Go MSI Crazy – GH50 Headset, GK50 TKL Keyboard & GM41 Mouse Review
Peter Donnell / 1 year ago
Performance
The headset looks stunning, with an all-grey aesthetic that matches up with the design of both the mouse and keyboard, so everything is going to look like it belongs together. It’s mostly plastic, but there’s metal in the headband too, so it all feels nice and robust, while also being very flexible for a more comfortable fit.
The drivers are 40mm dynamic drivers, and feature a 32-hm impedance, so you don’t need a particularly powerful amp to drive them in wired mode, meaning they’re surprisingly loud, and that’s still true in their wireless performance mode too. The drivers are closed back too, which locks in the sound and blocks out the world around you quite nicely meaning you can enjoy your audio in relative peace and quiet.
Their overall fit and finish are very good, they even fit on my large head (many headsets don’t) and on their minimum setting they even fit my 10-year-old daughter pretty snugly too, making them well suited to just about any user.
With a powerful stereo sound and a built-in 7.1 Virtual Surround with Haptic Feedback, they pack quite a punch. The sound is a little low on treble, but this can be EQ’d in with the MSI Centre software to suit your taste, but music, gaming and movies sound detailed and rich. The Feedback mode is cool too, it adds a little bit of vibration to the headset that seems to heavily amplify the bass effect, which I think is great for a movie, but it got a little bit distracting in competitive games.
They’re even foldable, making them easy to store, and the microphone boom, while large, is also removable. Just don’t do what I do and remove the microphone then never find it again. The microphone sounds great though, I haven’t used a boom microphone in a while and it was a pleasant surprise how bright and clear it was.
Plus, the on-headset controls make it really easy to make quick adjustments, with volume and mute controls within easy reach.
By far one of my favourite aspects of all this setup has to be the mouse charging dock. I use wireless peripherals and always need to find somewhere to put them while I’m testing something else. Plus, I often don’t charge until the lights are flashing red, so having a charging stand means that anytime it’s not in use, I can charge it, so the battery is not going to be a concern.
Plus, it’s reasonably compact, so it isn’t a burden on your desktop space.
With the TKL keyboard, it frees up a load of space for the mouse too. With a maximum of 20,000 DPI from its fantastic PixArt sensor, it’s great for fast-paced twitchy shooters. However, I personally never found the need to go much about 4000 DPI, even on my 3440×1440 21:9 aspect ratio monitor, it felt plenty fast.
There’s some RGB customisation too, with the MSI dragon on the back, matching up with the dragon that’s printed onto the keyboard. The mouse is also an ambidextrous grip, but keep in mind it only has left-side buttons for right-handed users.
The mouse buttons are really nice, both individually mounted and with some really nice clicky switches that feel similar to the white clicky switches on the keyboard. They’re a little loud though, but the sound and feel of them is very pleasing, just maybe not to the person sitting next to you while you spam left-click.
It’s a surprisingly light mouse at 74 grams, especially given it’s wireless and has a battery within, but also because it’s a full-size design that fits a full-palm grip. Most mice this light have a honeycomb design to shed weight, but despite being full-body, this one feels really robust.
It glides great too, as it has loads of slipmats on the base, more than it likely needs given it’s so light, but even on my slightly rough wool mouse mat, it still moves around great! Plus, there are controls down here for the profile selection and the master power controls should you need them.
The keyboard looks wild, as it’s packed with RGB lighting that is super vibrant. Plus, the main body of the keyboard has this gorgeous brushed aluminium top plate that reflects the light really nicely and looks good even with the lights off too.
There’s a lot going on here too, with a bunch of features built into the keyboard that you can access via FN-Shift, but it can be customised further in the software too. You can cycle gaming modes, profiles, lighting effects all on-the-fly.
The key caps are pretty unique too, with cut corners giving them an eight-sided design. They’re also slim caps, mounted on low-profile switches. The pro is that they have fast action and short travel. However, the con is that they’re not compatible with custom keycaps.
They use a weight mounting system that isn’t Cherry MX stem compatible, but the bonus is there are two points of contact, so the caps are more stable and wobble less.
Plus, these new Choc White switches from Kailh are great! They’re very clicky, but it’s a light click and makes me think of a really nice quality switch on a nice car’s dashboard… they’re unique switches and the clicky noise of them isn’t going to be for everyone, but I like it.
The RGB features range from disco seizure to puking rainbow, but that seems to be enough to make both my kids (10, and 17 years old) want this keyboard even more. Thankfully, for me, it supports being set to a single colour too, so I don’t have a seizure while I’m writing a review. But hey, it’s nice to have choice!
A nice touch, aside from the dope-looking dragon there, is the NumLock and Capslock on the right side, they’re in a light bar that has a diffused light when they’re on. Pretty cool and a unique take on an otherwise boring feature of keyboards.
Overall, it’s a nice keyboard, but again, it is quite loud to type on, so keep that in mind if you type in a room where someone else may be bothered by loud typing, or they’ll likely belt you round the back of the head with the keyboard.
MSI has nailed the aesthetics though, with multi-tone matte greys making up the bulk of the mouse, keyboard and headset, and all have matching black braided cables for charging and/or connectivity.