REVIEW: MSI GF63 Thin 10SCXR – Business In The Front, Gaming In The Back

MSI is well known for producing gaming laptops with big size and big power at the core.

The Taiwanese tech giant is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to processing power in the laptop department, and the new MSI Thin GF63 10SCXR is a great hero product to help prove this theory.

The new GF63 model arrived at ChannelNews offices hot off the back of our review on the quirky GE66 Raider Dragonshield – so we were ready to get our paws on another similarly powerful machine.

Design

Gaming laptops are notoriously big and bulky beasts, so at 1.86kg and a width of 21.7mm, I have to give credit to MSI for producing a notebook that is reasonably lightweight with a decent amount of processing power.

MSI has a suite of gaming-specific machines for serious players, so the GF63 Thin is aimed at the occasional gamer with a bigger focus on business/everyday use.

This is apparent in the design, which is unassuming and chic.

It’s made with aluminium hairbrush aesthetics and an asymmetric pattern, making the look and feel quite smooth and visually pleasing.

The 15.6’’ display is wide and all-encompassing with Full-HD resolution and 60 Hz. The refresh rate isn’t perfect but for everyday use and a few recreational games here and there, it holds up nicely.

The keyboard is backlit with red LED lights, giving it a futuristic aesthetic, and has big, spaced-out keys that have a smooth finish.

The tracking pad sits comfortably on the middle-left hand side and I found it to be fast and responsive. It feels a tad clunky when clicking it the top and bottom corners, but it is sensitive enough to respond to light tapping.

MSI has placed the power button in the top-right hand corner of the deck, too.

The GF63 Thin has one x HDMI (4K @ 60Hz) port, three USB-A 3.2 ports and one USB-C port.

The charging port is situated in a bit of a random position on the left side, in the middle of the keyboard. I’d prefer it to sit on the top left corner.

Display And Sound

The GF63 ships with an IPS Display, which is supposed to offer enhanced picture from narrow viewing angles.

But it seems the thin bezel has undermined a bit of the display quality as I found there was a slight stutter when flicking quickly between screens.

Other than that, MSI has delivered on the graphics with the 60Hz Full-HD screen. Gaming, YouTube or scrolling aimlessly through news sites – the GF63 has bright, clear picture and minimal lagging.

It will definitely struggle to keep up if you are spending hours continuously gaming at full-throttle. If you want this kind of power, the Dragonshield is probably a better investment.

The GF63 comes with two bottom-firing speakers, which aren’t particularly powerful but have reasonable sound quality at mid-level audio.

Crank it up to the highest and there a little distortion and tinniness, so I wouldn’t be using this laptop as a makeshift music player. It’s loud and clear enough to fill a room, but with such incredible core power I’d expect a bit more bass-enduring audio.

Performance

As previously mentioned, this isn’t the machine for hours of full-throttle gaming. But it will hold up well if you want to switch on a game every now and then and have good graphics, decent refresh rate and minimal lagging.

The GF63 has a Intel Comet lake i7-10750H processor (2.6 – 5.0GHz) and a NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX1650 Max Q with GDDR6 4GB video memory graphics processor, so this certainly isn’t your grandma’s laptop.

It’ll perform any business-centric task, like any Adobe programme, at high-speed and the serious power means it won’t break a sweat even if you have 20+ tabs open and YouTube playing at the same time.

What MSI sacrifices for such high-performance is the fan. Even just idling on charge, the fan control is permanently active and it runs very hot.

When you start gaming, things get even more overheated. MSI compensates for this with the loud cooling fans, which whir uncontrollably when you’re pushing it to the limit.

That’s the price you pay with such a thin model.

The battery on this machine isn’t amazing – MSI says you’ll get 7 hours of juice on a full charge but expect it to be almost cut in half if you’re gaming and operating at full speed.

Battery-saver helps with this but it will downgrade display and performance a fair bit.

Verdict

They say don’t mix pleasure with business, but laptop will be mega-appealing to those who want fun and serious rolled into one cool machine.

The GF63’s performance is outstanding but I couldn’t get used to the crazy overheating.

It has an affordable price at around $1500 – a lot of gaming machines will set you back around $3000 on a good day – it’s a great investment if you want the best of both worlds.

The MSI GF63 Thin can be purchased at this link: https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/msi-gf63-15-6-full-hd-144hz-gaming-laptop-512gb

8/10

PROS

Fast performance

Sleek design

Good graphics

CONS

Overheating

Loud fans