MSI GP62 Leopard Pro 7RD Gaming Laptop Review

MSI GP62 Leopard Pro 7RD Gaming Laptop Review An affordable portable gaming system for many is a difficult problem. At least, not without spending a lot of money. We, therefore, review what could be an excellent option, the MSI GP62 Leopard Pro laptop. This could be the laptop to provide your solution for an portable gaming experience on a reasonable budget. Coming with a 7th generation Intel Core i7 processor, a 15.6 inch full HD display, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 or 1050 Ti graphics card and DDR4 memory. On the surface at least, this laptop looks to have a decent amount of performance to offer. 7th Generation Intel Core i7 "With the innovative Cooler Boost, 4 cooling solution and MSI's exclusive gaming features catered for gamers, the Intel Core i7-7700HQ releases its full performance completely on MSI gaming laptops." - MSI Specifications For in-depth specifications please visit the official product page here. A Closer Look Once out of the box, understatement is the keyword. Nothing looks overly impressive or ornate. From a visual standpoint, however, it is the understatement that really highlights the laptops features. For example, a more glitzy layout could easily let that beautiful SteelSeries keyboard and colour layout get lost. It has a really nice, clean and tidy layout. The screen has a matte finish and generally speaking is really good at not reflecting the ambient room light. Therefore you shouldn't have too much difficulty seeing whatever the environment you are using it in. Full-Size Keyboard The laptop is presented in a deep black. The MSI branding is found under the monitor and on the top of the laptop and it is nice and sharp while understated. The top edge of the monitor is lightly pitched and is matching at the front edge. When you lift the lid you are immediately struck by its sleek black design. The design includes a full-size keyboard including a number pad. While things do get a little cramped around the number pad, it's nice to see everything there and (more or less) in the familiar places. Connectivity As for connections on the right-hand side, you will find a USB 2.0 port, a memory card reader and in addition, a DVD-drive. The latter of which is becoming a bit of a rarity in modern gaming laptop design, but in this instance, a welcome addition. On the left side, you are spoilt for connections. These include a USB 3.0, a micro DisplayPort, ethernet port, USB 2.0 as well as HD audio inputs. The laptop also comes with a SteelSeries keyboard. With backlit silver keys and a very bold key lettering the extra touch makes is very attractive and at a glance, hints of something of real substance. Other features include excellent wireless connectivity, Killer Gigabit LAN and an m.2 SSD for swift loading times. The operational lights are located on the underside of the front-lip. It should be noted that these are not easy to view when in operation and although I understand that you wouldn't necessarily want the flickering interfering with your experience, at the same time, being more notable would have been nice. Cooling The underside of the laptop has several banks of intake vents with 2 large exhaust vents to the rear. While running under standard non-gaming usage, the laptop is quite notably quiet. This is surprising given its reasonably high specification. On the off chance that you think things are getting a little warm, however, the laptop also incorporates a fan boost button to really get the air moving. While it is rather noisy, it's preferable to overheating. Touch Pad Front and slightly off centre there is a scratch pad for the mouse as well as separate left and right click buttons. I personally am no fan of scratch pads, particularly those that are centrally mounted (I prefer the corner designs), however, it is nice and responsive and in addition to the 2 buttons (rather than a poke/hold interface), the mouse is more than acceptable. SteelSeries Going back to keyboard again, the moment you turn it on and it lights up, it simply looks fantastic. The keys have a really nice solid feel to them and while great for gaming, their low profile can make typing a little difficult. This is particularly notable if you are a fast typer or perhaps used to mechanical keyboards. When staring at that gorgeous backlighting though, you generally tend to forgive and forget whatever it may lack in functionality. Testing & Methodology To test each system or notebook, we want to stress every component of the system to check stability and performance, giving us an idea as to why those particular components were picked for this particular system. We use a wide variety of applications to gain a broad spectrum of results for comparing diverse aspects of system performance. Games Used All games are tested at both 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440 and 2160 x 3840 (4K). Please note that for systems which do not support a particular resolution, such as 1080p laptops, we will not test the higher resolutions on those devices. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Pure Hair Off Deus Ex (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Uplay) Medium Preset Turf Effects Off Far Cry Primal (Uplay) Normal Preset Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download) FireStrike (1080p) Benchmark Unigine Superposition (download) 1080p Extreme Benchmark PCMark 10 Professional (download) Express Benchmark WPrime (download) 32M and 1024M CineBench R15 (download) CPU Multi CPU Single Handbrake (download) Custom MP4 to MKV 4K conversion (details below) AIDA64 Engineer (download) CPU-Z (download) HWMonitor (download) Handbrake To stress processors to their absolute limit and accurately judge their performance in video editing workloads, we transcode a 7.7GB compilation of gaming footage; this particular file is freely available from here. The captured footage is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long, it has a bit rate of 50.1 Mbps and it uses the Advanced Video Codec. Additionally, the video runs at a constant 30 frames-per-second and opts for a 3820 x 2140 (4K) resolution. Once loaded into Handbrake, we then transcode the 4K MP4 to an MKV file using the "normal" profile. Synthetic Benchmarks 3DMark Firestrike The MSI GP62 Leopard Pro 7RD isn't a high-end system and this is clear when in comparison to the results of other laptops. While it has an excellent CPU, it's likely that the rather lightweight Nvidia 1050 acts as a lead balloon to the figures. The difference between this and the WoT edition (which had the 1050ti) is clearly visible and substantial. Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme Moving onto a GPU bound score, the system scored a reasonable 997. Once again, the lack of a better graphics card and only 2gb of VRAM meant that this system just simply could not compete in this test. PCMark 10 Scoring 4139, this is where the MSI GP62 Leopard Pro 7RD really shows its power. That Intel i7 7700 makes this, from a CPU standpoint, a solid performer. WPrime 32M and 1024M A little higher than we would have anticipated clocking in a 330.215, which is quite notably higher than its competitors. Cinebench R15 The CPU pushes the rendering ability of this laptop far beyond that which most would expect. While the single core result is a little lower than expected, I would put this down to perhaps just an aberration that clearly does not affect the overall performance. Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K The MSI GP62 Leopard Pro 7RD did fairly decently with the conversion. While 4k video files may not fall within your usual gaming laptop remit, this performed the task at a reasonably solid speed thanks in no small part to that Intel i7. It was, however, during this task that the laptop became the noisiest, but then video conversion is one of the most demanding tasks you can do. Storage Write While not the fastest figured we have seen, the SSD included is certainly no slouch either. Despite the SSD capacity not being too amazing, the secondary standard HDD still performs at a good level and has more than enough capacity for gaming. Read Gaming Performance With this system only operating at a maximum 1920 x 1080P display, we have omitted our usual 1440P and 4K benchmarks. This particularly model tested comes with the Nvidia 1050, not the 1050ti and in fairness, it shows. We have reviewed laptops with the 1050ti and although not massive, the difference is certainly notable. While this will eat up the lighter load games, you might struggle to get the best performance out of new titles. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Rise of the Tomb Raider Ghost Recon: Wildlands Far Cry Primal Power Consumption and Temperatures Temperatures Performance temperates are pretty average compared to similar laptops. In idle the laptop is quite notably quiet, but once under load, the fans can get quite vocal although this should not affect your gaming experience. The Nvidia 1050 handles the temperatures surprisingly well, even at the highest recorded temperature it was much lower than I expected it to be. While this clearly isn't a particularly high-end card, from a temperature stand-point at least, it works well at operating within more than acceptable ranges. CPU GPU Acoustics Final Thoughts Pricing In a price range of about £750-£800 this would I feel comfortably fall within the budget gaming laptop criteria. If you needed a laptop capable of gaming, without being blown away, then this could make an excellent option on a lower budget. Overview The laptop combines an understated look with some very nice highlights. It may not blow someone's mind at a glance and certainly doesn't have some of the visual appeals of its competitors, but once they see that keyboard they will doubtlessly be impressed. Performance While this version included an i7 7700k which was excellent, the Nvidia 1050 just didn't have the punch required to accompany it. While it largely coped with what our benchmarks threw at it, once it hit a wall (largely it's small 2gb of VRAM) it struggled to keep up. Design I honestly can't see anyone disliking this laptop. Its sleek, black, understated look combined with that beautiful laptop will make this appeal to all. I only had a couple gripes. One was the location of the scratchpad (I prefer a corner location rather than in front of the keyboard). The other was that the operation lights were on the underside of the front lip. The location of the these LED's (for HDD operation, power and charging) makes their inclusion almost pointless. You can't see them unless you stoop down or lift it up. That being said, the inclusion of a DVD-drive was nice to see given that they are almost being phased out of laptop design. Gaming and Something Working The Intel i7-7700 easily handles the day-to-day operations you might have. Running multiple windows at times, I never felt the performance drop. My only complaint is that for such a fantastic processor, the Nvidia 1050 simply wasn't a good match for me. The processor is streets ahead of the GPU in terms of matching performance. Should I Buy One? A nice gaming laptop if you are on a budget, but unless you are into the lighter load games, getting the 1050ti version is almost necessary. I almost hesitated to call this version a gaming laptop given that the 1050 was so completely overwhelmed by moderate to high-performance tests. While I love the processor performance, the standard 1050 simply struggles to compete. The 1050 version is simply a nice budget laptop - Pay the extra, get the 1050ti version. Pros Sleek understated design. SteelSeries keyboard is a joy to behold. SSD makes start-up fantastically quick. Very quiet during non-intensive operation. A top quality processor. The inclusion of a DVD-drive is a highly pleasant surprise. Cons The Nvidia 1050 is a poor match to the processor. Only 2gb of VRAM makes your gaming options limited. I dislike the location of the operation lights. The inbuilt speakers are poor. Music is very tinny. Neutral I would prefer the scratch pad in a corner. The keyboard includes a number pad, but things get a little cluttered in that area. Exhaust can get a little noisy while at peak performance. The laptop has a fan boost button. A bit unnecessary since it generally just tends to turn on when required anyway.