MSI GT80 Titan SLI

Gaming laptop, especially in the high-end price range, are always vying to deliver the fastest performance and the coolest new features. The MSI GT80 Titan SLI ($ 3,399.99 as tested) is certainly doing that, with a unique chassis that you can open for easy upgrades, built-in mechanical keyboard industry-first, and two powerful Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M graphics card. But being first does not automatically make you the best, so how the GT80 stack up against other premium gaming machines such as Aorus X7 Pro or the Editors' Choice Asus ROG G751JY-DH72X?

Design
The first feature that jumps out about mechanical keyboards, such as those found on the dedicated keyboard, as the Das Keyboard Ultimate 4C and the Corsair K95 RGB. Cherry MX Brown switches, they are key tactile, but not as much as clicky sounds like MX Blue switches and aggressive-looking red backlight, looks and feel great keyboard. It is comparable to a good dedicated gaming keyboard, and easily surpasses the shallow scissor-switch keys used in other gaming laptop. For extra touch that competitive players can appreciate, MSI also throws a keycap kit with gold-colored metal keycaps for the WASD keys, and another key (ostensibly for the Escape key, but it will work in any other key) bearing the MSI dragon logo. The swappable keycaps provide visual and tactile preference for frequently used keys.

Also takes the mechanical keyboard up a lot of room. In fact, it requires far more physical space than usual chiclet-style keys that are used in most laptops, completely changing the size and design of the system. The depth of the requirements of the buttons and switches buttons affect the thickness of the laptop, while also changing how much space can be allocated to the internal components. To compensate for this, all of these components are normally share space with the keyboard chassis instead moved up and packed in a lidded 6-by-18-inch box.

The giant 18.4-inch display is a scale we have not seen in a laptop because the Alienware 18. In 1920-by-1080 resolution, it is big and beautiful, but almost as important as the display itself is the width of 18 enables you-inch screen on a laptop design. That extra room provides ample space for a touchpad located next to the keyboard. It sits right where you can expect a 10-key numeric pad to be, and if you tap the icon glowing numbers on the top left corner of the pad, it lights up with a version touchpad instead.

Obviously, the required depth of the keyboard and the width of the massive 18.4-inch display become apparent that this machine is not built for mobility, but a. GT80 ​​measures 1.93 by 13.02 by 17.95 inches (HWD) and weighs a hefty 9.9 pounds, making it one of the largest gaming laptop we've seen in a long time. It even makes the 1.7-inch-thick Asus G751JY-DH72X look slim. And that's not all you have to haul if you want to drag the laptop on a LAN party; It also has a massive power supply, large bricks weighing nearly five pounds, and a silicone wrist rest to compensate for the loss of the palm rest of the chassis.

In Dynaudio stereo speakers and a built-in subwoofer, audio output is good with strong volume and no distortion, even if the volume is turned up too high. Headphone and headset users get extra treated, with a dedicated amplifier chip also boost the sound quality and quantity for the headphone and audio-out connection. You can also tweak the audio with Sound Blaster Cinema 2 control panel to optimize the settings for your game or media.