msi lcd panel testing made in china

But what separates each manufacturer from the other? To cut their way through the fog, MSI sent out invitations to one of their mainland Chinese factories, in the hopes of showing just why they call themselves a “true gaming” company.

The factory in question is situated in Kunshan, a Jiangsu province city home to a modern industrial zone, multiple cultural sites, and a footnote for hosting the 2013 World Cyber Games. It’s one of three factories that MSI operates — the others are in Shenzhen, China and Jung He, Taiwan — and its duties include marketing, research and development, and production for the wide range of products the company carries. The 272,000-square meter facility also houses worker dormitories and recreational sites, though the focus of our visit was solely gaming notebooks.

Before plodding around the assembly lines in disposable shoe covers and hair nets, Yang walked us through a brief presentation on what made MSI’s notebooks special.

How, then, does MSI effectively translate a bespoke process to fit mass-production? The answer lies in preparation. Every new model introduced requires detailed research and data collection to find its overclocking limit. They’ll record configuration information, temperature performance, clock speeds, and work load every five seconds, in a test that’s repeated simultaneously by hundreds of other notebooks. With access to more than a million logs, MSI can then data mine to determine the best parameters to use for that model.

That’s step one. The next phase involves repeating the tests with those determined parameters to see if it passes their profiling. If it doesn’t, they’ll tweak those parameters and back to the testing marathon we go. Only when it succeeds will it be set as the default overclock setting, allowing end-users to have a souped-up system that’s also safe and stable. Yang stresses that last point, as any improper trial-and-error fiddling may wind up damaging the chips instead.

In a similar vein, every single display panel will have been individually calibrated by the time it leaves the factory. Advanced recognition technology and testing allows MSI to spot imperfections of less than 0.5 millimeters, and each panel that passes will be tagged with a unique binary file derived via a color parameter identification tool. Once assembled, this matching binary file will then be installed onto the system.

Yang says that the displays are all calibrated to be “dead center” according to three key areas: color temperature, color gamut, and grayscale gamma; the display tools MSI provides are only there so a user may tweak things according to their personal preferences and lighting conditions. He quotes an actual scenario where a SEA-based user complained about the screen’s color, only for the on-site tech to discover that the user’s definition of “perfect” ended up having a color temperature of over 7,000 Kelvins – higher than the 6,500K standard used for calibration.

MSI are just as thorough when it comes to their other tests, all of which are conducted over an extended period of time. This not only simulates whether the notebook can sustain its load but also serves to check display burn-in and, most crucial of all, thermal performance.

In addition to the regular performance checks and screenings are the reliability ones, to see that every notebook can stand the rigors of daily use. We didn’t get to see these first-hand although MSI did provide the video embedded below, covering everything from parts durability to withstanding extreme conditions. For instance, it needs to survive storage in temperatures as low as -20 degrees Celsius, or to not crumble when exposed to a g-force of 40 – for comparison, Yang says a human experiences about 9 g in a rocket launch.

It’s worth mentioning that MSI designs and builds these rigs themselves, to accommodate for the many different shapes, sizes, and functions of their products. Complementing these automated tests are the user-experience ones, encompassing a wide variety of approaches. One involves a worker physically testing the mechanical keyboards for their tactile response, while on the other end there’s the Out-of-Box simulation to mimic a user’s first experience with their brand-new system.

The latter not only includes basic tasks such as running system updates, anti-virus scans, or video streaming but also compatibility checks with various VR systems. Also of interest is how MSI monitors and reacts to Windows 10’s surprise automatic updates, which Yang says has proven to be a problem for both the company and its customers. Now, they’re able to identify problems early, broadcasting the notice and solution through their various user support and outreach channels.

In all, every system must pass more than 1,900 carefully planned and conducted tests before, during, and after assembly. Depending on the model, some systems may even wind up going through seven days’ worth of testing. And if all this is starting to seem mind-boggling, consider the fact that they load these packed notebooks into a truck bound for a 800km round-trip journey and, 24 hours later, test them again. It’s the only way to be sure, Yang says, as transportation is the most unpredictable aspect in production.

Primed from our briefing at the R&D Center, we made the short trek over to building A for an actual peek into production. While MSIK was, in Yang’s words, smaller than most factories, having design, manufacturing, sales, and the supply chain all operating from within the same compound, under the same management, allowed the team to be both lean and quick to react. That combination is also a strength of MSI’s, granting them the leeway to do “unusual” things such as the individual display panel calibration for their True Color branding. Vendors that rely on OEM factories, on the other hand, would no doubt have to fork out extra for implementing such a service. The other plus for MSI here is that they’ll need less time to get a new product designed and ready for the market.

Our first order of business was the printed circuit board line, which Yang explains is quite different from others. As PCBAs for notebooks aren’t conventional due to their small form factor, MSI has had to develop their own set of processes to suit what they were trying to do with advanced components.

Immediately after placement, the boards begin the reflow stage starting with this reversed insertion machine, which replaces manual soldering for improved quality and efficiency. Yang highlights this as one of the special processes MSI employs in their PCBA production, with the other called Print-In-Place. Both work together to help accommodate any special components they might use.

Once the boards are through they’ll undergo various testing, such as at this automated optical inspection machine which checks for missing components or defects.

Our next scheduled stop was building C, where the main assembly line featuring the GE63 and GE73 notebooks were. Interestingly, we came across a separate building where MSI produces touch displays for cars. The company also produces touchscreens for mobile devices, which is why they have a Class 1000 clean room for their assembly.

MSI are now designing their internals with easy accessibility in mind, so that future upgrades or a thorough cleaning wouldn’t be excessively complicated.

While the rest of the notebook is carefully put together with WiFi antennas, memory sticks, and other components, workers further down the line begin assembling the lid and display panel.

Eventually, notebooks are loaded onto the carousel racks for a series of tests. These include testing wake times from various states of hibernation (session saved to RAM versus saved to disk), checking thermal performance and overclocking under heavy load, as well as running third-party software such as 3Dmark and Furmark

To combat the tedium of repeating the same task for weeks, Yang reminds us about the license incentive program they run at MSI. The more licenses a worker owns, the higher their pay, and thus the more varied their duties become. And since other factories do not have a similar program, the workers aren’t interested in leaving either.

At the end of the day, Yang says that what makes MSI truly special is how they’re all gamers themselves. It may sound cliché but the ultimate test of a product lies in the hands of their users, and what better way to understand their target market than to be a part of it themselves?

We aren’t talking about corporate-enforced directives, either. Engineers, operators, line leaders, and various other employees all hold a passion for games in one form or the other, so much so that in 2014 the factory formed the MSIK Gaming Club, an official title for what had already been in existence for some time.

And to make the best out of the situation, this is where they take their latest systems for some real-world testing – be it Dota 2, Overwatch, or some new AAA titles. They’ll check for glitches or performance slumps, find out what the optimal in-game settings are, and basically try out anything a hardcore PC gamer might want to do with their system. The feedback received from the Club is considered critical within the company and must be addressed before the product launches.

We left the tour with a newfound appreciation for the philosophy and methodology behind MSI’s approach to gaming notebooks. They’ve certainly invested heavily in all aspects of production, from attaining the best tools and technology money can buy to developing the best workers they have under their employ. And that’s not to speak of the clear talent and passion of the one man driving it all.

So the next time you run into a MSI notebook at a roadshow, think of the gaming enthusiasts that excitedly huddled around a computer to design it, the massive testing gauntlet it had to endure to get there, or that one worker who made sure the backspace key works and feels just right. It may sound trivial but this obsessiveness over quality definitely grants some degree of comfort when spending all that hard-earned money.

The OncoMate™ MSI Dx Analysis System is a fluorescent, multiplex PCR-based test to detect microsatellite instability (MSI). MSI is a form of genomic instability caused by the insertion or deletion of repeating bases within microsatellites during DNA replication due to the failure of the mismatch repair system (MMR) to correct these errors.

The OncoMate™ MSI Dx Analysis System (Cat.# MD3140) is available in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. For information about availability in other regions, including the FDA-cleared product in the United States, please contact us.

MSI-H tumors express protein neoantigens that can result in lymphocyte infiltration. Some tumors can block immune activation through the expression of PD-L1. This tumor induced inhibition of immune cell activity can be overcome with immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapies, which enhance the immune response against tumor cells and generally improve a patient’s response to these treatments1–3.

The MSI gold standard research tool is now an IVD, enabling better access for clinical diagnostics laboratories. The OncoMate™ MSI Dx Analysis System is a CE-Marked IVD Medical Device, leveraging the same informative MSI loci relied on by global clinical researchers for almost two decades. The improved system is designed for use as a diagnostic with cancer patients to better inform testing and treatment options.

In a retrospective study of colorectal cancers, the OncoMate™ MSI Dx Analysis System showed concordance with sequencing and immunohistochemistry4 and is intended to identify patients that may benefit from further diagnostic testing.

The OncoMate™ MSI Dx Analysis System targets five mononucleotide repeat markers (BAT-25, BAT-26, NR-21, NR-24 and MONO-27) that were selected for high sensitivity and specificity to alterations in repeat lengths in samples containing mismatch repair defects5,6. For quality control and sample authentication of matched tumor and normal samples, the system uses two pentanucleotide repeat markers (Penta C and Penta D) that were selected for their high level of polymorphism and lower degree of MSI.

The OncoMate™ MSI Dx Analysis System is part of a broader workflow that includes DNA extraction from FFPE tissue samples, quantitation of DNA, amplification of specific microsatellite markers using multiplex PCR, fragment separation by capillary electrophoresis, and data analysis and interpretation.

Capillary electrophoresis data requires further analysis to assign marker and size information. We have provided fragment analysis marker panels and analysis settings for download. The provided settings were used during the performance evaluation of the OncoMate™ MSI Dx Analysis System and may required optimization for your chosen capillary electrophoresis equipment.

A recent paper published by researchers in Italy compared the performance of detecting MSI in endometrial samples using four molecular tests including capillary electrophoresis (OncoMate™ MSI, Promega), microcapillary electrophoresis (TapeStation 4200, Agilent), and high-resolution (HRM) analysis approaches (Idylla™ MSI Test, Biocartis; EasyPGX® ready MSI, Diatech Pharmacogenetics). Across the four methods, OncoMate™ MSI demonstrated the highest concordance with IHC results and best sensitivity for dMMR tumors.8

The authors note that for endometrial samples MSI detection should rely “…on fluorescent capillary electrophoresis because its resolution is able to identify….critical cases that could be misdiagnosed with other strategies”.

Because MSI is highly correlated with Lynch syndrome, and more recently has been associated with response to immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapeutics, several professional organizations recommend analysis of MSI and/or DNA mismatch repair protein expression (dMMR by IHC) for many different cancer types 9-14.

Clinical oncology associations that endorse universal screening of colorectal and endometrial cancers for MSI to identify candidates for further diagnostic testing for Lynch Syndrome include the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology9,10,14.

EMSO recognizes the importance of MSI and dMMR testing to support patient eligibility for ICI therapies. The recommendations surrounding MSI testing for this purpose have been summarized in the literature13,14.

The ESMO Translational Research and Precision Medicine Working Group recommends MSI testing on the spectrum of Lynch Syndrome tumors because of the potential usefulness of ICI in these cancers and because the identification of Lynch Syndrome can benefit extended family members. They recommend using MSI by PCR and dMMR by IHC together.

Our team is dedicated to partnering with you to ensure success and has broad experience training laboratories. We offer an online user training course as well as virtual and in-person training to get your lab up and running with the OncoMate™ MSI Dx Analysis System more efficiently.

Luchini, C., et al. (2019) ESMO recommendations on microsatellite instability testing foe immunotherapy in cancer, and its relationship with PD-1/PD-L1 expression and tumor mutational burden: a systematic review-based approach. Ann Oncol. 30.1232–1243.

Murphy, K.M. et al. (2006) Comparison of the Microsatellite Instability Analysis System and the Bethesda Panel for the Determination of Microsatellite Instability in Colorectal Cancers. J. Mol. Diagn. 8, 305–11.

Intended Use Statement: The OncoMate™ MSI Dx Analysis System is a PCR-based fragment-sizing test used to determine microsatellite instability (MSI) status in DNA purified from human formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples derived from solid tumors.

The OncoMate™ MSI Dx Analysis System generates allelic profiles from tumor and non-tumor FFPE tissue samples from the same patient through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of DNA microsatellite markers, followed by size separation of the amplified markers using capillary electrophoresis. MSI status is determined by comparing the allelic profiles. An expansion or reduction in the length of repetitive DNA sequences in the tumor cell DNA when compared to the normal cell DNA from the same patient indicates MSI. Normal and tumor tissue from the same patient must be tested at the same time and data from both samples must be available for comparison for results to be valid.

The OncoMate™ MSI Dx Analysis System is not intended to diagnose a specific disease. It is intended for use with patients already diagnosed with cancer who may benefit from additional genetic testing. Test results obtained using the product must be interpreted by healthcare professionals in conjunction with other clinical findings, family history and laboratory data. This product is intended for professional use only.

The notebook assembly is a lot more manually intensive as it"s built up progressively by hand, even though each person does a single job like screwing down the motherboard, installing the memory, applying thermal paste, or clipping down the plastic panels. In fact, it takes the same amount of line space to assemble and pack it, as it does to doing simple tests to check the entire system works correctly - audio test, every-single-key keyboard test (imagine having a mash keyboards all day), display, ports, touchpad etc - it all gets looked at.

This doesn"t really mean that notebook manufacturing takes twice the space as motherboard manufacturing because people typically take up less space then machines, and the line goes up one side and down the other. Ingeniously, MSI uses the centre column between both the lines to test the power adapters and notebooks charging capability, so the available space is efficiently used.

The MAG series was born through rigorous quality testing and designed to be a symbol of sturdiness and durability. Focused on providing the best user experience, the MAG series has a simple installation process coupled with a friendly user interface making it the best choice for entry level gamers.

Visualize your victory with MSI Optix MAG273R2 esports gaming monitor. Equipped with a 1920x1080, 165hz Refresh rate, 1ms response time panel, Optix MAG273R2 will give you the competitive edge you need to take down your opponents. Enjoy extremely smooth, tear-free gameplay with built-in NVIDIA G-SYNC Compatible technology when paired with a compatible NVIDIA graphics card. Make sure you can hit your mark with all the latest technologies built-in the MSI esports gaming monitors for competitive play.

Optix series gaming monitor is equipped with an IPS panel that produces no image distortion and minimum color shifts when viewed from different angles. Additionally, the IPS panel will offer clear images and instantly optimize screen color and brightness to ensure that you enjoy every scene at its best.

Optix monitors are equipped with a 165hz refresh rate and 1ms response time panel which has the most benefit in fast moving game genres such as first person shooters, fighters, racing sims, real-time strategy, and sports. These type of games require very fast and precise movements, which an ultra-high refresh rate and fast response time monitor will put you ahead of your competition.

The MSI Optix Gaming monitor is built to make you as comfortable as possible while gaming. Through adjustments of tilting (-5°~20°), lowering and raising (0~130mm), you can easily change the position of the monitor for maximum ergonomics and optimum viewing experiences.

With MSI Mystic Light, the Optix MAG series gaming monitor lights provide a soft ambient light that can easily be synced with any other Mystic Light enabled gaming product. Select any of the colors from the palette using your smartphone or the Mystic Light App to match your system style to your taste. Or just turn on gaming echo, letting your monitor back light dance to music you play on the computer.

By having a large viewing angle, MSI gaming monitors has more leeway for placing your monitor in your setup without giving up the optimal viewing experience. Colors and details will stay sharp at more angles compared to other monitors with less viewing angles.

Generic monitor displays normally have a flicker-rate of about 200-times per second, which is unnoticeable to the naked eye, but can cause fatigue over time. Certificated by TÜV Rheinland®, MSI Anti-Flicker technology provides a very comfortable viewing experience by reducing the amount of flicker.

Bring you’re A-game with the Optix MAG270CR curved gaming monitor. Equipped with a 1920x1080 resolution, 165Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time VA panel, the Optix MAG270CR will help you see your opponents and aim with ease. Built with AMD® Adaptive Sync technology, the MAG270CR can match the display’s refresh rate with your GPU for ultra-smooth gameplay. Make sure you can hit your mark with all the latest technologies built-in the MSI Curved Gaming monitors for competitive play.

Bring you"re A-game with the Optix MAG270CR curved gaming monitor. Equipped with a 1920x1080 resolution, 165Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time VA panel, the Optix MAG270CR will help you see your opponents and aim with ease. Built with Adaptive Sync technology, the MAG270CR can match the display"s refresh rate with your GPU for ultra-smooth gameplay. Make sure you can hit your mark with all the latest technologies built-in the MSI Curved Gaming monitors for competitive play.

MSI gaming monitors use a curved display panel that has a curvature rate of 1800R, which is the most comfortable and suitable for a wide range of applications from general computing to gaming. Curved panels also help with gameplay immersion, making you feel more connected to the entire experience.

Optix MAG270CR is equipped with a VA LED panel that supports refresh rate up to 165Hz, which is essential for gamers who are serious about the quality of their gaming experiences. For players of many popular fast moving game genres such as first person shooters, fighters, racing sims, real-time strategy, and sports, the speed and precision of the display are crucial when it comes winning. Optix MAG270CR’s 165Hz refresh rate provides gamers with real-time image of the game, allowing them to react faster than their opponents and reaching for victory.

By having a large viewing angle, MSI gaming monitors has more leeway for placing your monitor in your setup without giving up the optimal viewing experience. Colors and details will stay sharp at more angles compared to other monitors with less viewing angles.

MSI gaming monitors are optimized to reduce the strain on your eyes by reducing the total amount of blue light displayed by the monitor to ensure you can game for longer periods of time without fatigue.

Common monitors flickers around 200 times per second. Though unnoticeable to the naked eyes, the flickering may cause eye-fatigue over time. MSI Anti-Flicker technology, by reducing the amount of flickering, will keep gamers’ eyes comfortable over long periods of gaming.

The MSI Optix series is optimized with all of MSI’s latest gaming desktop systems. Through the MSI gaming center that is pre-loaded with MSI gaming desktops, you can choose between 7 different visual modes to enhance gameplay, media viewing, or even general computing.

The MSI Optix Gaming monitor is built to enhance your gaming sessions to be as comfortable as possible. With adjustments to tilt, swivel, and height, easily change the position of the gaming monitor for maximum ergonomics and optimum viewing experience.

MSI, MSI gaming, dragon, and dragon shield names and logos, as well as any other MSI service or product names or logos displayed on the MSI website, are registered trademarks or trademarks of MSI. The names and logos of third party products and companies shown on our website and used in the materials are the property of their respective owners and may also be trademarks. MSI trademarks and copyrighted materials may be used only with written permission from MSI. Any rights not expressly granted herein are reserved.

Excellent design, powerful hardware, and solid display make the MSI Creator Z17 a compelling MacBook Pro alternative for creatives who don"t want to jump on the Apple Silicon bandwagon.

Ever since Intel debuted its 12th-Gen Alder Lake CPUs with a hybrid E (Efficiency) core + P (Performance) core architecture, we"ve been itching to get our hands on one. In theory, this new architecture should give 12th-Gen Intel laptops a boost in both performance and battery life, potentially giving Apple"s latest 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros a bit of competition for creators" hard-earned money. Our first chance to test this theory comes in the form of MSI"s Creator Z17: a computer that"s targeted at creative types who want a PC laptop that doesn"t skimp on performance, design, or build quality. In other words: a jack of all trades, master of all... or at least a "master of most."

You may remember the MSI Creator 17 (no Z) from our review earlier this year. That was an impressively powerful laptop, but it was still using last year"s 11th-gen CPUs and there were a few things about its design that left us wanting. The trackpad was small, the keyboard was mushy, the whole laptop was quite thick, and the RAM was basically inaccessible unless you were willing to remove the entire motherboard. The 4K miniLED display made some of that worth it, but from a day-to-day use perspective, it was designed as a desktop replacement that spent most of its time in the studio.

As it turns out, the MSI Creator Z17 ticks mostof those boxes. It"s lighter and thinner than the Creator 17, features a much friendlier and sleeker design and, most importantly, it"s as fast or even faster than the equivalent MacBook Pro in many photo and video editing tasks.

The MSI Creator Z17 comes in three different configurations depending on the CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage you"d like. The base model features a Core i7-12700H and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070Ti, 32GB of DDR5-4800 RAM and 1TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage for $3,250, while the maxed out model upgrades you to a Core i9-12900H, an RTX 3080Ti, 64GB of RAM, and 2TB of PCIe 4.0 storage for a much steeper $4,600.

No matter which configuration you choose, you"ll get a factory-calibrated 17.3-inch QHD+ Touchscreen LCD with a 165Hz refresh rate and approximately 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space:

If MSI offered a 64GB version with a Core i7 and an RTX 3070Ti for $3,500, that would be a very tempting upgrade – some of the most impressive performance gains we"ve seen in this laptop are probably due to the DDR5-4800 RAM – but they do not. As it stands, our recommendation would be to pick up the A12UGST-049 and then upgrade your RAM and/or storage yourself (more on that later).

The one place where MSI fell flat is upgradability and, like virtually all of the high-performance 17-inch PCs on the market, battery life. But otherwise, the Creator Z17 represents a huge design and usability upgrade compared to the Creator 17 and a small-but-substantial step up over the smaller Creator Z16.

True, the comparison to the Creator 17 isn"t entirely fair – they are technically two different series in MSI"s lineup – but as of right now, the Creator 17 and the Creator Z17 are the only two consumer-grade 17-inch "Creator" laptops that MSI sells. And if I had to pick between the two, I"d take the Z17 with its cleaner, sharper, and sleeker design language every day of the week.

It looks more professional, and while the MSI dragon logo is never going to scream "executive suite," the laptop hits a nice balance of cool styling and professionalism.

Notably missing compared to the MSI Creator 17 we reviewed in January or the ASUS Studiobook 16 OLED we reviewed in March is an ethernet port. This is an unfortunate omission since many creatives like to plug in to high-speed networking when they"re at home or at the studio, where they might be working directly off of network attached storage. A 17-inch laptop like this is often used as a desktop replacement, and an RJ45 port would have been a nice addition.

Still, the Z17"s port situation is slightly better than the ports you get on the latest MacBook Pros, and much better than the ports in something like the Dell XPS 17. Neither of these machines have any USB Type-A ports, and the Dell doesn"t have an HDMI port either. That means carrying around a dongle or two depending on the peripherals you intend to use. With MSI"s configuration, I can confidently leave all the dongles at home.

In other words, the Creator Z17 is technically user upgradable, but you"ll have to be comfortable completely disassembling your laptop if you want to do anything more than add storage. Removing the bottom panel and the battery is extremely easy on this model—easier than it was on the Creator 17—but everything else is a huge pain.

One of the most hyped features of the Creator Z17 is the included pen, which boasts over 4,000 levels of pressure sensitivity and can be used for digital art or as a productivity tool that allows you to move the mouse by hovering up to 1 cm above the display. MSI"s marketing materials make a big deal about how this is "the world"s first 17-inch pen-touch laptop," but I"ll be honest: I don"t really have much to say about it.

When the MSI Pen is magnetically attached to the side of the Creator Z17, it covers up both thunderbolt ports, the headphone jack, and the battery indicator light.

But it was the actual act of using the pen that turned me off from the experience entirely. There is simply no good way to draw on this display with the MSI pen, because the chassis isn"t designed to lie flat in any orientation. The screen does open a full 180 degrees, but even in this orientation, it"s not flat and will rock back and forth as soon as you put pen to display. Unless you find a way to "prop" up the screen from behind, there"s no way to set up a usable drawing angle.

The display on our MSI Creator Z17 covers 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut with solid color accuracy and a ton of control thanks to MSI"s "True Color" app.

To that end, we wanted to find out if the Z17"s 16:10 QHD+ panel is worthy of daily driver status for photo and video work, or if it"s just a high-refresh-rate gaming panel with good gamut coverage but poor color performance out of the box. What we found was a solid display with acceptable color performance, but with a few notable drawbacks.

Using a more basic SDR display with no local dimming and a peak brightness of just under 400 nits is definitely going to be a disappointment for some, but it"s not all bad news. The QHD panel doesn"t just throw away resolution – it trades that resolution for speed. Where the Creator 17"s miniLED panel maxes out at 60Hz, this one can churn out up to 165Hz, making it a hybrid between a gaming display and a content creation display.

One of the biggest positives about MSI"s "Creator" laptops is that MSI gives you a ton of control out of the box. Using the built-in MSI True Color app, you can select from several pre-defined color space presets like sRGB, AdobeRGB, and Display P3, you can manually adjust your display"s RGB gains and choose the Native panel gamut through the Customize Panel, and you can use one of three supported colorimeters to re-calibrate your display at home.

This is about as close as you can get to the control you"d expect from a dedicated photo-editing monitor, with all of these adjustments applied through MSI"s proprietary "True Pixel" technology before any sort of .icc or .icm profile is applied through Windows Color Management.

MSI"s True Color app allows you to choose between several color space modes, or you can adjust the Native panel gamut manually through the Customize tab.

But the Native panel gamut isn"t the setting you should use out-of-the-box. If you"re unable to calibrate or even profile the display, your best bet is to use one of the three factory-calibrated color space modes: sRGB, Display P3, or AdobeRGB. All of these perform a lot better than the Native profile if you set your display profile to match, and while the factory calibrated white point is still not properly tuned to D65, it"s not as bad as the Native gamut.

In our testing, the sRGB display mode covers 96.3% of sRGB and comes in at an average Delta E of 1.65 with a maximum Delta E of 3.6. The RGB primaries are a little bit off the mark, hence the lower coverage, but both the average and maximum Delta E values are within what we"d call nominal tolerance, with most of the issues arising in the gray balance:

Finally, the AdobeRGB display mode – which is the worst of the bunch – comes it at 87.7% coverage in our testing, with an average Delta E of 2.16 and a maximum Delta E of 4.5.

These higher values are because the panel isn"t actually meant to cover AdobeRGB completely, which is reflected in the verification report below: the largest Delta E values are recorded for colors in the green and cyan regions, where the panel"s green primary can"t get saturated enough to create the colors between the dashed line (Adobe RGB color gamut) and the rainbow colored line (the panel"s actual output) that connects the Red and Blue points of the triangle.

Assuming you have a colorimeter that"s supported by MSI True Color, like the X-Rite i1Display Pro Plus (now sold as the Calibrite ColorChecker Display Plus), you have two options to get better accuracy than the reported values above.

This is the second caveat if you want to use the Creator Z17 for color critical work: MSI"s built-in calibration tool uses the wrong colorimeter correction, and you should not use it. Based on our testing, the built-in calibration tool uses the "White LED" spectrum to determine how to automatically adjust your display to produce the appropriate white point and accurate sRGB/DisplayP3/AdobeRGB profiles.

We don"t have time to dive into the technical details here, but the short version is that MSI tells your colorimeter that the laptop"s display primaries look like this:

On the one hand, MSI"s True Color app gives you more control over the output of your display than just about any other laptop we"ve tested, and that should be celebrated. Plus, even if you don"t have a colorimeter handy, the built-in color space presets already get you about 98% of the way there, allowing you to use this laptop confidently out of the box.

On the other hand, the factory calibration leaves something to be desired, missing the D65 white point by a lot, and the built-in calibration tool is basically useless for this particular laptop because (and I"m assuming here) MSI decided to use one single colorimeter correction for every laptop that ships with MSI True Color... the wrong one.

The final piece of the creator laptop puzzle is, of course, performance. It"s one of the main reasons we wanted to review the MSI Creator Z17: to see how Intel"s 12th-Gen laptop chips with dedicated "performance" cores compare against the latest from Apple and AMD in a head-to-head showdown.

At import—a CPU-heavy task—the MSI Creator Z17 cleans up. Both the M1 Pro and M1 Max have the same number of CPU cores, so they perform identically, while the ASUS laptop"s Ryzen 9 5900HX is showing its age. This allows the Intel i7-12700H to breeze through and take a big win at every single file size.

Exports are a different story. The latest version of Lightroom Classic (11.4) introduced GPU-accelerated exports, and the MacBook Pro 16 with its 32-core M1 Max GPU and 64GB of shared unified memory runs away with the win. However, the MSI with its combination of DDR5 memory and RTX 3070Ti GPU one-ups the ASUS across the board and beats the MacBook Pro 14 in all but the smallest export.

Exports again go to the MacBook Pro 16 with its high-powered 32-core GPU and copious RAM. However, the MSI Creator Z17 still bests the MacBook Pro 14 overall: beating it when exporting the large Sony and Fujifilm files and matching it when working with the Canon or Nikon files.

The Creator Z17 can"t quite match up to the more powerful (and expensive) MacBook Pro 16 in our comparison, but it far surpasses both the MacBook Pro 14 and the ASUS Studiobook 16. For MSI, this is the biggest win of all, showing that the Creator Z17 punches well above its weight in the most time-consuming video editing tasks.

Performance is one area where the MSI Creator Z17 really shines, showing off what Intel"s latest CPU can do when its paired with DDR5 RAM and a powerful NVIDIA RTX GPU. We were only able to test it against the laptops we had on hand, but put these numbers up against any of our previous PC reviews and you"ll see just how much of a leap this new hardware provides.

Sure, it can"t run at this speed on battery, the way the Apple Silicon Macs can. But if efficiency isn"t your main concern and you"re usually near a power outlet, the MSI Creator Z17 gives you more performance bang for your buck in many applications—especially when video editing.

The MSI Creator Z17 is an excellent laptop that has a good chance of keeping some potential Apple Silicon converts over on the Intel bandwagon. Performance is essentially neck-and-neck with the equivalent MacBook Pro and far exceeds what we"ve seen from the 11th-Gen Intel and AMD Ryzen 5000 laptops we"ve tested.

Thanks to Intel"s 12th-Gen chips and some very smart design decisions on the part of MSI, the Creator Z17 is the MacBook Pro 16 competitor we were hoping for.

It"s not a perfect device. I"ve already griped about the high difficulty level of RAM upgrades, the mediocre battery life, gimmicky pen, and wonky factory calibrated display. Taking into account that MSI is basically charging the same price as Apple for equivalent specs, and it drops the Creator Z17 down to 4 out of 5 stars.

But if you were worried that nobody would seriously challenge Apple Silicon on the creative front for many years – as we were – it seems that those worries were misplaced. Thanks to Intel"s 12th-Gen chips and some very smart design decisions on the part of MSI, the Creator Z17 is the MacBook Pro competitor we were hoping for. For users who value upgradability and gaming performance, it"s almost certainly the better buy.

Limited performance. Despite being equipped with top hardware, this is what the MSI Katana GF66 delivers. After several benchmarks in our test, the question presents itself whether MSI cut corners in the wrong places. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 and the Intel Core i7-11800H are unable to make use of their full performance potential.

The MSI Katana GF66 11UG-220 is one of a whole series of new gaming laptops with Intel processors of the 11th generation and RTX 3000 series graphics cards that MSI has introduced only in May of 2021. The exterior of the simple, yet elegant laptop was designed by the illustrator Nagano Tsuyoshi, an artist who is also known in Japan for his Star Wars covers.

According to MSI, the Katana laptop was created with the same high craftsmanship that is also necessary for creating the famous Japanese swords. At least, the test configuration with an Intel Core i7-11800H, 16 GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, and 512 GB NVMe SSD promises a high performance. As the operating system, only FreeDOS is preinstalled. For our test, we installed Windows 10 Home on the system. The competitors for this test include the Asus TUF Dash F15, the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16, the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED, the Razer Blade 15, and the Schenker XMG Neo 15.

Among gaming laptops, the case of the MSI Katana GF66 stands out particularly with its inconspicuousness. The laptop is cased completely in black plastic. In terms of the design, MSI also uses only few accents. However, these few elements ensure a distinctive design. Brushed surfaces on the sides, the small angles above the display, the dragon logo on the lid, and the angled hinges give the gaming laptop an aggressive exterior when you look at it again.

In terms of the workmanship, the MSI laptop shows only a single weakness. While all the gaps are tight and the case stability is quite high, the display hinges tend to wobble a bit too easily. The display, which can also be opened up to a 180° angleusing a single hand, even drops lower when there are only some slight vibrations.

Schenker XMG Neo 15 Tiger Lake MSI Katana GF66 11UG-220 Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16ACH6H (82JQ001PGE) Asus TUF Dash F15 FX516PR Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XD Razer Blade 15 Advanced (Mid 2021) DIN A4 ❌

With only 3 USB Type-A ports and a single USB Type-C port, the connections of the KatanaGF66 are quite limited, particularly since the USB-C connection does not offer any Thunderbolt or PowerDelivery functionality. This means that the HDMI connection on the right side is the only option to connect an external display. You also have to do without an SD card slot in the MSI gaming laptop.

In the MSI Katana GF66, an Intel AX201 adapter is handling WLAN ax and Bluetooth 5.2. In terms of the selection and position of the antenna, MSI did everything right, so that the transfer rates using the WLAN card are above average.

The current Intel processors like the one in our test unit support the necessary security features for Windows 11 such as TPM 2.0 and SecureBoot. MSI did not integrate any additional security features into the gaming laptop.

In principle, the MSI KatanaGF66 can be opened fairly easily. There are 12 PH1 screws that fasten the bottom cover to the base unit. After removing them, you can then go around the gap around the cover with a plastic prying tool to get access to the insides. However, the provider of our testing unit loaner has asked that we don"t break the manufacturer"s seal. We therefore cannot offer you any views into the insides of our test unit. But peeking through the large fan vents, we can still take some guesses.

MSI offers a 24-month manufacturer warranty for the GF66. Defective devices are picked up and repaired at a central location from which they are then also sent back to the customer.

The matte 144-Hz display panel with a Full HD resolution shows quite good response times. And at 321 cd/m², the display is also fairly bright. However, larger halos can form in some image areas that are also clearly noticeable during some dark image sequences. In our test unit, the bright spots are concentrated on the right side of the display.

The contrast ratio of the MSI laptop is fairly high, but some halos are noticeable in certain scenes. Only by reducing the display brightness by about 20%, these brighter areas won"t be as noticeable in dark sequences anymore. Then the display is able to convince with a saturated black. While a 91.3% coverage of the sRGB color space isn"t bad, considering that this is a gaming laptop, it could have been a bit more. You should also use a color profile under Windows. The average color deviation of the display could be reduced significantly by using our ICC file, which you can download from the link in the info box. Once it is calibrated, the display produces a fairly good image.

MSI offers a large variety of configuration options for the Katana GF66. Our test unit is equipped with an Intel Core i7-11800H processor, an NVIDIA®GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU, 16 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, and a 512-GB NVMe SSD. In addition, our laptop offers the option to expand the storage. The manufacturer"s website also shows many other configurations with RTX 3050, 3060, and 3070 graphics cards, as well as i5 and i7 processors with 8 or 16 GB of working memory. The configuration options also include an available M.2 slot. In addition, the gaming laptop is available with or without Microsoft Windows 10.

The system performance is at a good level. The laptop offers sufficient available resources for office tasks, surfing, gaming, and image and video processing. However, with 6666 points in PCMark 10, the MSI laptop does not perform at the high level of other gaming laptops. One of the reasons for this could be traced back to the power supply. At only 180 watts, the power supply is sized extremely small. According to HWinfo, the CPU was using more than 74 watts of power in the test. Since the Nvidia chip also demands up to 100 watts of power, the supplied power is insufficient for the whole system, if all the components are supposed to perform at their highest levels. The working memory, display, SSD, WLAN, and other components also need power. In addition, the system performance of the laptop depends on the values adjusted in the UEFI and on the fan mode. We performed several attempts to optimize the system performance before running the following benchmarks. However, the fact that MSI does not offer any Windows software to do this (at least at the time of the test on their German home page), the process is quite cumbersome and requires several reboots and test runs.

In mains operation, the laptop performs subjectively at a high level. All the applications start quickly and the laptop responds immediately to inputs. On the other hand, the MSI GF66 appears a little more sluggish in battery operation. The benchmark using PCMark 10 confirms this. A more than 2000-point difference to mains operation is in parts clearly noticeable.

With DPC latencies of 952 µs, the MSI gaming laptop falls into the average of the test devices. This is another instance of Microsoft"s kernel mode driver (WDF01000.sys) leading to problems. Depending on the upgrade, there could be some improvements here. The GF66 mastered the reproduction of our 4k 60-Hz YouTube test video with zero dropped frames.

The laptop edition of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 is one of the fastest graphics cards for laptops. The dedicated graphics card with 5120 shader units has 8 GB of GDDR6 working memory at its disposal. While the working memory could be fully used up by the current games, it is sufficient for the Full HD resolution of the MSI GF66. However, the results of the 3DMark benchmarks show that the graphics card is unable to develop its full potential. Other gaming laptops with the Nvidia chip achieve significantly higher points.

The MSI laptop delivered good results in all the games we tested. The frame rates at full display resolution were more than acceptable even in the highest quality settings.

dB(A)0102030405060708090Deep BassMiddle BassHigh BassLower RangeMidsHigher MidsLower HighsMid HighsUpper HighsSuper Highs2039.749.839.838.845.1253744.241.235.940.8314548.149.742.847.9403334.63430.134.25028.326.940.840.730.36337.434.335.227.336.9802724.4251827.410025.620.420.417.226.212527.121.919.615.927.516027.324.22417.627.120029.522.520.819.728.725028.920.720.21527.731531.621.42113.930.740031.120.819.412.131.550031.422.320.712.629.763033.323.823.212.532.580032.422.522.511.832.9100036.526.825.912.236.1125039.127.627.512.338.5160041.628.227.61240.3200038.923.322.812.139.1250040.523.122.812.339.9315036.219.419.212.936400032.916.716.113.133.1500033.216.115.313.132.663003014.713.913.629.2800026.414.313.413.3251000021.713.813.11321.11250018.313.61312.9181600016.412.812.11215.5SPL48.835.334.825.148.2N5.921.90.65.7median 31.4median 21.4median 20.4median 12.9median 30.7Delta3.93.33.21.73.130.122.223.324.127.228.62829.230.331.231.832.134.83638.137.236.637.138.940.238.538.740.140.739.336.8332823.219.650.47.4median 36.64.1hearing rangehide medianshow medianFan NoiseMSI Katana GF66 11UG-220Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16ACH6H (82JQ001PGE)

The speakers of the MSI GF66 sound quite tinny and are not particularly loud. If the fans run at full speed, the volume of the speakers is hardly sufficient. Fortunately, you can also connect external speakers via the audio port or Bluetooth.

dB(A)0102030405060708090Deep BassMiddle BassHigh BassLower RangeMidsHigher MidsLower HighsMid HighsUpper HighsSuper Highs2038.837.12535.937.53142.846.54030.134.65040.741.76327.341.4801831.510017.229.312515.935.116017.637.720019.738.62501547.931513.952.240012.154.750012.659.463012.562.980011.870.7100012.273.9125012.368.916001264.8200012.161.3250012.361.4315012.961.7400013.162.3500013.161.9630013.661.6800013.363.5100001359.91250012.959.6160001259.3SPL25.178N0.639.4median 12.9median 61.3Delta1.75.335.335.132.931.831.83236.535.132.428.93328.936.328.848.32761.52752.924.860.92462.822.763.32269.521.267.82174.82075.919.472.718.97117.770.117.86917.671.817.668.117.671.417.673.717.670.417.571.617.671.617.669.617.459.717.583.630.662.51.5median 69.6median 17.84.62.432.935.232.926.922.326.921.620.121.629.725.229.733.233.733.23733.7372822.42820.224.620.218.639.718.617.750.617.722.25822.216.758.516.713.263.513.214.165.414.111.270.611.210.873.710.810.866.810.810.660.610.611.36011.31156.31110.65510.611.259.211.211.464.611.411.565.311.511.752.911.711.85411.811.751.211.711.752.611.711.456.311.41151.31124.176.124.10.636.90.6median 11.5median 58median 11.51.85.71.8hearing rangehide medianshow medianPink NoiseMSI Katana GF66 11UG-220Apple MacBook 12 (Early 2016) 1.1 GHzLenovo Legion 5 Pro 16ACH6H (82JQ001PGE)

The power consumption of the MSI GF66 gaming laptop is significantly below average, and the laptop is clearly more efficient here than most of its competitors.

With more than 5 hours while surfing and more than 9 hours of idle operation, the battery in the MSI laptop delivers fairly decent runtimes. Under full load, the 70 minutes of battery life are also decent, if you consider the high system performance. Overall, the current gaming laptops have gained some endurance. With these values, the GF66 laptop would still have achieved quite a good result last year, but currently this only places it in the middle of the field.

The MSI Katana GF66 11UG-220 is a solid device for gaming. However, you will look in vain for any special performance or equipment characteristics in this laptop. On the other hand, it does not have to hide with its performance either. At least in the mobile PC area, the performance of the current Intel processors approaches that of the powerful AMD processors. With the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, you will at least get a decent gaming experience.Unfortunately, the MSI Katana GF66 does not develop its full potential.

The available software for the gaming laptop (at least on the German MSI homepage at the time of the test) leaves room for improvement. We would at least wish for a tool to control the performance without having to reboot the laptop. The drivers of the keyboard could also use some improvement.

Feast for the eyes. Selecting a laptop with a good LCD panel is essential for an enjoyable viewing experience. In this article, we will look into several factors that determine an ideal LCD panel for a laptop, including display size, resolution, refresh rate, and other characteristics that gamers should be looking at for a gaming experience that is both immersive and offers a competitive edge at the same time. We take the implementation of LCD displays in MSI laptops as examples to explain the basics. (Sponsored article.)

Display technology seems to be pretty straightforward at first sight — just decide on the resolution and you"ll be good to go, right? Wrong. A lot of stuff goes on behind the scenes to ensure vivid visuals for an enhanced viewing experience. Modern laptop displays have come a long way and bring increased complexities that need to be properly evaluated to ensure that you"re getting your money"s worth. Factors such as screen size, resolution, refresh rates, response times, color gamut coverage, and panel choice and quality are all variables that can make or mar the viewing experience. That is the reason Notebookcheck tests out each of these parameters in all our laptop reviews.

In this article, we will take a look at how these parameters are factored in while deciding on a laptop display for gamers. We will restrict our discussion to LCD panels since OLED displays are still yet to mature enough to be used as gaming displays. We illustrate some of the concepts by showing examples from MSI gaming notebooks such as the MSI GT76 9SG.

The LCD panel size (measured diagonally) directly influences the laptop"s chassis. The general LCD panel sizes used in MSI laptops include 14, 15.6, and 17.3-inches. Thin and light laptops usually use 14-inch and 15.6-inch screens while desktop replacements can go up to 17.3-inches. A screen size that aids your workflow is very important as is the display resolution, which we will come to shortly. Designers, photo and video editors, and workstation users would do best with larger displays whereas internet surfers and document writers can make do with the smaller ones as well. Gaming and entertainment can also benefit from bigger screen sizes for a more immersive viewing experience.

Refresh rates have a direct impact on the overall viewing experience. Basically, refresh rate denotes the number of times an LCD panel can refresh its image data. A display with a refresh rate of 60 Hz can refresh its on-screen content 60 times a second. Most laptop displays today offer a default 60 Hz refresh rate with some panels even offering up to 144 Hz. Higher refresh rates result in a smooth viewing experience without any perceivable lag in gaming or even while interacting with GUI elements in general.

While 144 Hz is a high-enough refresh rate, this year, MSI"s laptops have upped the ante by offering 240 Hz panels as well. This eliminates any instance of screen tearing and enables competitive gameplay in fast-paced titles where every single frame can mean the difference between winning and losing.

Below is an example of black-to-white and gray-to-gray response time measurements in the MSI GT76 9SG gaming notebook. As you can see, the GT76 has some of the lowest response times, making it an ideal choice for competitive gaming.

The human eye can discern a wide range of colors and shades, but an LCD monitor can only reproduce a limited part of the visible color spectrum. The range of colors that can be reproduced by an LCD display constitutes its color gamut. Support for a wide color gamut means that the LCD panel can deliver more accurate color.

Modern LCD panels usually refer to coverage of a certain color gamut standard to convey to the buyer a sense of what to expect from the display"s color reproduction abilities. Commonly used standards include sRGB, NTSC, and Adobe RGB. We will discuss more about color gamut standards and color accuracy in our upcoming article on laptop LCD displays for content creators.

sRGB is the commonly used color gamut standard across LCD monitors, printers, and most digital cameras. However, the overall color range of sRGB is very limited and does not include highly saturated colors. Adobe RGB overcomes this limitation, and displays supporting this color gamut standard can display a much more vivid color profile, especially when considering the greens. The image below illustrates this nicely.

The choice of LCD panel influences all the factors listed above. Commonly used laptop LCD panels fall into three categories: Twisted Nematic (TN), In-Plane Switching (IPS), and Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (IGZO) panels. Let"s have a brief look at each of them.

In a typical TN panel, the TN liquid crystal (each crystal molecule corresponds to a pixel) is sandwiched between two electrodes and polarizers oriented in perpendicular phases to each other. So in an uncharged state, i.e. when current is not passed, light cannot pass from one polarizer to the other as it gets effectively blocked. When current is applied, the TN liquid crystal molecules bend or "twist" the light coming from the first polarizer by 90 degrees so that it can now pass through the second polarizer. Before getting through to the second polarizer, the light passes through color filters for red, blue, and green.

This simple arrangement allows TN panels to offer very low response times. TN panels still constitute the majority of laptop displays as they can be configured to offer response times as low as 1 ms (gray-to-gray) and true 120+ Hz displays on a restricted budget making them an ideal choice for gaming displays. However, TN panels have narrow viewing angles and can only use 6 bits per RGB color, requiring the use of workarounds such as dithering to produce 16.7 million colors.

IPS displays are similar to TN displays for the most part except for the orientation of the liquid crystals. Unlike in TN panels, there is no helical twisting of crystals involved. Rather, the IPS liquid crystal molecules rotate by 90 degrees "in-plane", i.e. horizontally, to allow light to pass through and they are aligned to the display plane at all times. Both the electrodes are placed on the first polarizer so less light from the source can pass through compared to TN, requiring the use of much brighter light sources.

Compared to TN panels, IPS panels offer excellent color reproduction and wide viewing angles but are generally more expensive to produce. IPS panels make an excellent choice for graphics professionals who value color accuracy above anything else. IPS panels generally offer a standard 60 Hz refresh rate, but higher refresh rate options are also available nowadays. A point to be noted is that all IPS panels suffer inherently from some sort of IPS backlight bleeding (IPS glow). IPS glow cannot be avoided, but proper choice of panels during quality control can minimize its effects considerably.

Unlike the difference between IPS and TN panels, IGZO refers to the type of transistor used and not the liquid crystal orientation. IGZO transistors can be used in all kinds of LCD panels including TN, IPS, and even OLED.

Another advantage with IGZO is high electron mobility (20 to 50x more) compared to a-Si, which means better conductivity of current with much smaller transistor size. Although IGZO panels are expensive to produce, they have high refresh rates, higher pixel densities compared to typical a-Si TFT panels and significantly lower leakage current, making them an excellent choice for gamers. A still image displayed on an IGZO-TFT panel consumes way less power as the pixels remain charged without the need for continuous transistor refresh.

MSI not only offers high quality TN panels with fast refresh rates for gamers but also has 240 Hz IGZO options available in premium gaming laptops such as the GT76, GE65, and the GS65.

In this article, we have provided a brief overview into what goes into the design and selection of LCD panels for gaming notebooks. Although you can hook up your laptop to an external desktop monitor for enhanced multitasking, the primary display quality is very much essential when you go mobile. The factors to be prioritized depend on the target audience. For gamers, the primary considerations include low response times and high refresh rates, while professional users place emphasis on color accuracy and higher resolutions. For creatives who also game, it is essential to choose a panel that caters to both work and play. We will be looking into laptop LCD display choices for creative professionals in a subsequent article, so stay tuned for that.

We hope this primer on LCD panel selection for gamers was helpful in offering a high-level know-how into this important aspect of laptop purchase. Watch this space for more upcoming laptop 101 articles, including LCD panel design for creative workflows, touchpad design and more.

Besides this careful component matching it’s ensured that the latest GeForce RTX Turing graphics are at the centre of MSI laptops. Whether playing blockbuster games like Battlefield V with ray tracing for the very best image quality or working with creative apps like Autodesk 3DS Max, Adobe Premiere Pro and Lightroom or DaVinci Resolve, RTX Laptops are true "workhorses" for professionals, students, and gamers alike. They are perfect for combining leisure and work.

For our thermal testing, we used our Optris PI 640 infrared camera to measure the laptop’s thermals. For more information about how we test, be sure to check out our Measurement Science article. We captured a thermal image during idle, and after 15 minutes of a Furmark GPU stress test. During the Furmark test, a temperature log of the GPU diode is recorded using Aida64.

We used the SpectraCal C6 Colorimeter to measure the Leopard Pro"s display. Be sure to check out our Display Testing Explained article for a full description of our test methodology.

RGB balance is accurate at low brightness, but it quickly loses balance; red levels fall drastically, while blue and green levels increase. DeltaE 2000 should ideally stay below a value of 3, but brightness levels above 30% increase DeltaE values too much. The gamma levels very slightly shift between 2 and 2.4 between 0 and 50% brightness, but then even out at higher levels. The 2.2 is the ideal gamma point, and the Leopard Pro maintains an excellent average of 2.1994. The Leopard"s Grayscale DeltaE 2000 is lower than the Asus Strix 15 and Alienware 15 R3, which is good. However, the overall Average DeltaE 2000 is higher than the Asus, the Alienware, and the Gigabyte P37X v6. Basically, the MSI Leopard Pro"s overall color differences need improvement, but its grayscale difference isn"t too bad.