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日本MSI Stealth GS66 – Top 5 Pros and Cons
Thin and light gaming notebooks have become more and more popular as newer and more efficient hardware with more performance gets released annually or biannually. Today we have a laptop from MSI which has tried numerous times to lead the pack when it comes to portable gaming machines.
However, multiple other brands have been a thorn in the eye of MSI, with the Triton 500 and Razer Blade notebooks presenting some competent opponents in the market. MSI’s answer in 2022 is the Stealth GS66, which brings the most powerful available hardware, along with a display selection that will leave you speechless.
Today we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the MSI Stealth GS66.
MSI Stealth GS66: Full Specs / In-depth Review
4 reasons to BUY the MSI Stealth GS66
1. I/O
The laptop does lack an SD card reader, but the rest of the I/O is packed with ports, including two USB Type-A, two USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) ports with DisplayPort capability, a Thunderbolt 4 port with DisplayPort support, an HDMI 2.1 port, an Ethernet port, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. You can plug up to 4 external monitors, which is quite the screen real estate.
2. Upgradeability
The laptop offers great upgradeability, with up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM thanks to two SODIMM slots that are hidden behind a metal should, for cooling purposes. For storage, we have two M.2 PCIe x4 slots which both support Gen 4 drives.
Here is our teardown video, which shows how to access both the RAM and SSD slots on the notebook.
3. Display quality
The laptop has several displays, with the base model coming with an FHD IPS panel with a 360Hz refresh rate. After it, we have one QHD panel with a 240Hz refresh rate and a 4K UHD panel with a 120Hz refresh rate. We had the pleasure to test the QHD panel which showed excellent viewing angles, a max brightness that was slightly lower than we expected with 269 nits in the middle of the screen, 267 nits as an average for the whole area, and a maximum deviation of 6%. The contrast ratio is decent at 1120:1.
In terms of coverage, the panel fully covers the sRGB gamut, along with 96% DCI-P3 coverage.
We tested the accuracy in the standard sRGB color space, with both the stock settings (left) and with our Design and Gaming profile applied (right). The profile lowered the dE value significantly, down to 1.9.
The second accuracy test was performed with a D65 white point in the DCI-P3 space. Here the dE value after the application of our profile remained largely unchanged, going down to 1.8.
Buy our profiles
Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) configurations with 15.6″ QHD IPS Sharp LQ156T1JW04 (SHP153C).
*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].
Read more about the profiles HERE.
In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.
Office Work
Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.
Design and Gaming
This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.
Health-Guard
Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.
Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount
4. Cooling
MSI has put a pretty decent cooling solution on the inside, with six heat pipes for the CPU and GPU, while a seventh one is there for the VRMs and GPU memory. The number of fans has been increased to three, while a total of four heat sinks siphon heat away from the internals.
Max CPU load
In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.
Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.
| Intel Core i7-12700H (45W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min |
|---|---|---|---|
| MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) | 3.84 GHz @ 2.82 GHz @ 83°C @ 124W | 3.55 GHz @ 2.67 GHz @ 85°C @ 107W | 3.19 GHz @ 2.42 GHz @ 83°C @ 85W |
The CPU never heats up that much, maintaining a stable temperature of around 83°C during the entire test. In terms of clock speeds, things are looking good as well, with both the P and E-cores running at decent speeds in prolonged tasks.
Real-life gaming
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan) |
|---|---|---|---|
| MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) | 1277 MHz @ 71°C @ 92W | 1250 MHz @ 75°C @ 91W | 1314 MHz @ 64°C @ 92W |
The RTX 3080 Ti doesn’t run as high as other 30-series GPUs, but that seems to be GPU specific as other RTX 3080 Ti-powered laptops share the same characteristic. The temperatures on the other hand are great.
Gaming comfort
The outside of the notebook gets hot, with the hotspot on the keyboard reaching a max temperature of 46°C.
1 reason NOT to buy the MSI Stealth GS66
1. Battery life
Despite the 99.9Wh battery pack, the notebook lasts for only 6 hours and 46 minutes of Web browsing, or 6 hours and 1 minute of video playback. As always that’s done with the Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.
