**MSI GL65 Leopard Laptop Review**

As I delved deeper into my experience with the MSI GL65 Leopard laptop, I was struck by how much it defied expectations. With its profile changed to "Balance" mode in MSI's Dragon Center software, I expected a significant boost in performance and efficiency. However, what I got was a relatively modest increase in speed and a decrease in noise levels, but not as significant as I had hoped.

Changing the profile from "Balance" to "Turbo" mode pushed the CPU towards 4 GHz, causing it to run at an average temperature of 95 degrees Celsius. While this may be sufficient for some users, I'm concerned about the potential risks of throttling during intense gaming sessions or other CPU-intensive tasks. As a result, I would recommend leaving the profile in "Balance" mode to avoid any potential issues.

On the other hand, changing the profile from "Turbo" to "Silent" mode did indeed reduce the noise levels by a significant margin, making it much more comfortable to use during extended periods of gaming or video playback. However, the speed boost was relatively minimal, and the laptop still runs considerably warmer than I would have liked.

In terms of cooling, the fans on the GL65 Leopard are easy to clean and maintain, which is a big plus in my book. The battery is also easy to replace and can be upgraded to 64 GB or more, depending on your needs. Additionally, there's no soldered nonsense here, making it possible to upgrade storage and add a secondary 2.5-inch drive if desired.

One area where MSI could improve is in the standardization of storage options. In some regions, such as the Netherlands, it seems that only 500 GB SSDs are available, which can be a bit limiting for users who need more storage space. However, this can be easily addressed by upgrading to an external hard drive or upgrading the internal storage themselves.

The battery life on the GL65 Leopard is surprisingly good, considering its size. I was able to get around 4 hours of productivity and 5 hours and 43 minutes of Netflix watching out of it, which is respectable for a laptop of this size. However, it's worth noting that this is not as impressive as some Ryzen-based laptops in the same price class.

One aspect of the GL65 Leopard that did surprise me was the marketing surrounding its "giant speakers." While they're certainly louder than average, I wouldn't say they're particularly special or noteworthy. The webcam, on the other hand, is a fairly standard 720p model that gets the job done for occasional video calls.

In conclusion, my experience with the MSI GL65 Leopard laptop has been largely positive, but with one major exception: the display. While it's perfectly fine for school or casual gaming, I found it to be somewhat lacking in terms of color gamut and response time. Thankfully, the 144Hz version should address these issues, and users can opt for the GP65 model instead.

Overall, if you don't mind a slightly thicker and louder laptop, and you're willing to sacrifice some display quality for a good balance of performance and price, the GL65 Leopard is definitely worth considering. With its good keyboard, upgradeability, and gaming performance, it's a solid choice for users who want a reliable and fast laptop without breaking the bank.

As I wrap up this review, I'd like to remind readers that there are some important considerations when choosing a laptop, such as display quality, storage options, and cooling systems. By taking the time to research and compare different models, users can find the perfect fit for their needs and budget. And with the GL65 Leopard, MSI has proven itself to be a solid choice in the mid-range segment, offering a great balance of performance, features, and value.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi guys nada here and today i'll be taking a look at the gl65 leopard which is a mid-range gaming laptop from msi now it's not a thinnest nor the lightest it doesn't have crazy specs or a lot of rgb it is just a typical gaming laptop that should just offer a lot of gaming performance for your money now as always you will have some different options and different prices depending on where you live in the world my model here has a six core intel coi 710 750h and rtx 2060 max p which is always nicer to see than the max q version it has 16 gigs of ram a 500 gig ssd and 120 hertz ips panel now for this particular model you will have to pay around 1500 euros here in the netherlands or around thirteen hundred dollars in the us so let's check it out and see how it performs and how it compares to other laptops i've tested so far let's go this video is brought to you by ifixit and their pro tech toolkit the protac toolkit has all the tools and accessories you need to repair your hardware whether it's a pc phone tablet console and so on it is made of great quality materials and ifixit backs that claim up with a lifetime warranty get yours using the links in the description below now i think the gl65 looks and feels like a mid-tier gaming laptop it weighs 2.3 kilos and it is 27.5 millimeters thick so it is definitely not the thinnest nor the lightest 15-inch laptop on the market but it will still fit most bags and backpacks and if you mostly use it at home you won't really mind the size it has a very old-school look to it with those big vents and red details and red leds and the very visible red dragon logo on the back now build quality is mid tier as well the chassis is mostly plastic with a thin sheet of metal on the top cover it is decent enough overall the hinges are sturdy the panel shows barely any flex but there is some flex in the keyboard it is very sensitive to fingerprints as well both on the outside as well as on the inside so be prepared to clean it regularly now this particular model has a red keyboard with red backlighting but there are rgb models available as well and this goes for both the gl65 and the gp65 which is pretty much identical but with gray color on the inside instead of black now the keyboard itself is really nice and used the actuation feels good both for typing and fast paced gaming and i absolutely love that they included a full size numpad there is a button for some turbo cooling on the top right and next to it there is another button that is supposed to open dragon center software just be careful not to turn off your laptop by accident now the touchpad is a bit basic it is a precision touchpad with a plastic surface it's pretty accurate and not really sensitive to accidental wrist contact and i personally like that they added dedicated buttons but they are quite tough to press and they do have quite a bit of resistance to them so it's fair to say that it is not as nice as some of the new extra-large glass pads that msi is using for high-end models but it works just fine and gamers will use a mouse anyways now there is one fast usb 3.2 gen 2 type c port 3 usb 3.2 gen 1 type a ports a gigabit lan an hdmi port a mini display port separate audio and microphone jacks and a fast sd card reader now the only real thing missing here is thunderbolt support the position of some of those usb connections is not really that ideal i mean plugging anything other than a small dongle into those front right ports right here will just be in the way of your mouse and you'll constantly bump into it while gaming now putting them a tiny bit higher up or on the back of the laptop would have been much nicer at least in my opinion now let's talk cpu performance most gl65 and gp65 leopards will ship within six core intel core i7 10750h like i have right here it is a pretty fast cpu that does especially well in single core performance but in multi-core workloads it does get beaten by the new amd ryzen cpus which can be found in cheaper alternatives still it is more than fast enough for tasks like photo editing or 1080p video editing and 4k editing is also possible if you let adobe premiere use your gpu instead now the cpu definitely doesn't hold back games and this is where this laptop just shines it uses a proper 115 watt geforce rtx 2060 and it is outperforming the other rtx 2060 laptops by a very nice margin as most are limited to 80 or 90 watts you have no problems playing big aaa titles at high settings or light games at very high frame rates and if that's not enough you can decide to pay a bit more for an rtx 2070 or even an rtx 2070 super version instead but i think an rtx 2060 does hit a nice balance between performance and price now unfortunately this 120 hertz display really is an entry level gaming panel with a roughly 25 millisecond response time and a very poor color reproduction i measured only 54 srgb color gamut a lot of cheaper laptops are being criticized harshly for offering poor color performance so it is really hard for me to accept this from a 1500 euro mid tier laptop it's going to be fine for casual gaming and office applications but it's not great for competitive play or anything that requires any level of color accuracy now even though some other results of the display aren't really that bad contrast is good for example and the brightness is fine for most users they just don't stop this panel from being classified as poor now according to msi's own information the 144hz panel should also be a 25 millisecond panel with poor color gamut however jared from jared's tech already tested the gl65 with 144hz display which showed a 95 color gamut around 5 millisecond response time and around 400 nits of brightness which is actually a great result and this pretty much makes the 144 hertz panel way more attractive than this 120 hertz option i have here now i'm gonna put a link to this article in description down below and even though i really highly doubt that there is anyone here that doesn't follow jared already i'll leave a link to his youtube channel as well because his laptop content and his reviews are purely awesome now when it comes to thermals msi decided to push for performance rather than low temps and noise and you can clearly see and hear that while gaming in assassin's creed odyssey it keeps the cpu at an average 3.8 gigahertz with the occasional boost to 4 gigahertz and at around 91 degrees celsius now the gpu runs at a comfortable 78 degrees but with really high clock speeds actually i mean 1845 megahertz is great for a mobile rtx gpu and it does get pretty noisy uh 50 decibels is not extreme for a gaming laptop but it is quite loud you can play around with the performance profiles but yet again they're a bit confusing now in a cpu heavy game like assassin's creed odyssey changing the profile in msi's dragon center software from balance to turbo doesn't really do much with both modes actually showing a very similar results now changing it to silent mode does cut down the noise by a lot but the speed of the cpu and the gpu only by a bit so it runs considerably warmer and causes the cpu to throttle making silent mode pretty much unusable while gaming now while stressing the cpu only there are more differences in balance mode the clock speed is at respectable 3.6 gigahertz with a comfortable 81 degrees average and it is audible but not extremely noisy at 44.9 decibels i would say those are very nice numbers overall now changing it to turbo mode pushes the cpu towards 4 gigahertz causing it to run at 95 degrees average and again occasionally throttling now since you really don't want your cpu to throttle i think that msi software devs really need to sit down and take some time to tweak some of these profiles but until then i think it's best to just leave it in balance mode as it will be completely fine for cpu workloads as well as for gaming so let's see the internals now the fans are very easy to clean the battery is easy to replace and you can also replace the wi-fi chip if you want to although it is a wi-fi 6 chip so you won't need to replace it at least for a couple of years the memory can be upgraded as well there is no soldered nonsense here you can easily go up to 64 gigabytes if you really want to you can replace the original ssd and you can add a second 2.5 inch drive if you like now some versions of the gl65 will ship with a mechanical drive in that position but you can just upgrade that to an ssd instead if you want to i do think msi should consider making one terabyte ssd standard in the mid and high end segment especially with some games being so large these days i mean in some regions like here in the netherlands you literally cannot buy one of these laptops with anything else than a 500 gig ssd which does feel a bit weak but again if you want to you can upgrade it yourself with some cheap storage now you may have noticed that the battery looks quite small it is a 51 watt hour battery but surprisingly battery life is actually not that bad it ended up doing around four hours of productivity and five hours and 43 minutes of netflix watching and if you just stick to only browsing the internet or just typing you will get a bit over 6 hours i would say it's not as impressive as some of the ryzen based models like the tough gaming a15 but it's really not a bad result now the funny part of msi's marketing is that they say it has giant speakers which aren't particularly large or that amazing i mean they're okay there is enough volume and it is reasonably fine for a laptop but i wouldn't really call them anything else but average if you're looking for some reliable and fast external storage ssds are the way to go it doesn't matter if you're just going to use them to copy some files to work from them for example or to keep your games on they're just such a useful tool to have now the webcam is a fairly typical 720p webcam again nothing special but it will get the job done for the occasional meeting which i pretty much think is more than enough and i think that covers all of it like i said at the start the gl65 is a mid-range laptop and my experience with it completely fits that positioning now the main downside to consider is the fact that this 120 hertz display just isn't that great i mean it's gonna be fine for school or casual gaming but that's pretty much it now thankfully the 144hz version should be much better just double check the specs before you buy anything to make sure it mentions a low response time or at least a good srgb color gamut now alternatively you can look into 144hz gp65 instead which should only come with good displays and generally slightly better specs but then at a slight price premium now aside from this display choice confusion you do get a really decent gaming laptop with a good keyboard with nice upgradeability and you do actually get more gaming performance out of this rtx 2060 than most others in this price class so if you don't mind your laptop being a bit thicker and a bit louder and you don't want to spend more on something a bit more fancy like a gs66 the gl65 leopard is definitely worth checking out now that's it for today i really hope you enjoyed this review don't forget to like this video and subscribe to this channel to never miss a new one bye guys youhi guys nada here and today i'll be taking a look at the gl65 leopard which is a mid-range gaming laptop from msi now it's not a thinnest nor the lightest it doesn't have crazy specs or a lot of rgb it is just a typical gaming laptop that should just offer a lot of gaming performance for your money now as always you will have some different options and different prices depending on where you live in the world my model here has a six core intel coi 710 750h and rtx 2060 max p which is always nicer to see than the max q version it has 16 gigs of ram a 500 gig ssd and 120 hertz ips panel now for this particular model you will have to pay around 1500 euros here in the netherlands or around thirteen hundred dollars in the us so let's check it out and see how it performs and how it compares to other laptops i've tested so far let's go this video is brought to you by ifixit and their pro tech toolkit the protac toolkit has all the tools and accessories you need to repair your hardware whether it's a pc phone tablet console and so on it is made of great quality materials and ifixit backs that claim up with a lifetime warranty get yours using the links in the description below now i think the gl65 looks and feels like a mid-tier gaming laptop it weighs 2.3 kilos and it is 27.5 millimeters thick so it is definitely not the thinnest nor the lightest 15-inch laptop on the market but it will still fit most bags and backpacks and if you mostly use it at home you won't really mind the size it has a very old-school look to it with those big vents and red details and red leds and the very visible red dragon logo on the back now build quality is mid tier as well the chassis is mostly plastic with a thin sheet of metal on the top cover it is decent enough overall the hinges are sturdy the panel shows barely any flex but there is some flex in the keyboard it is very sensitive to fingerprints as well both on the outside as well as on the inside so be prepared to clean it regularly now this particular model has a red keyboard with red backlighting but there are rgb models available as well and this goes for both the gl65 and the gp65 which is pretty much identical but with gray color on the inside instead of black now the keyboard itself is really nice and used the actuation feels good both for typing and fast paced gaming and i absolutely love that they included a full size numpad there is a button for some turbo cooling on the top right and next to it there is another button that is supposed to open dragon center software just be careful not to turn off your laptop by accident now the touchpad is a bit basic it is a precision touchpad with a plastic surface it's pretty accurate and not really sensitive to accidental wrist contact and i personally like that they added dedicated buttons but they are quite tough to press and they do have quite a bit of resistance to them so it's fair to say that it is not as nice as some of the new extra-large glass pads that msi is using for high-end models but it works just fine and gamers will use a mouse anyways now there is one fast usb 3.2 gen 2 type c port 3 usb 3.2 gen 1 type a ports a gigabit lan an hdmi port a mini display port separate audio and microphone jacks and a fast sd card reader now the only real thing missing here is thunderbolt support the position of some of those usb connections is not really that ideal i mean plugging anything other than a small dongle into those front right ports right here will just be in the way of your mouse and you'll constantly bump into it while gaming now putting them a tiny bit higher up or on the back of the laptop would have been much nicer at least in my opinion now let's talk cpu performance most gl65 and gp65 leopards will ship within six core intel core i7 10750h like i have right here it is a pretty fast cpu that does especially well in single core performance but in multi-core workloads it does get beaten by the new amd ryzen cpus which can be found in cheaper alternatives still it is more than fast enough for tasks like photo editing or 1080p video editing and 4k editing is also possible if you let adobe premiere use your gpu instead now the cpu definitely doesn't hold back games and this is where this laptop just shines it uses a proper 115 watt geforce rtx 2060 and it is outperforming the other rtx 2060 laptops by a very nice margin as most are limited to 80 or 90 watts you have no problems playing big aaa titles at high settings or light games at very high frame rates and if that's not enough you can decide to pay a bit more for an rtx 2070 or even an rtx 2070 super version instead but i think an rtx 2060 does hit a nice balance between performance and price now unfortunately this 120 hertz display really is an entry level gaming panel with a roughly 25 millisecond response time and a very poor color reproduction i measured only 54 srgb color gamut a lot of cheaper laptops are being criticized harshly for offering poor color performance so it is really hard for me to accept this from a 1500 euro mid tier laptop it's going to be fine for casual gaming and office applications but it's not great for competitive play or anything that requires any level of color accuracy now even though some other results of the display aren't really that bad contrast is good for example and the brightness is fine for most users they just don't stop this panel from being classified as poor now according to msi's own information the 144hz panel should also be a 25 millisecond panel with poor color gamut however jared from jared's tech already tested the gl65 with 144hz display which showed a 95 color gamut around 5 millisecond response time and around 400 nits of brightness which is actually a great result and this pretty much makes the 144 hertz panel way more attractive than this 120 hertz option i have here now i'm gonna put a link to this article in description down below and even though i really highly doubt that there is anyone here that doesn't follow jared already i'll leave a link to his youtube channel as well because his laptop content and his reviews are purely awesome now when it comes to thermals msi decided to push for performance rather than low temps and noise and you can clearly see and hear that while gaming in assassin's creed odyssey it keeps the cpu at an average 3.8 gigahertz with the occasional boost to 4 gigahertz and at around 91 degrees celsius now the gpu runs at a comfortable 78 degrees but with really high clock speeds actually i mean 1845 megahertz is great for a mobile rtx gpu and it does get pretty noisy uh 50 decibels is not extreme for a gaming laptop but it is quite loud you can play around with the performance profiles but yet again they're a bit confusing now in a cpu heavy game like assassin's creed odyssey changing the profile in msi's dragon center software from balance to turbo doesn't really do much with both modes actually showing a very similar results now changing it to silent mode does cut down the noise by a lot but the speed of the cpu and the gpu only by a bit so it runs considerably warmer and causes the cpu to throttle making silent mode pretty much unusable while gaming now while stressing the cpu only there are more differences in balance mode the clock speed is at respectable 3.6 gigahertz with a comfortable 81 degrees average and it is audible but not extremely noisy at 44.9 decibels i would say those are very nice numbers overall now changing it to turbo mode pushes the cpu towards 4 gigahertz causing it to run at 95 degrees average and again occasionally throttling now since you really don't want your cpu to throttle i think that msi software devs really need to sit down and take some time to tweak some of these profiles but until then i think it's best to just leave it in balance mode as it will be completely fine for cpu workloads as well as for gaming so let's see the internals now the fans are very easy to clean the battery is easy to replace and you can also replace the wi-fi chip if you want to although it is a wi-fi 6 chip so you won't need to replace it at least for a couple of years the memory can be upgraded as well there is no soldered nonsense here you can easily go up to 64 gigabytes if you really want to you can replace the original ssd and you can add a second 2.5 inch drive if you like now some versions of the gl65 will ship with a mechanical drive in that position but you can just upgrade that to an ssd instead if you want to i do think msi should consider making one terabyte ssd standard in the mid and high end segment especially with some games being so large these days i mean in some regions like here in the netherlands you literally cannot buy one of these laptops with anything else than a 500 gig ssd which does feel a bit weak but again if you want to you can upgrade it yourself with some cheap storage now you may have noticed that the battery looks quite small it is a 51 watt hour battery but surprisingly battery life is actually not that bad it ended up doing around four hours of productivity and five hours and 43 minutes of netflix watching and if you just stick to only browsing the internet or just typing you will get a bit over 6 hours i would say it's not as impressive as some of the ryzen based models like the tough gaming a15 but it's really not a bad result now the funny part of msi's marketing is that they say it has giant speakers which aren't particularly large or that amazing i mean they're okay there is enough volume and it is reasonably fine for a laptop but i wouldn't really call them anything else but average if you're looking for some reliable and fast external storage ssds are the way to go it doesn't matter if you're just going to use them to copy some files to work from them for example or to keep your games on they're just such a useful tool to have now the webcam is a fairly typical 720p webcam again nothing special but it will get the job done for the occasional meeting which i pretty much think is more than enough and i think that covers all of it like i said at the start the gl65 is a mid-range laptop and my experience with it completely fits that positioning now the main downside to consider is the fact that this 120 hertz display just isn't that great i mean it's gonna be fine for school or casual gaming but that's pretty much it now thankfully the 144hz version should be much better just double check the specs before you buy anything to make sure it mentions a low response time or at least a good srgb color gamut now alternatively you can look into 144hz gp65 instead which should only come with good displays and generally slightly better specs but then at a slight price premium now aside from this display choice confusion you do get a really decent gaming laptop with a good keyboard with nice upgradeability and you do actually get more gaming performance out of this rtx 2060 than most others in this price class so if you don't mind your laptop being a bit thicker and a bit louder and you don't want to spend more on something a bit more fancy like a gs66 the gl65 leopard is definitely worth checking out now that's it for today i really hope you enjoyed this review don't forget to like this video and subscribe to this channel to never miss a new one bye guys you\n"