MSI GS77 Stealth review: don’t let the name fool you

Don’t let the name fool you – there’s nothing stealthy about this device.

The MSI GS77 Stealth has long been the portable option among MSI’s gaming elite, and while that fact held dubiously true with last year’s 5.4-pound GS76 Stealth, this year’s 0.79-inch-thick, 6.17-inch Pound GS77 effectively brought this idea to market sun. This laptop is big, thick, and bulky, and while it lacks the light strips and LED grilles that other flashy gaming laptops feature, its RGB keyboard still makes it very clear that it’s primarily intended for gaming.

This isn’t necessarily a huge knock against the device – the GS76 was fairly light for what it was, and the GS77 brought the Stealth series back in line with the rest of the 17-inch market. It now weighs slightly more than Razer’s Blade 17 and Zephyrus S17 by Asus. And it’s almost the same weight as MSI’s more powerful GE76 Raider.

You can see why MSI might want to go bigger, as the chips inside have fried pretty much every case they touch this year. The model sent to us features a 12th-gen Core i7-12900H – one of the most powerful mobile chips in Intel history – paired with Nvidia’s RTX 3070 Ti, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, all of which sport a 240Hz QHD screen supply with electricity.

But the new scope takes away a major advantage the GS77 had over those models: The GS77 Stealth appears to have lost some of what made it desirable as a “portable” purchase. The keyboard is on the flat side, the touchpad is uncomfortably stiff, the battery life isn’t great, and the device is too big and heavy to reliably carry anywhere. What we’re left with is a computer that requires many of the same compromises as the most powerful gaming laptops on the market, without delivering the same exceptional frame rates.

You can find more information about our scoring at how we rate.

The main advantage that the stealth has now is its price. My review unit is currently listed for $2,899. Getting that GPU in the GE76 Raider (which has an even beefier Core i9 and a sleeker design) would be $100 moreduring a QHD Razer Blade 17 with the 3070 Ti would be a whopping $3,399.99. I was also able to find GS77 models for as low as $1,799 (for a 144Hz 1080p screen, an RTX 3060 and 16GB of RAM), while the cheapest Blade on Razer’s website is $2,799 and the Gen 12 Raider begins at $2,299. Still, $2,899 is hardly a budget price, and it’s worth knowing what trade-offs you’re making for that lower cost.

First, the aspect of the GS77 that represents an undeniable improvement over last year: build quality. I’ve fretted over MSI’s case in the past, but the GS77’s base and lid are both sturdy and unyielding. The trackpad collected some fingerprints fairly easily, but the rest of the case wasn’t too much of a magnet for them. It’s a nice looking computer and it hasn’t suffered any scratches or dents after being pushed around in a suitcase for a few days.

Other benefits of previous models remain. There’s a good range of ports, including two USB-C, two USB-A, a headphone jack, HDMI, Ethernet and an SD card reader. (The SD reader is oddly slower than last year, but as other reviewers have noted.) The QHD display makes games look great. There are a whopping six speakers inside, and while they don’t deliver the best audio on the 17-inch market, my games still sounded pretty good. I had no issues with the mics supporting AI noise reduction and the webcam has a physical shutter switch on the side for some quiet.

However, I really can’t imagine using this device as a daily driver for two important reasons: keyboard and touchpad. The keyboard has nice lighting, but is fairly thin for typing and feels spongy rather than crisp. And while there’s a number pad, it makes the keys all a bit cramped. The arrow keys in particular feel small.

And the touchpad is where I really struggled. It’s big, but clicking was harder than I’ve ever experienced on a touchpad. (And it’s pretty loud, too.) I felt like I really had to press down with my finger to register a click. I was about to plug in a mouse (something I don’t do when testing productivity use cases, as a general guide) because I hated navigating with it. These aren’t unheard of compromises when it comes to 17-inch gaming laptops, but they underscore how little I would recommend this as a daily driver.

How do these specs stack up in terms of frame rates? When all sliders are set to maximum, Red Dead Redemption 2 ran at an average of 60 frames per second at native resolution (technically 59.3, but we can call it 60). That jumped to 65 at 1080p. On Shadow of the Tomb Raider At 1080p we saw an average of 83 frames per second with ray tracing on Ultra (maximum setting) and 121 with the feature disabled. At native resolution, these translated to 58 frames per second (another number we can easily call 60) and 86, respectively. All in all more than playable.

The GS77 delivered an absurd 400 frames per second on the CPU mood CS:GO in 1080p and still quite high 286 at native 1440p. The only title that caused problems for the game was cyberpunk 2077, which – at native resolution, at maximum settings, with ray tracing cranked up to “Psycho” – ran at 19 frames per second (but hit 33 at these settings in 1080p).

All in all, these are certainly an improvement over last year’s model’s results, and show that you shouldn’t have any trouble running most modern games at QHD resolution, despite being below what you get with the pricier Core i9 and can achieve RTX 3080 machines. There’s one disappointing omission, though: the GS77 doesn’t support MUX. This component (which both the Raider and Blade have) allows laptops to support adaptive features like G-Sync and can also result in a significant difference in performance. It’s an odd thing to rule out at this price point, and I would imagine many people willing to shell out $2,900 wouldn’t want to compromise.

On other workloads, the stealth was more competitive. It completed our 5-minute, 33-second 4K Adobe Premiere Pro video export test in two minutes and 15 seconds. The Raider beat it by a minute and 56 seconds this time, but it’s one of the few laptops to ever do so. Last year’s 3070 GS76 was 12 seconds slower. (These are not direct comparisons as different versions of Premiere can change over time; they are more intended to give you an idea of ​​how long an export might take.)

The GS77 also beat the GS76, as well as the Blade and other creative workstations like the Gigabyte Aero 16 in the Puget Systems benchmark for Premiere Pro, which tests live playback and export performance at 4K and 8K. (It lost a lot against the Raider). This isn’t a laptop I would recommend to people for office work, so the GS77’s good performance isn’t its biggest draw here.

MSI’s software is definitely not as buggy as it has been in recent years, which is an encouraging sign. With the pre-installed programs, I had no problems adjusting fan profiles and the like. I ran into a bug where the screen would turn off when trying to run games (a problem on a gaming laptop). MSI sent me a replacement device that didn’t have this problem. Still, it’s not what we like to see on $2,900 products.

And then we come to what I see as the biggest compromise here: battery life. I’ve only used this thing continuously for about two hours and 16 minutes on average, with some attempts even lasting less than two hours. This has to be the worst battery life I’ve ever gotten out of a gaming laptop. While it’s common knowledge that cheaper laptops pack less powerful chips, sacrificing battery life on top of that performance is a hard pill (the Raider lasted me about two hours longer with the same workload).

If you’re just looking at the frame rates on paper, this laptop is a good buy. It can run all kinds of games in QHD resolution without burning down your basement.

But the Stealth nickname and the way the line has been historically positioned might mean to some people that this device is a good choice for more than just gaming. It is not; MSI’s changes to the Stealth line have made them more powerful at the expense of other features that made them Stealthy. It’s too big and heavy to constantly carry around in a briefcase or backpack, the battery life isn’t usable for day-to-day work away from an outlet, and the keyboard and touchpad just wouldn’t be my pick for day-to-day use. This isn’t really a portable alternative to the Raider anymore. It’s just a cheaper version of the Raider.

Which is fine if that’s what you’re looking for. But since the Raider offers higher-performing specs, better battery life, more RGB, and a MUX switch for a few hundred bucks more, I think it offers an all-around better experience that’s well worth the money for people shopping in this lineup will be.