The worldwide computing industry has changed. The one size fits all approach is long gone. With modern life mixing productivity and play together, it is no longer viable to get separate machines for each purpose. Working professionals, creators, and gamers alike are now on the lookout for a laptop that isn’t too flashy and can give them steady performance without costing a boatload. Thankfully, industry giants like MSI are out in the global market, producing thin gaming laptops under the MSI GF series in an effort to change that.
The MSI GF Series is one of the newest additions to the company’s laptop portfolio. Created to meet the needs and demands of modern working professionals while appealing to casual gamers, the GF series strikes the perfect balance between design and portability. And it does that while being a pocket-friendly solution. However, the beauty of the MSI GF Series is that it fits a wide variety of users without being a generic template.
While you can see that the GF series does not offer a flashy and over-the-top design with an RGB logo or light strips and strikes a beautiful balance, there’s no compromise on the hardware front. You have models like the MSI GF65 Thin that boast 10th-Gen Intel Core CPUs and up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU with a higher wattage to host your gaming sessions. Gamers on a tighter budget will find solace in models like the MSI GF66 with 11th-Gen Intel CPU and NVIDIA RTX 3050 laptop GPU.
As even seen from a glance, the MSI GF Series contains a wide variety of laptops created to fit anyone and every use case while retaining its core individuality. So no matter if you are an office worker or coder going about your day or a hardcore gamer playing for hours at a stretch, there’s something for everyone’s needs in this lineup. Having said that, let’s talk about the design and performance of the MSI GF series in detail here:
Design aesthetics are always a hard concept to perfect, especially when you are working on a product that should appeal to the student and working-class. Make the laptop’s design too minimalistic, and you ward off gamers. Make it too flashy, and it doesn’t appear professional at client meetings or college presentations. However, the MSI GF series treads the road rarely traveled and comes out on top with a fabulous product lineup.
Taking a design philosophy made for gamers but blending it with the intricacies of a subtle urban design wanted by professionals, the MSI GF Series proves to be the best of both worlds. The asymmetric structure of the MSI GF 65’s body gives it a distinctive yet sleek look, whereas the aluminum alloy with hair brushed texture lends it a level of sophistication.
The gaming laptop market in the modern world is chock full of laptops that try to stand out. Whether it is models that have hyper-styled displays, laptops with RBG strips running around the edges, or laptops with dual displays, it can all get overwhelming. As a gamer who prefers to immerse himself in the games rather than flashy lighting, I appreciate the MSI GF series’ commitment toward its clean design aesthetic. It pays homage to the more classic times while still melding it with the future.
The design of the MSI GF series aesthetic provides a dual-edge advantage. While professionals and creators can take the GF65 Thin or any other laptop in this product lineup to work without it being too distracting, gamers can easily immerse themselves in long sessions without any worry about performance woes.
No matter if you are out and about presenting creations to clients or sitting at home rendering videos, performance is paramount. Nobody likes a laptop that starts stuttering after opening more than two-three applications. The MSI GF lineup fortunately is power-packed to its brim to counter situations like that. Featuring 10th-Gen Intel Core i7 CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, the GF65 Thin delivered an outstanding performance in our testing, no matter what the usage scenario.
Scenario 1: Daily Office Work
As a writer dishing out thousands of words on a daily, my usual workflow involves multiple tabs, videos, a text editor, along with image editing software when needed. To test if the MSI GF65 Thin could actually manage all this in one go, I decided to use it as a daily driver while sparing nothing. The GF65, unsurprisingly, pulled through everything without any lag or slowdown.
The 51 Whr battery easily lasted me 3-4 hours (in Performance mode) under my normal usage before I had to charge up the laptop. Now, changing the power mode settings to Battery Saver or Balanced added another hour and a half to the backup, which was useful. Moreover, the tactile backlit keyboard felt butter smooth to my fingers while I was typing away. Professionals in a similar business who are used to traveling can pick up the GF Series products to get an all-in-one machine.
While typing articles on a laptop is one thing, editing and rendering videos is a whole another ballpark. Since rendering videos take up a fair chunk of a system’s resources, I decided to test the GF series’ prowess in this department as well.
The next pass was using the famous Adobe Premiere Pro video editing software. Again. Rendering the same 4K/ 60FPS video to an MP4 format took the same time, and I could continue to use the laptop without worries. I performed the rendering test with multiple videos to test the GF65’s endurance, and it took them all on the chin every time.
At the end of the day, there is a bit of gamer inside every one of us. Since the GF65 Thin easily doubles up as a play laptop once work hours come to a close, I decided to put this thin laptop through its paces. My current gaming schedule sees me invest an hour each in Doom Eternal and Cyberpunk 2077. Booting up Doom immediately set the pre-set to Ultra at 1080p with RTX enabled. All the while I was on Mars, killing demons left and right, the FPS on GF65 Thin did not drop below 95. While the GeForce RTX 3060 GPU is capped at 75 Watts, which is something I’m not a fan of, I did not face any lag whatsoever playing Doom Eternal.
Cyberpunk 2077 was a bit more punishing to the GF65 Thin, with the laptop dishing out 40-55 fps at Ultra graphics settings and RTX on. While these games tried to heat up the laptop, the performance remained unaffected, thanks to MSI’s Cooler Boost 5 technology that encases the internals with 2 dedicated fans and 6 copper heat pipes. The fans did get a bit too loud, but that was because I used the extreme performance settings using the MSI Dragon Center, which acts as a one-stop solution for customizing the laptop’s settings.
One thing that needs to be said about gaming and streaming movies on the GF Series is that I absolutely loved the speakers. It is probably the first time I had to turn down the volume because a laptop’s speakers were too loud while outputting good quality audio. Making them a set of front-firing speakers was the right call, good job MSI!
With the gaming market is expanding faster than ever, having powerful hardware is almost a need at this point. While it’s easy to think that everything out there is expensive, consumers with mixed utility can relax, knowing that the MSI GF series is out there. With the GF65 Thin available at just Rs. 1,23,990 for the 10th-Gen Intel Core i7 CPU and RTX 3060 GPU variant, it’s easier than ever before to get your hands on a capable gaming machine. And if you ever feel like you need another system for work, well, think again.
