Don't buy MSI notebooks, they are crap and here's why

Recently bought the MSI GS60 6QE Ghost Pro, and these are my found problems and considerations that can be extrapolated to any MSI notebook, under my understanding:

- The USB ports are quite tight. You need to apply quite a lot of of force to put and remove usb pendrives. You use the macbook or Sony and it's a pleasure to use. The right amount of pressure, no more, no less.

- The position of the motherboard and connector is awkard, making it a nightmare to disassemble and assemble back, for example for simple stuff as replacing the RAM or SSD drive.

- The exterior quality is bad, specially on those trim plastics whose purpose is to cover cables for aesthetic purposes. Very easy to break them or break the tabs locking mechanisms.

- The trackpad is average to poor quality, and gets depresses with use. You will notice that the left click gets much more dull like it will stick.

- The same will apply to the Steelseries space bar, that is unpleasant to hit, and the sensation will differ depending on the part of it that you hit.

- Cables on the motherboard are badly placed, and even some of them are so short that you can't even move the motherboard without disconnecting the cable, cable that is UNDER the motherboard, making it a nightmare to reconnect it to put the motherboard back in place. Would be that much cost to add two extra inches to a big ribbon cable??!!

- It's impossible to configure it from the website, they don't have online shop. There are a lot of variants, like 4K screen with or without touch instead of 1080p, but in the end you can count only on dealers that are the ones that sell, and they don't have all the variety that you can see listed on MSI's website, specially when talking about configuration option.

- The seller (which is a computer store) sold me the notebook with password protected BIOS. When I asked, told me to remove the main battery and button cell to reset the BIOS configuration, which I had to do myself and broke somethings in the way, because MSI computers are designed like crap with low quality components, except for the Intel processor and Nvidia graphics card, which of course they don't make.

- The RJ45 LAN connector is badly placed. Not only the connector is in the right side, but also in the middle instead of at the end, which can't go because there's the fan exhaust. Wrongly placed the LAN port that you can touch accidentally its cable while playing using the mouse. Well engineered notebooks put it on the left side because most people is right-handed.

- The bezels of the screen is quite noticeable, even compared to older notebooks.

It took me less than 24 hours to submit a return with full refund. I was hoping to get a good gaming notebook to play GTA 5, but probably now I'll look for Dell Alienware or Asus, I believe they are better quality. Getting a desktop is too much space, plus the screen.

 

Right well... Most of this is because of the series of MSI laptop. The MSI GT series machines are the high end gaming laptops with excellent contstruction and overall quality. The GS60 is so thin it has to make compromises. Also some of that stuff is your fault. Breaking some things in the way isn't something you can just blame the machine for. You need to be familiar with the motherboard, as like you found out, the thin gaming laptop ones are often vastly different from other machines. The GS60 series isn't made with you tinkering with it in mind, your not really supposed to open it.

If your going to be doing the same to your next laptop you may want to avoid Asus... The new Alienwares also aren't out yet so we don't know how they'll hold up. Perhaps try a heavier duty machine, or for some thin and light options look at the, Aorus X5, Clevo P650, or Razer Blade. Good luck with your next machine! And be careful with internal components! Many are fragile in all machines!

 

Own opinion

 

Buy the thick GT variants if you wish to upgrade the components without having to fiddle with the motherboard.

 

I bought a GT70 4 years ago and have had little problems with it, I also just bought and new GT73 and it seesm to be just fine so far.

 

Yes, let's extrapolate on all MSI products based on ONE laptop from ONE series.

Yeah, pal, THAT makes sense. I have only seen one post from you - should I extrapolate to your post quality based on this one post?

I'm going on 4 years with my GT60. It's been a very easy laptop to service on my own. I've added an SSD, added 16GB of RAM, upgrade the WiFi card - twice, upgraded the processor from a 3630QM to a 3920XM, and upgraded the graphics card from a 675m to a 970m. Yeah, I could totally do that with a piece of crap!

Your problems could have been avoided with a bit of research on your part. The GS60/70 series has been out for quite a while and there are disassembly guides out there (as well as videos). It's painfully obvious that it's not meant for tinkering. Any changes would either be a PITA to do yourself or should have been done by a reseller at purchase.

You also should have tried to find a local shop that had them on display to see how they are. I've seen MSIs on display at Fry's, Best Buy, Micro Center, and Tiger Direct stores in various parts of the US. That's just smart to do anytime you're going to spend a lot of money on an item.

If you want to tinker, the GT series is what you'd need. Otherwise, try one of the other guys' laptops and see how easy they are to upgrade beyond the basics like RAM and a hard drive. I've torn apart MSI, HP, Asus, Dell, Acer and Lenovo. For pure upgradability and ease of service, you're going to be hard pressed to find much a much more upgrade friendly laptop than the MSI GT series.

 

It seems that some of the issues are your mistake really, like accepting a laptop that has a BIOS password on it, removing that password is the shop problem, not yours to do.

Some other things you could've avoided by researching the laptop and reading reviews online.

 

-All new machines have reasonably tight USB ports. Soon wears off.
-Not your concern. At least you can get to the stuff.
-Devices are not indestructible. We're buying gaming power not build. Shame really.
-The space bar can be a bit rubbish.
-Not your concern. At least you can get to the stuff.
-This is the biggest thing that I have to agree with. There just seems to be random models and it would be amazing to know which model has the card that supports 3x M.2 etc.
-Wow! Come on... At that point you should have returned it.
-Get a left angled RJ45 cable.
-Less bezel on these machines might mean more broken screens.

Glad that you got a refund.

 

I'm coming from a MacBook 2016, the HP Spectre 13, and the XPS 13, all considered to have premium build quality, and the overall build quality of the GS73 feels superb - flawless. Definitely better than the HP. Absolutely no complaints. The touchpad, although plastic, is probably the best I've ever used and everything feels built to last, as I'd expect from an $1800 laptop. The keyboard and spacebar are also study and responsive. My Spectre's spacebar won't even register if I hit it on the corner.

The GS60 is a much inferior laptop compared to the GS73 IMO, but still not a bad one. I think you just didn't know what to expect from an ultra-thin gaming laptop. They are all hard to disassemble, and there is a greater margin of error on some things during the manufacturing process. Shame on your seller for giving you a locked BIOS thought.

If you want quality, $ for $ Asus and Alienware are no better than MSi. Expect to get what you pay for from all three brands. The only ASUS I'd consider is the overpriced G752VT.

 

It's funny how that changes. It wasn't all that long ago - even with the 1st gen MSI Skylakes - that the GS60 was the better of the two and the GS70 was the red-headed step child that got the crap components. Now, it's the other way around.

I don't understand why MSI just can't make the GS60/GS70 series pretty much the same with the only real difference being size. One shouldn't be forced to buy a bigger or smaller laptop than they want just to avoid crap components in otherwise similar models.

 

The main problem is that they sold an "upgradable computer" with mxm technology and didn't respect their wo

rds.

 

Actually, the issue is Nvidia didn't keep to the spec like they had in years past and did something different that isn't quite compatible. Just look over at the Sager/Clevo forum and you'll see the exact same problems over there.

Is it that 2 notoriously upgrade-friendly OEMs suddenly decided to screw their customers, or is Nvidia leaving them holding the bag?

My bet's on the latter.

It's hard to keep a promise when your upstream supplier changes things on you from how they did it for the last several years.

 

After getting rid of the MSi, I got myself an Asus ROG G751JY. It is quite a good laptop, however there's an issue with the motherboard in several Asus models, mine included. The issue is related to USB 3.0 ports. See here my little review and further explanation on the issue:

Asus G751JY short review

 

I guess you need to catch up a bit, Eurocom has released a 1070 Upgrade for the P870DM, and word is they are working on a 1080 Upgrade as well.

So, if Eurocom can do it, MSI can also.



No excuses left for MSI...

 

The Odm/Oem engineers know the direction last year when they designed the new laptops for the 980 desktop version. All newer laptops designed for 980, should easily be upgraded to 1070/1080... But the ODM/OEM's decided that we shouldn't have the possibility to upgrade our almost new machines. You can't blame Nvidia for this!! At least not for the new designed laptop models from last year!!

 

I guess that's because it would require a specific setup (dedicated motherboard module or something like that). I feel more and more inclined each day to buy a desktop.

 

For the Clevo models... The engineers could easily designed new cable/adapter with the correct graphics power connection for older models intended for 980. But the problem is the placement of MMX slots... Clevo screwed us. They only placed the MMX slots 12/15mm different and the rest is almost the same in the newer model vs last year. They know exactly what they did!! Not NGreedias fault. Only the greedy Clevo!! Yeah. Maybe home build phase cooled desktop next.

 

No idea how Clevo is performing currently, but I had a M540G years ago and ended failing everywhere. Clevo, not anymore.

 

I haven't problem with Clevo quality. On my second Clevo now and everything works well. The older W860 from 2010 works as the day I got it. Of course with upgraded graphics. Worse with my AW model. 2-3 times with problems before the machine worked as intended(AW17 - 2013 model). And take a look into the AW sub forum. Several Aw owners of the Aw15/17 Echo models from 2015 and later needed up to 6 motherboard before they get tired But the trick Clevo did this time with the upgrade ability for new graphics in last years models isn't pretty!!