MSI GE75 Raider review – the Raider series just got pretty

As usual, MSI has spent a lot of effort into their new gaming laptop. The GE75 Raider is a direct successor to the GE73 Raider, that we managed to cover last year. If you are not familiar with the device – it was a relatively light and thin 17-inch gaming laptop. Apparently, MSI has continued to work in this direction, making their new hardware both thinner and lighter than before.

At the same time, they managed to pair it with beast hardware, maxing out with Intel Core i9-9880H and GeForce RTX 2080. There is also an upgrade to be seen in the display section, where the 120 Hz TN 1080p panel was ditched in favor of a 144 Hz IPS one with the same resolution. There is a lot of competition in this segment, as we are reaching a top-end gaming territory. On the other hand, MSI certainly has some jacks in its pocket, so why waste more time? Let’s check it out!

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/msi-ge75-raider-8rx/

Contents


Specs Sheet

MSI GE75 Raider 8Rx / 8Sx / 9Sx - Specs

  • Innolux N173HCE-G33 (CMN175C)
  • Color accuracy  2.5  1.3
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 8000GB SSD + up to 2000GB HDD
  • RAM
  • up to 64GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro
  • Battery
  • 51Wh, 6-cell, 51Wh, 6-cell , 65Wh, 6-cell, 51Wh, 65Wh
  • Body material
  • Plastic / Polycarbonate, Aluminum
  • Dimensions
  • 397 x 269 x 27.5 mm (15.63" x 10.59" x 1.08")
  • Weight
  • 2.61 kg (5.8 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps)
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • HDMI
  • 4K@60Hz
  • Displayport mini
  • Card reader
  • SD, SDHC, SDXC
  • Ethernet LAN
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ac
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 1x Mic-in, 1x Headphone-out
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • HD 720p
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Speakers
  • 2x 3W + 2x 3W Woofer
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

What’s in the box?

First, as expected at this price point, this laptop is presented in a very well designed box. Inside you can see the laptop itself, packed in a couple of layers of protection. In a separate compartment, you’ll find the charging unit which in our case (RTX 2070) provides 280W of power.


Design and construction

In terms of the chassis design, this laptop is clearly inspired by its predecessor, which looked a little bit like a car bonnet on the lid. However, the GE75 Raider is designed with simplicity in mind, softening the aggressive lines of the GE73 Raider of last year. This is not to say that the MSI GE75 Raider has an industrial design – no, no, no! It is just a little less intrusive. As we mentioned, the laptop has been trimmed in all directions with the profile being 27.5mm and the weight – 2.61 kg (5.8 lbs).

Its lid can be opened with a single hand and this reveals one of the biggest overhauls of the GE75 Raider – its narrow bezels. This is what mainly contributed to the smaller overall size of this laptop. Of course, this means that one should improvise with the thermal solution.

Further below we see a SteelSeries keyboard, which is one of the best we’ve ever tested – it has both long key travel and tactile feedback, which makes it comfortable for either writers or gamers. Additionally, SteelSeries has equipped the keyboard with a per-key RGB backlight, which is programmable by the dedicated MSI app. However, we would only like to share our frustration of the arrow keys, which despite their big size are slightly uncomfortable as there is no way to designate them from the surrounding keys without looking.

Thankfully, MSI has retained the super useful trio of buttons on the right – the top one is the Power On/Off button, the one in the middle opens the SteelSeries app, whereas the one at the bottom spins the cooling fans at a maximum speed upon push. By the way, this laptop is equipped with an accurate and fast touchpad, although we are doubtful, any gamers are going to use it instead of a mouse.

On the bottom plate, you can see the speaker grills, as well as some ventilation grills spread across the device and just beneath the fans themselves. Exhaust air, on the other side, comes out of the back and the sides.

WidthLengthHeightWeight
MSI GE75 Raider397 mm (15.63″)269 mm (10.59″)27.5 mm (1.08″)2.61 kg (5.8 lbs)
MSI GE73VR 7RF419 mm (16.50″)285 mm (11.22″)29 mm (1.14″) (+5%)2.80 kg (6.2 lbs) (+7%)
Dell G7 17 7790404 mm (15.91″)296 mm (11.65″)25 mm (0.98″) (-9%)3.27 kg (7.2 lbs) (+25%)
ASUS ROG GL704G399 mm (15.75″)274 mm (10.98″)26.4 mm (1.05″) (-4%)2.90 kg (5.7 lbs) (+11%)
Acer Predator Helios 500428 mm (16.85″)300 mm (11.81″)38.7 mm (1.52″) (+41%)4.00 kg (8.8 lbs) (+53%)

Ports

On the left you’ll find an RJ-45 connector, HDMI 2.0 connector, a Mini DisplayPort, followed by two USB 3.1 (Gen. 2) – one Type-A and one Type-C, as well as two Audio jacks. On the other side, there are two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports and an SD card reader. It’s a bummer there is no Thunderbolt connection here, though.


Display quality

MSI GE75 Raider has a 144Hz Full HD IPS screen, model number Innolux N173HCE-G33 (CMN175C). Its diagonal is 17.3″ (43.94 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 127 ppi, their pitch – 0.1995 x 0.1995 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 69 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Its viewing angles are comfortable. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.

The maximum measured brightness is pretty high – 397 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 378 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 11%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 7230K (average) – colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 7130K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 34% Brightness (White level = 139 cd/m2, Black level = 0.18 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is not bad – 760:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows MSI GE75 Raider’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 95% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976, which provides a vibrant and punchy image.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of MSI GE75 Raider with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 9 ms – a rather fast panel.


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

MSI GE75 Raider uses PWM to adjust its screen brightness up to 105 nits. However, the flickers are with a very high frequency (26 kHz), which is rather safe for the eyes during extended periods of use.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Conclusions

MSI has chosen a very well balanced panel for the GE75 Raider. By default Full HD display is bright, color accurate and incredibly fast in terms of response time (144Hz version). Additionally, it covers 95% of sRGB and with the help of the Gaming and Web design profile, it is able to fall under the standard for Web design colors.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for MSI GE75 Raider configurations with 17.3″ Innolux N173HCE-G33 (CMN175C) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS.

*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


Sound

This laptop produces a very loud and crisp sound with its speakers. It is clear from deviations across the entire frequency range.


Drivers

MSI is one of the few manufacturers that make use of a tiny portion of one of your storage devices, placing all of the drivers and utilities you need on a separate partition, so you can install them right away. However, if you still want to search them yourself, we did that for you – https://www.msi.com/Laptop/support/GE75-Raider-8SX

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with 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. Our unit had the 51Wh battery installed. It is fairly small for this size and the results are going to prove that.

Web browsing times are still acceptable – 5 hours and a half. However, in video playback, the times drop by around a full hour – 4 hours and 40 minutes.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.

We use F1 2017’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life gaming.


CPU options

As of the moment of writing this review, the laptop is sold with the 8th Gen Core i7-8750H or the newer Core i7-9750H. You also have the option to buy it with the octa-core Core i9-9880H.


GPU options

In the graphics department, the choice is even wider – you can still pair the GE75 Raider with the older GTX 1060 and GTX 1070. Additionally, there is the RTX 2060, RTX 2070 and the RTX 2080 on the line, as well.


Gaming tests

GTA-V-benchmarks

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, MAX (Check settings)
Average143 fps87 fps63 fps

Far Cry 5Full HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
Average113 fps109 fps103 fps

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, MAX (Check settings)
Average140 fps84 fps55 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
Average98 fps88 fps59 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Highest (Check settings)
Average97 fps93 fps62 fps

Temperatures and comfort

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 temperature (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i7-8750H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
MSI GE75 Raider3.29 GHz (B+20%) @ 85°C2.36 GHz (B+7%) @ 68°C2.55 GHz (B+16%) @ 76°C
Dell G7 17 77902.54 GHz (B+15%) @ 76°C3.09 GHz (B+40%) @ 83°C3.01 GHz (B+37%) @ 85°C
ASUS ROG GL704G3.49 GHz (B+59%) @ 92°C3.41 GHz (B+55%) @ 95°C3.20 GHz (B+45%) @ 87°C
ASUS TUF FX7053.57 GHz (B+62%) @ 88°C2.98 GHz (B+35%) @ 87°C2.75 GHz (B+25%) @ 80°C
Lenovo Legion Y7303.43 GHz (B+56%) @ 91°C3.23 GHz (B+47%) @ 94°C2.69 GHz (B+22%) @ 79°C

In a typical MSI fashion the CPU is oriented at short bursts at a higher frequency, while during longer periods of load the clock speed is cut down so it can reduce the strain on the cooling, so there is enough headroom for the GPU. Of course, we are talking about a gaming laptop here, but if you are buying the laptop for video editting, expect a slightly higher render times.

Real life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)
MSI GE75 Raider1586 MHz @ 74°C1576 MHz @ 77°C
HP Omen 17 20191483 MHz @ 72°C1474 MHz @ 74°C
ASUS ROG GL704G1595 MHz @ 83°C1588 MHz @ 83°C

As you can see, the limitation on the processor is clearly giving its benefits when we compare the temperatures and frequencies of the graphics card. While it matches the clock speeds of the ROG GL704, it’s temperatures are 6C lower at the end of the test and on top of that, the fans are definitely quieter. However, they are still significantly louder than those on the Omen 17 2019.

Gaming comfort

MSI GE75 Raider is not too hot on the keyboard. We measured a maximum temperature of just below 50C. Its palm-rest area, however, remained cool throughout the entire test.4


Verdict

MSI GE75 Raider is certainly a well-balanced gaming laptop. It does the job exactly as it is supposed to and on top of that doesn’t heat up excessively. We found its keyboard to be one of the best in the class, and the RGB control, offered by SteelSeries is better than ever. Then there are the three dedicated buttons on the right, that offers you instant access to customization and fan boost.

While the model we tested was equipped with the older six-core Intel Core i7-8750H, there is octa-core Core i9-9880H that tops the processor choice list. However, except the CPU performance to be a little lower than the average for the said processor as there is a lot of headroom given to the graphics card in terms of thermal distribution.

Another strong point in the GE75 Raider is the display. Its Full HD 144 Hz IPS panel (Innolux N173HCE-G33 (CMN175C)) is very bright, it’s comfortable in terms of viewing angles and the PWM it uses has a very high frequency that is rather safe for the eyesight. Additionally, it covers 95% of sRGB and is very color accurate, especially when you apply the Gaming and Web design profile, we developed.

Sadly, there is no perfect device here as the battery life happens to be the biggest fluke of them all. In addition to /that, we would have liked to see Thunderbolt support, complementing that USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen. 2) port.

Either way, if you are a true gamer you would be more interested in the two M.2 slots and in the Wi-Fi card, that prioritizes real-time use, versus other programs. We found this laptop to an extremely appetizing alternative to the HP Omen 17 2019.

Pros

  • A super bright panel that covers 95% of sRGB and produces accurate colors (Innolux N173HCE-G33 (CMN175C))
  • Adequate cooling
  • Very good keyboard
  • Per-key RGB keyboard backlight with a SteelSeries customization
  • Doesn’t use aggressive PWM to adjust screen brightness (Innolux N173HCE-G33 (CMN175C))
  • Dedicated buttons for fan boost and customization


Cons

  • Average battery life
  • No Thunderbolt support

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/msi-ge75-raider-8rx/

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roberto
roberto
4 years ago

how much fps does it get on fortnite?