clean windows install it doesn't happen at all so that's it seems like an easy choice let me give you an idea of some of the applications that come on here just so you don't think that they're actually offering something of tremendous value we'll just do an a toz read through of the programs list in Windows battery calibration burn recovery CyberLink power DVD Dragon Center that's an MSI tool if you couldn't tell Firebird SQL Server Magic's Edition why is there a SQL server or SQL client on here by default I have no idea uh help desk which provides useful popups just kind of randomly while you're using the system that's always nice to have they normally pop up in the bottom right corner whole bunch of Intel stuff that you would expect and then some that you might not want like the pro set wireless software but hey maybe Intel controls them there other things that we don't want killer performance Suite I can't stand killer performance Suite but maybe they have a requirement there because the hardware used what don't they have requirements for maybe Magic's content and sound tools or Magic's Music Maker silver Magic's photo manager 16 Microsoft Office 3 65 Microsoft One drive I guess that's on Windows 10 now MSI remind manager that's another pop-up dispenser MSI true color which is a flux clone and aimik 2 however you say that one Norton online backup Norton Security my absolute favorite we've got SCM which is an annoying useless application we have sizing options which is the most annoying application that pops up and follows your mouse cursor when you move things around the screen we have steel series engine for the the RGB LEDs on the keyboard we have the synaptics pointing device driver that you would expect however it has some extra stuff on it windzip enough said and xsplit gamecaster which is probably the only one of those that add some level of value to the customers buying this thing and it's not running in the background all the time how hard is that why do we need all this other stuff on there so that's what they load up here now the question why do they do it we have to think about why if we're going to criticize it I'll tell you why the reason manufacturers do this and MSI will tell you as they did us that other people do it so it's okay the reason they do it is because they have MDF agreements or other agreements that would be marketing Development Fund either money or favors exchange hands we're not slamming them for that that's a business thing it happens all the time for example system integrators will sometimes get MDF from Intel AMD or Nvidia to ship systems to reviewers with certain parts in them it's something that happens in the industry it's not necessarily the best thing but we can forgive it to some extent this is a little crazy because the problem here is that msih HQ is not weighing the pros and cons to a way that they can actually see what's happening to their business when you have this level of software on here because you're saying to Norton we can install you on x million system shipped Norton's like great that we set up a deal let's do that then you say it to someone else and someone else someone else then you install a whole bunch of your own stuff on there MSI you're damaging your reputation people will use the laptop think it's bad because it's slow or slows down and they'll either blame windows or they'll blame you if they blame Microsoft I'm sure Microsoft's not happy about that they turn around they go buy Apple because Apple's always worked for them it just works it's out of box it's fast it boots so quickly this can do all of that but you don't let it so I suppose that covers most of this why the answer is because they have agreements with companies does that make it a good reason no and hopefully MSI will consider terminating some of those agreements in the future because until that point in time these laptops out of box are garbage until you fix them the hardware is perfectly fine MSI you're ruining good Hardware with bad software so that's all for this video because this video was a bit critical in some ways we're not going to run a normal ad on it what we will do is say that if you want to help us out making these types of videos because our independence is what allows us to do this you can go to patreon.com Gamers Nexus and help us directly join in on Discord and talk about the content thank you for watching subscribe for more MSI no hard feelings you know that we like your products when they are good but this is not a good move hopefully you fix it in the future I'll see you all next time\n"