When it comes to performing serious work on a gaming laptop, they were never favorites of road warriors, most of them are heavy, bulky and most truthfully, gaming laptops were never champions in battery life due to its powerful hardware internals. MSI has been attempting to redefine how gaming laptops should be back then with the GS60, it has proven to be a lightweight and powerful machine when compared to the rest of the pack however with poor battery life. The MSI GS30 tends to play the game differently, it is a lightweight 13-inch Ultrabook, comes with a powerful Intel Core i7 quad-core CPU onboard with Intel Iris Pro graphics, and its gaming power is handled by the laptop’s very own GamingDock, which houses a swappable NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 GPU and 3.5-inch mechanical hard drive, is this a machine that the business person gamer would want to consider? We find out.
MSI GS30 Hardware Specifications (2015)
Processor: Intel Core i7-5950HQ Quad-Core (2.9GHz, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz)
RAM: 8GB DDR3-1066(upgradable to 16GB)
Storage: 256GB M2. SATA Raid 0 SSD, 500GB (GamingDock)
Graphics: Intel Iris Pro 6200/NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 (GamingDock)
Display: 13.3-inch Full HD (1920×1080) IPS sRGB Display
Connectivity: 802.11 b/g/n/ac Dual Band, Bluetooth 4.0
I/O Ports: 2 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0, 1 x Killer Gigabit LAN
Battery: 4-Cell
Hardware and Design
Placing the MSI GS30 in a particular product category isn’t going to work, because the GS30 is a mixture of a few great things. First, it has the fire power needed to power the most resource demanding programs thanks to the powerful quad-core Core i7 processor; second, its lightweight form factor 1.2kg makes the machine lighter than a 13-inch Macbook Pro with Retina display, and lastly, this laptop gets boosted with gaming power with its optional GamingDock accessory, hence there is no way of calling the GS30 a vanilla device, we would simply call it a super notebook computer.
For a 13-inch light weight machine, MSI has managed to cramp the needed I/Os most road warriors will require, including two USB 3.0, one USB 2.0, one Killer Gigabit Ethernet, one SD card slot and two gold plated audio and microphone ports, these inclusions make this one of the most complete Ultrabooks in the market despite of its size.
The laptop’s 13-inch display delivers a reasonable Full HD resolution which looks very decent already, color reproduction is accurate thanks to MSI’s TrueColor technology, which also delivers a great contrast ratio that makes blacks look really good.
The GamingDock is an optional but needed accessory to make the GS30 a complete package and it is a very simple concept well executed with needed improvements. To begin with things, the rectangular box house a pair of stereo speakers with a subwoofer that sounds just okay but not impressive, it also becomes home to an additional 3.5-inch hard disk and a PCI-E 3.0 graphics card. Our review unit comes with a 500GB hard drive and MSI’s Twin Frozr V GeForce GTX 980 GPU, and just in case you are wondering, these two components are thankfully swappable, making the GamingDock an extremely future proof accessory for the GS30.
User Experience
The GS30 is the most powerful 13-inch laptop that I’ve used to date, there’s literally no 13-inch machine in the market that offers M2.SATA Raid 0 storage configuration and a high performance Core i7 processor under the hood, the GS30 screams performance in whatever tasks you threw at it. A warm boot would take less than 10 seconds, applications will launch with a blink of an eye, coupled with that stunning Full HD display, you really can’t ask for more for a great work laptop.
The GamingDock proves itself to be a useful accessory if I ever need to game with the laptop, and when MSI calls it a dock, it really is a dock. Unlike Alienware’s Graphics Amplifier, MSI expects you to pair the GamingDock to an external monitor, you then dock the laptop on to the hardware, power it up and boom, it becomes a powerful gaming rig.
However, the bad thing here is that the GamingDock doesn’t work in a hot swap mechanism, which means everytime if you were to switch between the laptop’s built-in graphics and the GamingDock’s discrete GPU, you will need to power down your device and turn it back on again, there have been numerous times where I simply undock the device while it is on standby mode, the laptop sounds a long BIOS beep sound and I know that all my work I’ve done on the laptop is pretty much screwed the next time I power up the machine.
I do appreciate MSI’s effort on building the GamingDock for the GS30, it makes a laptop less obsolete with upgradeable components, however the trouble to make sure your laptop is fully powered off when switching modes has become a chore for my memory at times, however it is all about getting used to a product.
Battery Life and Benchmarks
Since the MSI GS30 doesn’t allow you to game on battery, you can expect that the Intel hardware to deliver some great battery life and in my tests, the laptop has lasted me 3:45 hours on MSI’s ECO mode, it is no champion of course but for such powerful hardware internals, I have to applaud MSI for being able to achieve that.
3DMark15
PCMark 08
CrystalDiskMark
Verdict – The fastest 13-inch gaming and working laptop with reasonable value
First, the MSI GS30 with GamingDock retails at RM10,999, that’s a crazy amount to pay for a 13-inch laptop, it all comes to how you perceive its value to be very honest. In my case, I will consider the MSI GS30 to be the perfect machine for both gaming and working, this is an extremely fast and portable machine that you will not regret buying in the market should you have thoughts of buying an Ultrabook and a dedicated gaming rig, which both will cost more than what you are paying for the MSI GS30 and its GamingDock. For those who are doubtful of the GS30’s full price tag, take out a calculator and start tapping away for a high performance Core i7 notebook and a GeForce GTX 980 equipped rig, I’m very sure its way more expensive.
The Good
+ Lightweight and portable
+ Generous amount of USB ports
+ Brilliant display
+ Comfortable operational area
+ High performance processor and Iris Pro Graphics
The Not so Good
– Expensive
– Noisy cooling fan
– Inconvenient dock usability
We give the MSI GS30 with GamingDock a score of 8.3/10.
